Your site’s navigation menu helps visitors find content and move through your site. In this guide, you’ll learn how to troubleshoot and fix the most common menu issues.
How you edit your menu depends on your theme type. Block themes use the Site Editor, while classic and some third-party themes rely on the Customizer. To find the right place, check Appearance in your site’s dashboard:
- If you have Editor under Appearance, you’re using a block theme. Edit your menu through Appearance → Editor.
- If you have Customize under Appearance, you’re using a classic theme. Edit your menu through Appearance → Customize → Menus or Appearance → Menus.
Learn the step-by-step process for editing your site’s menu.
If your navigation menu isn’t visible on your site, a Navigation block may not exist in your theme’s header or footer. Most themes include one by default, but if it’s missing or removed, your menu will not display.
Learn how to add a Navigation block to your site.
If your menu updates across your site but not on your homepage (or one specific page), that page is most likely using a different header. In a block theme, templates like the homepage can use their own header, which may contain a separate Navigation block set to a different menu—so editing the menu elsewhere won’t change it.
To fix this, follow these steps:
- From your site’s dashboard, go to Appearance → Editor → Templates and open the template used for your homepage.
- Select the Navigation block in that template’s header.
- In the block settings sidebar, check which menu it uses and choose the same menu you use on the rest of your site.
Learn more about editing templates and the Navigation block.
When you publish a new page or post, it is not automatically added to your menu. You need to manually add it.
You can add different types of content to your menu:
- Add pages and posts to a menu
- Add categories to a menu
- Add custom links and other content types to a menu
When you first add a Navigation block, it displays your site’s menu. If you haven’t created a custom menu yet, it will automatically include a Page List block that displays all published pages and updates automatically when new pages are published.
If you’re using the Page List block, it will only show your published pages as top-level menu items. Child pages will not appear as drop-down or submenus. To create dropdowns with child pages, you need to convert the page list to individual menu links.
Learn how to create drop-down menus.
By default, your menu automatically converts to a mobile-friendly hamburger menu (the three-line icon) on smaller screens. You can customize this behavior to show the full menu, adjust the layout, or change when the mobile menu appears.
Learn how to change your menu’s design for mobile devices.
Note: If you want to display completely different menu content on mobile versus desktop, you’ll need to create two separate menus and use CSS to show/hide them based on screen size. Learn how to hide content on specific devices using CSS. This approach requires some CSS knowledge.
If your menu appears vertical instead of horizontal (or vice versa), or menu items aren’t aligned as expected, you can adjust the Navigation block’s layout settings.
Learn how to adjust your menu’s layout and display.
