Most WordPress blogs have a menu, and most of those menus are wrong in some way. They list every page that exists. They tuck “Privacy Policy” in alongside the main blog categories. They have eleven top-level items crammed in. They never get tested on mobile. This post covers how to build navigation that actually helps readers instead of cluttering the header.

A blog header showing a clean primary menu with four main sections

The principles

1. Less is more

Menus with four to seven items get clicked more often than menus with ten or more. Choice overload genuinely reduces engagement rather than increasing it.

2. Lead with what readers care about

Not what you care about. Readers care about your content (your categories), your credibility (an About page), and how to reach you (Contact). Lead with those three things.

3. Hide secondary stuff

Privacy Policy, Terms, Disclaimer, Affiliate Disclosure, these all need to exist somewhere, but they don’t deserve prime menu real estate. The footer is where they belong. Our roundup of disclosure, privacy, and legal pages every blog needs covers what actually belongs on each of those pages.

4. Design mobile-first

Most blog traffic arrives on mobile these days. The menu collapses down to a hamburger icon on smaller screens, so make sure that collapsed experience actually works well.

Where WordPress menus live

WordPress menus are managed either in Appearance → Menus for classic themes, or via the Navigation block for block themes. The official WordPress Menus documentation covers both paths in more depth.

Each theme defines its own “menu locations.” Common ones include:

  • Primary menu, the main header navigation.
  • Footer menu, links placed at the bottom of the site.
  • Mobile menu, sometimes kept separate from the primary menu entirely.
  • Secondary or top bar menu, an additional menu some themes place above the primary one.

You create a menu first, then assign it to one or more of these locations.

Building the primary menu

What to include

For a typical blog, this usually covers it:

  • Blog (or “Articles,” “Posts”), linking to your main blog index.
  • Categories, your top three to five categories, either listed as separate items or grouped under a “Topics” dropdown.
  • About, linking to your About page.
  • Start Here, a curated starting-point page for new readers. Optional, but genuinely high-value when you have one.
  • Contact, either a contact page or a direct link to email or a form.

That adds up to five to seven items total, which is plenty.

What not to include

  • Privacy Policy, Terms, Disclaimer.
  • Author archives, unless the blog is single-author with a dedicated author page worth linking.
  • Tags. Let readers find related content through the posts themselves instead.
  • Tag clouds.
  • Login or Register links, unless your site is membership-based.
  • Random pages you created once and then forgot about.

Categories in the menu

There are two common ways to expose categories in your navigation.

1. Separate top-level items

Each category gets its own menu item. This works well for blogs with three to five categories total.

The upside is that everything’s visible at a glance. The downside is that it eats up menu real estate quickly.

2. A single “Topics” dropdown

One menu item, labeled “Topics” or “Browse,” with your categories listed underneath as a dropdown.

The upside is that it saves space in the primary menu. The downside is that it’s slightly less discoverable, since dropdowns require an extra click to reveal.

For most blogs running four or more categories, the dropdown approach tends to be cleaner overall.

Building a footer menu

The footer menu is where the secondary links belong:

  • Privacy Policy.
  • Terms of Service.
  • Cookie Policy.
  • Affiliate Disclosure.
  • An HTML sitemap (not the XML version meant for search engines).
  • Copyright info, sometimes handled automatically via theme settings.

Visitors who actually want these links will look for them in the footer. They don’t need to occupy space in the header.

A footer menu showing privacy, terms, disclosure, and other secondary links

Mobile menu considerations

On phones, the primary menu collapses into a hamburger icon. Tapping it opens up a vertical list of items.

Issues to watch for

  • Tap targets that are too small. Make sure every menu item is genuinely easy to tap with a thumb. The W3C’s target size guidance recommends at least 24 by 24 pixels of tappable area, with more breathing room around anything smaller.
  • Submenus that are hard to expand on mobile. Some themes handle dropdown behavior poorly once you’re on a touchscreen.
  • Menu items that wrap across multiple lines. Long item names tend to look messy on mobile.
  • A menu that’s hard to dismiss. Make sure it closes cleanly once an item is tapped, or when the visitor taps outside of it.

Test this on an actual phone, not just your browser’s responsive preview mode. The two don’t always behave identically.

Aurora’s menu locations

If you’re using Aurora, or another blog-focused theme built along similar lines, check its specific menu locations before you start building. Aurora offers dedicated locations for header social links, footer social links, and the mobile drawer, all separate from the primary menu, and knowing which location controls what saves you time fighting the theme later. The full breakdown lives in Aurora’s navigation menu locations documentation.

Setting up a menu, step by step

For classic themes

  1. Go to Appearance → Menus.
  2. Create a new menu and name it, such as “Primary.”
  3. Add items from the left sidebar: Pages, Posts, Custom Links, Categories, Tags.
  4. Drag items to reorder them.
  5. Indent items to create submenus by dragging them to the right, nesting them under a parent item.
  6. Assign the menu to a location under Display Location.
  7. Save the menu.

For block themes

  1. Go to Edit Site, or Appearance → Editor.
  2. Open the template where navigation lives, usually the Header template.
  3. Click the Navigation block.
  4. Add or remove items using the block toolbar.
  5. Save your changes.

Dropdowns and submenus

Most themes support two levels of nesting: a top-level item with a submenu beneath it. A few support three levels, but going any deeper than that usually turns into a bad idea.

When dropdowns work well

  • You have four or more categories to expose.
  • You have a “Resources” parent item with several individual resource pages underneath it.
  • You want to keep your top-level menu short while still exposing more content underneath.

When dropdowns hurt more than they help

  • You only have two or three items sitting under the dropdown. Just put them directly in the main menu instead.
  • You’re trying to cram fifteen items into a single “More” dropdown. At that point it’s not really a menu anymore; it’s just a list.

“Custom Links” for non-page menu items

Some menu items should point to things that aren’t pages or posts at all:

  • An external URL, like your YouTube channel or a specific tag archive.
  • A scroll-to-section anchor on your homepage.
  • A protocol link, such as mailto: or tel:.

Use the “Custom Links” option in the menu builder for these. Just specify the URL and the label you want displayed.

Active menu states

Most themes automatically highlight whichever page you’re currently viewing in the menu, which helps with orientation as visitors browse.

If your theme doesn’t do this out of the box, you can add a bit of CSS to handle it yourself:

.current-menu-item a {
  color: #yourcolor;
  font-weight: bold;
}

Adding a CTA button to the menu

Some themes let you mark one specific menu item as a “button,” visually distinct from the rest and designed to draw the eye.

Useful for things like a “Subscribe” call to action, a “Hire Me” link if you offer services, or a “Shop” link if you run a store.

Stick to one button maximum. Add more than one and none of them stand out anymore.

Mega menus

Some themes or plugins support mega menus, large dropdowns with multiple columns, images, and more elaborate layouts.

For most blogs, this is genuine overkill. Mega menus make sense for large content sites with deep hierarchies, think news sites or e-commerce stores. A blog with five categories simply doesn’t need one.

Search in the menu

Many themes include a search icon right in the header, and it’s worth having. Search is consistently one of the most-used features on content-heavy blogs.

Configure it through your theme’s settings if that option is available, or add a Search block manually if it isn’t. Once someone actually uses it, what they land on matters just as much as the menu that got them there. See our guide on making a search results page people actually use for how to get that part right too.

The version worth remembering

Limit primary menus to 4 to 7 items. Lead with content categories, About, Contact, and Start Here. Hide legal pages in the footer. Use dropdowns sparingly. Test mobile. Add a search icon. One CTA button max. Don’t try to expose every page, let readers find what they need through clear paths instead of a cluttered menu.