To setup the website menu in WordPress 6.x is completely different from older versions of WP. This article helps you with both ways to setup WordPress menus.
– To be honest, for me the new way to create menus with full site editors was a big drawback at first!
How to tell if your theme works with the old way or the new way of creating menus in WordPress?
If you already know if your website uses fullsite edit or not, and just want a quick step-by-step guide, you can jump to;
- Creating menus the old way (i.e. themes that do not support full site editing or in versions of WordPress older than 6.x)
- Creating menus in themes that support fullsite editing
Here’s how you identify the relevant method for your theme and WordPress installation:
Log-in to WordPress (surprise!) and click on the ‘Appearance’ menu item in the left column.
1) If there is a sub-menu called ‘Menus’ your theme does not support full-site editing and/or your version of WordPress is version 5.9 or older.
To create your menu follow the step specified in creating menus the old way
2) If, instead, you see ‘Themes’ and ‘Editor’ when you mouse-over ‘Appearance’ your theme uses full-site editing, and you’ll have to follow this process to…
Create WP menus with themes that do not support full site editing
It can be argued (and I won’t disagree) that setting up the menu ‘the old’ way is easier and more intuitive. It comes with the cost of not being able to move the menu or change the appearance of the menu, which is offered with full-site editing.
But if your theme’s menu option are all you need, then indeed; you’ll be up and running in no time. Follow the steps in this video:
Create menus in WordPress full-site editing themes (and running WP version 6.x and newer)
The benefit of WordPress’ new method of working with menus is that it offers a much higher degree of customisation compared to the old method. It is however, not very intuitive to be honest.
I have created a relative brief video going through the menu setup in WordPress themes that use the blok editor and full-site editing. You can see it below. But do also, take the time to watch the full video from Jamie Marsland inserted below.
More details on creating menus with blocks
Jamie from Pootlepress have created a very detailed video om the subject. His video is divided into two parts – one for block editing an existing menu created with the old menu method and one for creating a menu from scratch. The first part takes the first 4 minutes of the video and the second part starts after that.
Use the slider in the video-windows or click here to jump directly to the 4 minute mark in YouTube