Section 5: Working with Navigation and Menu's

Before we start to work with the individual menu components, it's a good idea to decide on which pages you want linked into each menu component, and if you want the buttons for the corresponding pages displayed in a specific 'order'.

Most menu bars will include a link back to the 'Home' page as the 'first' or the 'last' button, and the remaining buttons are usually listed in order of priority, or alphabetically. By default, Wordpress will list the pages in order of when they were created. So you may need to create a specific 'order' number for each page, so it's displayed in the 'order' that you choose for your website.

To change the order of the pages:

In the following example, we see the 'Blog' page listed at the end of the list, in the 'last' or 'bottom' position on our ( Side Menu ) panel. The 'Blog' was the last page created, so it's listed 'last'.

and here's what it looks like in our LIVE example

now, let's say we want to move the 'Blog' page to the 'top' of the menu buttons, so it's listed where the 'Home' button currently is

• click on the 'Pages' menu >> 'Edit'
• then hover over the 'Page name' in this example, 'Blog' to display the 'Quick Edit' link

• click on the 'Quick Edit' link
• type a number into the 'Order' field ( in this example, 1 )
• and click the 'Update Page' button

• you're not done yet, you will also need to edit the remaining pages, and assign each of the remaining pages in your list an order number as well.
• write down the page names if you have can't remember which pages you want to included in your 'Menu' components
• return to the 'Edit Page' panel
• click on the 'Quick Edit' for each page included in your Site Menu
• assign the page an 'order' in the 'Order' field

for this example, we've assigned the following for each page

• Blog (1)
• Home (2)
• About (3)
• Services (4)
• Contact (5)
• FAQ's (6)
• Privacy (7)

and here's the result from our LIVE example

** NOTE: The order number applies to the Side Menu, Drop Down Menu, and Bottom Links.. once an order is set for a page, this is the order of that page will be displayed in all 3 of the Navigation components.

** NOTE: the Menu components are based on the 'Navigation Structure' built into your Wordpress Theme. Navigation Components are site wide widgets. You can modify each of the 'Menu' components to display specific pages, and edit as often as you need to, but you will not be able to create 'page specific' menu bars. For Page Specific navigation, you'll need to create a new widget, and insert the hyperlinks into that widget, then add this widget to a sidebar specific to your page. More on that in the following lessons.