Menus: It's what makes the nav go 'round
Nav bars taken from THIS article
I am only discussing horizontal navs...the code just generates a list of links and you can use CSS for vertical or horizontal navigation.
Nav bars taken from THIS article
I am only discussing horizontal navs...the code just generates a list of links and you can use CSS for vertical or horizontal navigation.
From the admin panel, you can create a menu, and if wp_nav_menu is in place, your menu will show with only the selected items.
Be sure you hit the "Save Menu" button, or it, you know, won't save.
NOTE: If no menu is created, but wp_nav_menu is still used, WordPress will display ALL of your pages
Even if you have limited coding experience, this is incredibly easy.
Open your header.php file
<div id="header">
<?php wp_nav_menu(); ?>
</div>
// That's it...that's all you have to put for WordPress to display your menu
// The other way is this
<div id="header">
<?php wp_nav_menu( array('menu' => 'Main Menu' )); ?>
</div>
The second example defaults to a created menu but if 'Main Menu' is the name of a created menu, it will take precedence.
In the previous examples, it's important to understand the sequence of the menus
NOTE: To read up on wp_nav_menu yourself, click HERE
NOTE: To read up on wp_nav_menu yourself, click HERE
The wonderful world of sidebars...a few examples below
Sidebars, like menus, are easy to add to your WordPress site.
Most themes come with some form of sidebar, but if you find that you have no sidebar.php file, or your index, page, whatever.php has no reference to the sidebar, you can add the code below:
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
// This will attach sidebar.php to your page
// simple right?
Since almost every theme comes with sidebar.php, we'll move forward and wait to discuss adding your own sidebar until the very end.
WordPress Codex on customizing sidebars - Click HERE
As I just said, WordPress comes standard with a sidebar, mostly because it started out as a blogging platform and the sidebar is a staple of blogs.
Every Theme uses the sidebar differently:
Sidebars and Footbars are easy to use and are complimented by widgets. Speaking of widgets...
Now that we've covered the very basics of Sidebars, let's look at what goes in those sidebars.
From the admin panel, access 'Apperance -> Widgets'
If you're not too code savvy, you'll want to make sure the theme you choose has the pictured containers, troughs, barrels, whatever containing device you want to call them.
That's where your widgets go
Standard Widgets:
These widgets are put in the Sidebar and Footbar containers by a drag-and-drop process.
Then there are usually other options.
WordPress Codex on widgets - Click HERE
There are two main ways to add a sidebar.
The first is to create a new .php file for your sidebar (in this case sidebar-custom.php)
Once you have created sidebar-custom.php:
// add this to page.php, or whatever.php file you want
<div id="sidebar">
<?php get_sidebar('custom'); ?>
</div>
// Then in functions.php you need to add this
// register sidebar-custom.php
if ( function_exists ('register_sidebar')) {
register_sidebar ('custom');
}
This then registers your new sidebar, allowing for the top code to output whatever is contained in sidebar.php
The second way, the way I prefer, is to create a new dynamic sidebar because no extra PHP file is required, and a bin/crate/container for widgets is created
Add the following code into functions.php:
<?php if (function_exists('register_sidebar')) {
register_sidebar(array(
'name' => 'Custom Sidebar', // the name that calls the sidebar
'id' => 'custom-sidebar',
'description' => 'These are widgets for the sidebar.',
'before_widget' => '<div id="%1$s" class="widget sidebar">',
'after_widget' => '</div>',
'before_title' => '<h2>',
'after_title' => '</h2>'
));
} ?>
// to load this in a page, paste this code wherever you like
<?php dynamic_sidebar('Custom Sidebar') ?>
This then registers your new sidebar, allowing for the top code to output whatever is contained in sidebar.php
/