Setting up the navigation of your site
Now you have the web-pages created, you need to create a menu for visitors to navigate easily around your site. By default the Klasik theme from ThemeForest.net (the WordPress theme we’ve been using to build your artist website) adds all pages to the main navigation. In order for visitors to navigate the site more logically, I suggest you make a couple of changes.
1. From your WordPress dashboard, choose Appearance>Menus.
By default, a menu will have already been generated for you. It is called ‘Menu 1’ and includes every page you have created in alphabetical order (except that ‘Home’ is placed first).
2. Rename the menu ‘Main Menu’ in the ‘Menu Name’ field.
3. In order for pages to appear as sub-pages in a drop-down menu when a visitor hovers over a Menu item, you need to create a new Menu Item. For example, the ‘About’ option at DarenRedman.com has two sections – ‘About the artist’ and ‘Artist resume’ – each of them has its own page and the option to visit them appears in a drop down when a visitor hovers over ‘About’.
To add a new Menu item, click on ‘Links’ and type in the URL of the most important page in a particular section of your site; the ‘About’ link in the menu at DarenRedman.com actually links to the ‘About the artist’ page. Then type in the text you’d like to appear in the navigation menu. Then click on ‘Add to Menu’.
4. The item you’ve just added will automatically go to the end of the list.
Click on it and drag it to wherever you’d like it to appear in the menu.
5. Next, find the sub-pages that you’d like to appear under the Menu item you’ve just created. For Daren’s site I wanted the links for ‘About the artist’ and ‘Artist resume’ to appear in a sub-menu under the main menu item ‘About. One by one, click and drag the sub-menu items inwards slightly (to the right) and they will slot into place as sub items and will be labelled as such.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 for each item you’d like to allocate sub-items to.
7. You can then drag the other menu items into whatever order you’d like them to appear on your live site. You should end up with something similar to this:
8. If there are pages you’ve created that you don’t want to appear in the main menu of your site, simply click on the item, and click ‘Remove’.
9. At the bottom of the page, make sure that under ‘Theme Locations’, the box next to ‘Main menu’ is checked.
10. Click ‘Save Menu’ at the bottom of the page.
11. One last thing! Click on ‘Manage locations’.
12. Make sure that ‘Main menu’ is selected in the drop-down. Click ‘Save changes’.
And there you have it! If you have followed all of the tutorials in Section 2: Building your artist website, congratulations! You should now have a fully functioning website showcasing your artwork in a sleek and stylish theme.
There are a few optional bells and whistles that will give your site a real edge. That’s what we’ll cover in Section 3 of The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Own Artist Website.
Go to Adding the professional touches >>>
<<< Go back to Chapter 9 – Creating your Contact page
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