How to create a custom WordPress navigation menu?

Question

I hired a designer to create a custom website for my startup home business. Two years later the site is uploaded onto WP but I can't do a thing with it. The site is password protected as it is still not completed. I would want to add new pages (and tabs) to the site, however after reading up on WP I've learned that in order to this I would need to add a "Menu" to the "Appearance" option on my dashboard, further reading suggest that I may need to know HTML. Needless to say I am very frustrated as I do not know the first thing about WP let alone HTML. The site is utilizing wordpress 3.4.2. Can someone please help me with this issue. Thank you Maria

Answer 1

In order to make this work you will need to modify the template a bit, but it's fairly straight forward to add a menu to wordpress. The Codex has a great writeup on the subject: http://codex.wordpress.org/Navigation_Menus

You have to "Register" the menu in functions.php by adding code similar to:

function register_my_menus() {
  register_nav_menus(
    array( 'header-menu' => __( 'Header Menu' ) )
  );
}
add_action( 'init', 'register_my_menus' );

Then, you need to "Call" the menu into your template where you would like it to appear:

<?php wp_nav_menu( array( 'theme_location' => 'header-menu' ) ); ?>

This will create a menu within the admin you can add links to, and cause it to appear in your template.

Finally, if you are creating more then one page and changing the location of them within the navigation I recommend the "CMS Page Tree View" Plugin. It makes adding multiple pages and arranging them a snap.

It takes a while to get used to looking at the code, but the WordPress community is chock full of great examples and is quite friendly. Keep at it!