Wordpress Menus

Shown below is the Wordpress interface showing the Menu Editing (Appperance) screen - click on image to see larger view.

I have added mark-up to aid in this dicussion.????? (Image is wp_menu_1.png)

While the screenshot above shows the menu editing screen from the Village Hall website this is not the same as what I see when I started a new website.

The menu that is being shown in the WUI is the current menu of the VH website - it consists of just two items. This is shown in the black bubble.

There is a list of pages that can be added to the menu system, the red bubble on the main screen. These are the pages that are "published" there may be pages that are till in "draft".

It is not easy to find the Menus page in the WUI. The red bubble on the WUI menu.

Other topics that could be documented

There are other areas of the Wordpress User Interface (WUI) that could be documented as I don't think that it is well explained by Wordpress in their help files.

• The use of Themes and Templates
• The difference between editing exiiting content vs. the creation of a new page
• Monitoring of visitors and feedback logs.
• Adding on-line payments - Woocommerce and Stripe
• Adding media - uploading photographs and how to display them - there is a slideshow block! - All media is stored in the
• Use of the WUI in general
• Upgrading to paid subscription - what you will get - the "ownership" of the domain registration.
• The difference between a post and a page.
• Reponsivity - how things look on a mobile phone - menus with dropdowns could be problematic
• SEO - Yoast and Adveristing Blaze
• Google Analytics - how this compares to Statistics.

The Slidehow Block

The WUI for this actually looks quite good! I wonder if it works?

All the controls that I want to get to work seem to be there.

Without trying to build a slideshow for myself, and I have no intention of doing so, I don't know if this block is available with the "free" WP package.

Using Themes

There needs to be a consideration that menus will repond differently depending on the theme that is chosen.

If a "blog" type theme is chosen and you want blog posts to appear in the menu system then a strategy needs to be developed in that they should not interfere with any "website" menu items. In fact, I am not sure both can be implemented together.

There is an option to add new blog posts to the menu automatically. I see this as probelmatic as I have stated above.

The Wordpress site (linked at the bottom of this page) was created from scratch on an iPad. The start was made after selecting "Create an Account" after a User ID was disabled (well actually purposely mis-spelled) and a new "free" site was created. The on-screen prompts were followed as if I did not know what I was doing when in fact I did!

A theme was chosen (at random) and content was added automatically. Actually the result was not too bad.

The effect of Theme selection

When I started a new "practice" Wordpress website I do not see the same editing screen as shown above.

The selection of a theme seems to affect whether you see the "Menus" option under the "Appearance" menu option. Or it could be that Wordpress have "improved" things.

When I re-wrote some of the Village Hall website in Wordpress I changed the theme from "Twentyseventeen" to "Business". The business theme only seems to be available to a paid subscription. However, the coding for the menu is still present in the "free" subscription of the Village Hall website. Since writing this page the subscription has been renewed and the menu has been edited to add back some of the items. Quite frankly I am surprised. This couls be due to the fact that the "Menus" item is still in the GUI (see graphic above).

Adding menu items and dropdowns

Basically this is quite simple although not intuitive. If you are using the Wordpress block editor you should be able to work it out.

Drop-down menus seem to be Theme dependant and possibly part of a "premium" theme.

When I developed the "home-grown" code to emulate the Wordpress theme I had yet to develop the dropdown behaviour of the menuing system. I have done so for this website with far more options and formatting.

The adding and editing of pages and menu items is relatively simple but the implementation of forms is a little more challenging.