In WordPress you can easily create custom menus and assign them to available menu slots within your WordPress theme. It is always recommended to take advantage of the main navigation as that will be most present to your website visitors and help them navigate through your website. In case you are encountering any issues with custom menus in WordPress, especially with the main navigation of your theme, we have collected solutions to the most common issues.
- How to create custom menus in WordPress
- Menu is displaying several random pages after theme activation
- Main menu not showing properly after upgrading from free theme
- How to make custom menu static on scroll
- Use header menu as main navigation
- Menu disappears after installing child theme
- How to customize the design of the main menu bar
- You have not found a solution to your issue?
How to create custom menus in WordPress
To create a custom menu in WordPress you have to navigate to Appearance => Menus in your WordPress dashboard. Here you can create new custom menus, assign categories, pages or custom links as menu items and then assign the menu to your preferred menu slot – if available. Please see this tutorial for more information: How to create a custom menu in WordPress.
When using most of our WordPress themes (e.g. MH Magazine), it’s also possible to make use of custom menus to display linked social icons that point to your social networks. To create a social menu, please see: How to create a social icons menu in WordPress.
Menu is displaying several random pages after theme activation
If you have activated your new WordPress theme and have never assigned a custom menu with this theme before, the theme usually will display all available pages on your site within the menu. To change this, you can create a custom menu in your WordPress dashboard under Appearance => Menus and assign the menu to the particular menu slot in your theme – as explained above.
Main menu not showing properly after upgrading from free theme
When upgrading your theme from the lite to premium version, or if you simply change your WordPress theme, some basic settings will get lost as these are saved on a per theme basis in your database. To ensure that your menus will appear again, you simply need to re-assign your menus to the correct menu slots / locations under Appearance => Menus in your WordPress dashboard.
How to make custom menu static / fixed on scroll
If you would like to have a static menu which stays on a fixed position when you scroll on your website, this usually requires custom coding in case that functionality isn’t available out of the box. If you’re familiar with coding, you could create a custom child theme for your WordPress theme and then apply your customizations as you like. As an example of what route you could take, please have a look at this: CSS and simple jQuery.
Use header menu as main navigation
Most of our WordPress themes are designed to have a main navigation as menu bar and you can display some additional menus for complementary links (e.g. header or footer menu). If you would like to get rid of the main navigation and use the small header menu as main navigation instead, this usually isn’t possible out of the box and requires custom coding.
The reason for this is that there usually are several menu slots within your WordPress theme and it’s not a good idea to display them all on mobile. For example the MH Magazine theme has four menu slots in the header (header, social, main and additional navigation) and displaying all these menus on mobile devices wouldn’t be good for usability and doesn’t look appealing.
That’s also the reason why the header and additional menus will be hidden on small mobile devices (e.g. smartphones) as these menus are only supposed to display complementary menu items anyway and the main navigation will be converted into a nice mobile navigation on mobile devices. However, if you’re familiar with coding and would like to have it different, you could apply your own customizations within a custom child theme.
If you for example would like to prevent that the header and/or additional navigation will be hidden on mobile devices, you could achieve this with come basic custom CSS code. Here you can find more information: Show header / additional navigation on mobile devices.
Menu disappears after installing child theme
When installing and activating child themes in WordPress, it’s basically almost the same as installing a new theme. That means it’s required to do some basic configuration after the activation of your child theme. If your custom menu (which you previously had created) is not the default menu anymore, you can navigate to Appearance => Menus in your WordPress dashboard and assign your custom menu again to the preferred menu slot in your WordPress theme.
How to customize the design of the main menu bar
If you simply want to change the color of the menu bar, this usually is possible by changing the color scheme of your theme in your WordPress dashboard under Appearance => Customize => Colors. In case you want to further customize the design of the main menu bar, you usually need to do this with some custom CSS code. We’ve collected some examples of custom CSS changes regarding the main navigation in MH Magazine here: CSS customizations for main menu.
You have not found a solution to your issue?
In case you have not found answers to your questions in this support article, please also take a look at our other support topics, as it is very likely that you will find your answer there. If you have purchased a WordPress theme by MH Themes and have a valid license to gain access to theme updates and support, then you may also send a support request for additional assistance.