How to Create & Use Menus in WordPress 3.6 (With Video)

As we’ve previously informed to all our readers, WordPress 3.6 is released, and with it comes some new changes that we’ve never seen before. It comes with a brand new blog-centric theme named as Twenty Thirteen, new revision manager, better autosave handling, native support for audio and video embeds, and a brand new Menu system.

For those who’re new, “Menus” is a system in WordPress that allows you to create your own menu bar (also known as navigation bar) – you choose what pages, categories or custom links you want to display in the menu bar to your visitors.

WordPress 3.6 comes with a new and simplified menu system. The system is divided in two parts – one for creating and editing menu and one for managing or picking the location of the menu. Let’s take a closer look at the process.

How to Create and Use WordPress 3.6 Menus

Go to Appearance -> Menus. This will open the “Edit Menus” screen. If you’ve already created a menu previously then you can start editing it from here or you can create a new menu by clicking on “Create a new menu.”

Give your menu a name and then click on “Create Menu.”

Now it’s time to start adding items to your menu. From the “Pages” section, select the page that you want to place in your menu and then click on the “Add to Menu” button. Same way, you can add custom links (e.g. you can create a link to beginwp.com) or categories to your menu.

Once you’ve added all the items (pages, links, categories and post formats) to the menu, you can drag and drop each item in the order that you want it to appear in the front-end. For example, the first menu option would be Home, and then your categories and pages.

Finally, click on the blue “Save Menu” button to save your newly created menu.

Next, click on “Manage Locations” from the top. Now you can select your newly created menu from the drop-down for your preferred location. For example, as you can see in the below screenshot, for the Primary menu location, I have selected a menu named as “Main menu”, and for the Top menu location, I have selected “Top menu.” If you don’t want to place a menu, then simply don’t select a menu. Finally, click on Save Changes button. You can now check out the front-end to see your new menu live on your site.

However, note that your theme must be able to support the Menu system. Most of the themes do, but if your theme doesn’t support this feature then you’ll not be able to pick a menu from “Manage Locations.”

So that’s how you can create a menu in WordPress 3.6. Should you prefer a more visual view, here’s a video explaining the same process.