Creating and Modifying Site/Navigation Menu Structure in Public Website WordPress

For most sites, the order and structure of both the site and the navigation menu are determined by a combination of two settings on each individual page: “Parent” and “Order”. To illustrate what is meant by this, imagine the following site/grouping of 5 pages:

When creating this site, this structure was implemented by setting the “Parent” page for each page as it was created, like so:

Setting the Parent page as above determines both what the URL for the page will be and what the general structure of the navigation menu will look like. However, the sequence in which the pages appear in the menu is determined by the “Order” setting. By default, when a new page is created, the Order setting is 0. If all pages have their Order set to 0, WordPress has to make a decision about what the sequence of pages should be in the menu. Somewhat lacking in imagination and ability to interpret contextual clues, WordPress simply puts everything after the Landing page in alphabetical order in that situation. Which means our site above would look like:

The final step in determining the navigation menu structure and sequence then, is to set the Order number for each page – other than the Landing Page, which is always at the top and does not need an Order number – to ensure that it is arranged in the correct sequence within the navigation menu.

Our recommendation for the Order field is to start at 10 and count up by 10s. This leaves room for adding future pages to the sequence without having to reorder existing pages (a new page could be set to 15, 25, 35, etc. to place it between existing pages).

You’ll notice in our example above that there are two 10s and two 20s. This is because pages in sub-sections of site – sub-groupings of pages within a site that share a Parent page other than the initial landing page – are not in competition with the main site pages as to what sequence they will appear in. They will always be set apart beneath their parent page in the menu, so only their sequence relative to each other needs to be determined by the Order number. In our example, the main site is made up of two pages: the Resources page (10) and the Contact page (20). The Resources sub-section has two pages: Students (10) and Faculty (20).

As you might expect from the information above, adding a new page to an existing site means setting the “Parent” and “Order” fields when adding a new page. Assuming you’ve already decided where the page should be within the existing structure, you should be able to figure out what these settings need to be by looking at the pages that will be above and, in some cases, below it in the menu. The Order number is visible in the pages listing in WordPress.

For example, let’s say you wanted to add a new page in one of these three locations in the Student Services menu:

Making changes to a navigation menu means changing the sequence of the menu items, changing the structure of the site, or often, both. Both types of change will result in a change to the appearance of the navigation menu, but changing the structure also changes the URL for affected pages (which breaks existing links to them across the site). Because of this, understanding the difference between changing the sequence and changing the structure is important.

Changing a page’s place in the sequence of pages in the navigation menu is a trivial/aesthetic change that any user can do, simply by changing the page’s Order field.

Changing a page’s place in the structure of the site, on the other hand, is not trivial. It involves changing not only where a link to your page is visible in the menu, but that page’s URL as well. Changing site structure is accomplished by altering the existing Parent of one or more pages. Making changes of this kind is not recommended without seeking assistance from IT services by submitting a request through the Service Catalogue.