Menus

The first thing to remember is that if your page or gallery isn’t on a menu, then visitors to the site will not be able to find it without knowing the actual URL address. So everyone needs to understand how menus work.

The GeneratePress theme supports the use of three menus at one time:

  • A primary navigation menu
  • A secondary navigation menu
  • An Off Canvas Menu
This is the Appearance – Menu Edit Menu page. Pictured is the About menu. Notice the Menu Settings options at the bottom of the page. This is where you assign where the menu appears. Like all pages, the About page placement is controlled with the Conditional Menus plugin, so is not assigned to a location here.

The Primary Navigation Menu

This is the site’s main menu. It is on the top of every page. The settings for the menu can be found in Appearance – Customize, under the Layout, Colors, and Typography sections. The Underline behavior of this menu is controlled under Additional CSS.

The Secondary Navigation Menu

This is the site’s page by page menu. It is on the top of every page. The settings for the menu can be found in Appearance – Customize under, Layout, Colors, and Typography. The Underline behavior of this menu is controlled under Additional CSS.

While styled the same, this is actually several different menus, a different menu for each page. The menu switches depending on which page the User is. This behavior is controlled by a plugin called Conditional Menus.

The Off Canvas Panel

This is a hidden slider menu that slides in from the side as a vertical panel. On this site it is set to be used only on Mobile. The settings for the menu can be found in Appearance – Customize under, Layout, Colors, and Typography.

Conditional Menus Plugin

The MSHS site uses this plugin to control when selected menus are displayed or not displayed. It is mainly used for the page-by-page Secondary Menus. The controls for this plugin are found on the Manage Location Tab of the Menu Settings.

This is the Manage Locations view. Notice all of the options under Secondary Menu. This is where we assign individual page menus with the Conditional Menus plugin.

Appearance – Menus

This is the section where we create, edit and organize the site menus. It is divided into two tabs:

  • Edit Menus
  • Manage Locations

Edit Menus Tab

This is the area where we create and edit menus. The procedure is usually this:

  • At the top of the page “Select a menu to edit:” from the dropdown or “create a new menu.”
  • Under Add Menu items go to the Pages section
  • Select the pages you wish to add from either the Most Recent, View All or Search tabs. Then hit the Add to Menu button. This is the way for the primary menu only.
    • Secondary Menus must use Custom Links. That will be covered here.
  • Under Menu Settings, you can select the role for the menu. On this site:
    • Auto add pages Automatically add new top-lever pages to this menu = Unchecked
    • Primary Menu is New-main
    • Secondary Menu is set to Top Nav. This is a placeholder “default menu.” All Secondary Menu locations are controlled by the Conditional Menus plugin.
    • Off Canvas Menu is New-main

Other settings under the Pages panel include:

  • Posts – there are no posts on this site
  • Custom Links, see below
  • Categories – these pertain to Posts only so we don’t use them. 

Custom Links

The Custom Links setting under the Pages panel allows you to enter any address you want, even one entirely off this site.

This site uses Custom Links to make the Secondary Navigation menus.

These all involve what are called Page Anchors. These anchors are a bit of code that allows a link to take someone to an exact location on a page, instead of just the top of the page.

Adding anchors where you want them is explained in the section on creating and editing Pages. 

When creating a link using Custom Links:

  • Include the entire URL of the page with https://.
    • Example: https://mshsvt.org/join/
  • Add the name of the page anchor, preceded by a # (hash tag)
  • If ever a Custom Link fails to work:
    • Make sure you included the # hash tab
    • Make sure you actually added the Anchor on the page!
    • It is recommended to add Anchors to the H2 or H3 header

Manage Locations Tab

This is the area where you assign menus to locations. 

  • In this site the Primary and Off Canvas Menu locations don’t change.
  • The Secondary Menu locations are controlled by the Conditional Menus plugin from this tab area.
  • The default Secondary Menu is Top Nav. This is a menu that features only a Search link.
  • Next to the other menu names are a +Conditions button. Pressing this brings up a lot of options most users will never need.
  • In most circumstances you will be assigning your menu to a page.
  • The illustration shows the Pages tab selected and History as the chosen page on which to display the menu.
  • You can also Disable the Secondary Menu in this panel.