Editing Site Menus

Menus are the links that appear in the “framework” of your site that allow visitors to find and navigate to pages.

If you’re moving existing pages: Editing your site’s menus can change the URL / web address of affected pages, so take care to check for broken links after making any changes.

If you’re adding a new page: First create and publish the page, then follow the instructions below to add it to a menu.

On this page:

Related information:

Guide to site menus

The WUSM Web Theme includes four menu types; these may also be referred to as site navigation, or “nav” for short.

  1. Header/main menu: On a desktop, the header menu shows up across the top of the site and includes the site’s main pages with Home listed first. It is limited to 7 or 8 pages, as space allows.
  2. Left/sub menu: If a page has sub or “child” pages, the children are listed below the parent in that section’s left menu. Child pages are added to the left menu automatically (by setting the page’s parent), but you can edit the order in which they are listed. The left menu appears only if a section has child pages.The left menu can include three levels of pages maximum – i.e., a child page (level 2) can itself have child pages (level 3), but if those pages have children they will not appear in the left menu.

In the screenshot above, a user has clicked “Parent Page” in the header menu (1) so sees the child pages of “Parent Page” in the left menu (2).

  1. Footer menu (optional): If a site includes main or parent pages that are not part of the header menu, they may be included in the optional footer menu. These pages should be of secondary importance to the pages that appear in the header menu.
  2. Mobile menu: On a mobile device, a website’s header menu and left menu collapse into a single list with dropdowns for each section.

These four menus are edited in two different places; see the following sections for detailed instructions.

Editing the header and footer menus

Only WordPress editors with Administrator access can edit the header and footer menus. To request administrator permissions for a user, please contact WashU Medicine Marketing & Communications at mpa@wustl.edu.

  1. From the WordPress dashboard, on the left click Appearance > Menus
  2. Use the dropdown to select the menu to edit (Header or Footer)
  3. On the left, you can add new pages to the menu (select page/s then click “Add to Menu”)
  4. On the right, you can edit the Menu Structure by:
    1. Dragging and dropping pages to change the page order
    2. Selecting the “Page” dropdown to remove the page or edit the page name as it appears in the menu
  5. When all changes are made click “Save Menu“
  6. Don’t forget to edit the mobile menu, too!

Editing the left and mobile menus

To change the order of pages listed in the left and mobile menus:

  1. Publish any new page(s) first
  2. In WordPress, click “Pages” in the left menu

Pages are listed here in order of appearance in the mobile and left menus; child pages are listed under their parent page.

  1. If your site has more than 20 pages, you can list all pages on a single screen by clicking Screen Options at the top right, then adjusting the number of items per page
  2. Find the page/section to edit and drag and drop the pages into the correct order.To drag a page, point your cursor next to the page title. When the crosshair cursor appears, you can click and hold to drag the page to a new position.

Example of moving the Staff page by dragging and dropping it.

  1. Your changes will be saved automatically; be sure to double check them on the live site