What to put on your blog navigation menu can be one of the most challenging issues for a new blogger.
Do you put your blog categories on your menu?
Do you put the about me on the blog menu?
These are questions that we all struggle with. At the end of this post, you will find a few tips on website navigation. First though, we need to know how to set the menu on our new WordPress Theme. If you are using WordPress and Thrive Themes then this tutorial may prove helpful.
This is a quick tutorial on how to change your WordPress menu using Thrive Themes Focus Blog Theme.
Bonus: Download a free checklist of the first plugins that I always install on a new WordPress Blog.
- A self hosted WordPress blog
- Thrive Themes installed
- Log into WordPress Dashboard
- Highlight mouse over Appearance & Click on Themes
- Click on Customize
- Click on Menus
- Click on Menu Locations
- Select your Primary Menu in the drop-down
- Select your Footer Menu in the drop-down
- Click Save
- Click on the X
Tips For Your Blog Menu
From: mysiteauditor
12. Your menu is not in the standard location
OK designers, this one is for you. You are so guilty of this. Don’t try to blame your clients. Admit it. Sometime you get bored with the same old designs and you want to switch things up. Well, don’t put the menu on the bottom of the page. Keep it up top where everyone knows to find it. What if I tried to sell you a car with the steering wheel in the back seat? Again, be clear, not clever.
I believe that this is such an important tip. A few years ago someone hired me to build their website for them. They really wanted to be unique with their design and that was fun.
It was great to work with someone who really cared about the look and feel of their site but then they had me do something weird.
They made me put the navigation for their site at the bottom. It was confusing and people didn't know what to do. People expect the website menu to be at the top. The #1 rule of website design is to not make people think. They are there to gain knowledge already, so don't make it even more difficult to gain.
From Kissmetrics:
Mistake #4: Too many items in your navigation
You’ve seen this before: that website with hundreds of links on the home page. Terrible. But even eight may be too many. This is because short term memory holds only seven items. That means that, eight is a LOT more than seven.
As a final note, keep in mind that most people read the first and last item on a website menu far more than the others. Make sure that your most important items are fist and last.
