One of the things that you may wish to do as part of the process of structuring/restructuring your website is have a hierarchical menu. Doing this has a number of advantages, including the ability to cram many more items onto an otherwise limited space. It also gives your site some semblance of order, with related items falling under one menu. So, how do you create a hierarchical menu in WordPress?
What does it mean to have a hierarchical menu on a website?
Having a hierarchical menu simply means that you will have menu items inside others. In essence, you have one main menu nesting a number of sub-menus.
An example
Let’s assume, as an example, that you run a website on which one of the main components are health meals that your readers can enjoy as part of their lifestyle. One of your menu items would, in this case, be titled “Healthy Meals.” However, this menu item can, logically be expanded to include specific sub-menus titled “Breakfast,” “Lunch,” and “Diner.”
These sub-menus will be nested inside the Healthy Meals main menu. So, when a visitor to your site moves their cursor on top of the Healthy Meals menu, the three sub-menus become visible. That, in essence is what is meant by hierarchical menus; a main menu that has sub-menus nested within it.
How to create hierarchical menu items in WordPress
In WordPress, the process of creating hierarchical menus is quite simple. All that you need to do is first create your menus. What happens is that each time you create a Page, it automatically becomes a main menu item (unless you have switched off this function). To create hierarchy within your menu items, you need to take the following steps;
- Log into the backend of your WordPress website
- Go to Appearance, Menus.
- To turn one of the menus that are on your list into a sub-menu, click on and hold that menu item before dragging it to the item that you wish to have act as the main menu.
- When done, click on “Save Menu,” and you should be good to go.
Now when you go to your website, you will notice that you will have menus that are nested within other menus. That’s it! That’s how you create a hierarchical menu in WordPress. As already mentioned, doing this gives you the ability to properly arrange your website, with related items nested within each other.
