trying to fix menus

  • I’m asking for debugging help. Before I describe this, please understand that I realize my current thoughts are muddled. I’m basically looking not for a solution right away, but a suggestion for what I can try, or how to obtain basic information to assist in further debugging.

    I’m a programmer, but not a web programmer (except for a little dabbling). So I can understand fairly complex things but may be clueless about web things.

    A few years ago I set up a WordPress site (linked above). The procedure was messy… first I hired someone to set it up, and as I was unhappy with their work, I changed a lot of things, including changing the theme and perhaps adding a custom header. I just don’t remember very well what I did.

    At some point about a year ago, it broke. I guess some of my plugins were too old to use with the latest version. Or maybe my hosting company updated their servers. To get it running, I had to disable a number of plugins including a menu plugin.

    Once it was running again, the major problem was that the menus were gone. Instead, at the top of every page is an HTML basic

      hierarchical list of links, with no CSS styling.

      I have tried installing other menus plugins or messing around with WP menu settings, but my headers (menus) never change appearance.

      For reference, I believe I wrote a custom front page and a custom header. I may have messed things up in doing that. I just don’t remember very well.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

  • Hi @michaelmossey,

    Sorry to hear of your trouble. WordPress is a great and easy-to-learn tool, but sometimes we do get stuck with something.

    You’ll have to check some things:
    – Find where in your theme your header elements are printed. Normally it’s done in header.php file. Also check if your templates call the get_header() function, it’s this function that includes the header.php file.
    – Give a look at the WordPress Template Hierarchy. That shows the way of what file is called where. For your home page, for example, WordPress tries to find a front-page.php file, a home.php or the index.php (these two are searched only if you are not using a static page as the front page).
    – Check the wp_nav_menu function. This is used to render menus, so you should have a call for it in your header.php.

    This is the simplest way. You can look the register_nav_menu function that is used to register menu locations for your theme. You can use

     
function register_primary_menu() {
    register_nav_menu( 'primary', 'Primary Menu' );
}
add_action( 'after_setup_theme', 'register_primary_menu' );

    in your functions.php file. Then create a menu in WP Dashboard and mark that as the Primary Menu (after inserting that code a checkbox must appear below the menu items). After that call

    wp_nav_menu( array(
    'theme_location' => 'primary',
) );

    in your header.php to render it.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • The topic ‘trying to fix menus’ is closed to new replies.

Tags