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New to WordPress?
If so, your menu is probably an alphabetical list of the pages you’ve published thus far, but you can customize it completely.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:
- Create a custom menu
- Add a “Home” link to your menu
- Display your custom menu in your theme
Let’s start with creating that menu.
In WordPress, there’s a menu creation page found in the Appearance > Menus section of your admin dashboard.
On that page, click the “create a new menu” link near the top to create a fresh menu.
You can then use the Pages section on the left side to select the pages you want to add to the menu. But here’s the thing…
If you have your latest posts displaying on your homepage, you won’t see the homepage listed in the Pages section. The solution is simple: open the Custom Links section and add the link there instead.
In the URL field, enter your website’s homepage. In the Link Text section, enter “Home.” That’s the clickable text the menu item will use. Then click the Add to Menu button to add it to your custom menu.
Once you’re happy with the links you’ve added to your menu, save it, and then you can publish it on your site.
Every WordPress theme has at least one menu location built-in. To get your new menu to show up on your site, you have to tell the theme which menu location you want to use for your new menu.
To do this, click the Manage Locations tab at the top of the Menus page.
In my example, I’m using the Mission News theme, which includes three menu locations. It should be fairly obvious which location you want to use, but for Mission News, the Primary menu location is where the main menu shows up.
Once you’ve saved your changes, your new menu will show up on your site with your homepage link included.
If you want even more detailed steps on creating a custom menu, this video will walk you through everything.
That’s video 15 in my 17-part series on how to create your first WordPress site. The videos are all free, so if you’re new to WordPress, you might enjoy watching all of them.
Home link added
With the use of custom links, you have complete control over the links featured in your menu. You can use this feature to add external links to your menu. It also opens the possibility of linking to various archive pages and custom post types too.
If this tutorial helped you add a “Home” link to your WordPress menu, please consider sharing it with someone else.
If you want more customization tips, check out this guide next:
31 Easy Ways to Customize Your WordPress Website
Thanks for reading!
