Making nav menu targets into separate food menus

[Fred Rogers]

I’ve created pages, menu groups and navigation bar entries for the different food menus I want to create and populate but I can’t figure out how to link the respective types of food menus to their page targets. I evidently did it before with the ‘menu’ link which I’ll need to delete after I get the individual ones sorted out. Any help would be appreciated.

Different topic: I notice that if the text box for the single line of text at the very bottom of the sidebar is left empty, it defaults to a commercial/link for Organized Themes. I’d like to either leave that blank or change it to something generic like “We look forward to seeing you!” or “Est. 2015” but I can’t remember how to access that text box. Thanks!!!

[Bill Robbins]

Good Morning Fred,

Great questions. If you want a page that just displays the items in a menu group, the best way to do that is to not actually use a page. You can add menu groups directly to your site’s navigation menu. That will create a “page,” really a dynamic archive, of all the items in that menu group.

Another alternative is to use a shortcode to display a list of all the items in a menu group. You can do this on any page or post. To use it just enter this where you’d like to have a list of your menu items appear:

[menu group="burgers"]

Just replace burgers with the “slug” of the menu group you’d like to display. You can find the slug by going to the Food section and selecting “Menu Groups.” The slug will be listed next to each group.

The shortcode method will allow you to have more than one menu group on a page if you’d like to.

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You’re welcome to edit the footer text. Go to the Appearance section in your dashboard and click on Theme Options. Choose the Sidebar tab there. The footer text will be on that tab. As long as there is some content in the footer text box, it will display instead of the Organized Themes text/link.

Let me know if you have any questions or trouble.

Have a great day,
Bill

[Fred Rogers]

Thanks! Where do I put the slug for each menu? I tried to find it on the Appearance / Menus / Edit Menus page and could not.

And I appreciate the sidebar footer tip.

[Bill Robbins]

In WordPress’ navigation screen (Appearance > Menus in your WordPress dashboard) if you don’t see menu groups listed there on the right (near pages, categories and so on), then click the screen options tab in the top right hand corner of the screen. Make sure the box next to menu groups is checked. You should then be able to add a menu group directly to your navigation menu.

If you’d rather use actual WordPress pages you can do that too. That’s where you’ll need the shortcode. You can find the slug for the shortcodes by going to Food in your Dashboard and clicking on menu groups. The slug for each menu group will be listed next to the group. If you don’t have any menu groups yet, you can create them here.

I wish WordPress called menus in the Appearance section “Navigation” instead of menus to keep things clear for restaurant sites.

[Fred Rogers]

Thank you and I’m sorry I’m being so thick.

I’d rather use the Appearance / Menus option because they like the food menu formatting options.

I’ve created the different menus, added them to the navigation menu and then added half a dozen food items and toggled them to attribute to the Chiquito / Appetizers menu . . . but when I save and test that on the live version, when I click on the Chiquito / Appetizers link in the navigation bar, it just goes to a blank page that shows just the sidebar and the background images.

http://lagrangehouston.com/wordpress/chiquito-appetizers/

I feel like I’m just one egg short of a full dozen on this in order to get it to work. I’m really sorry to keep bugging you.

[Bill Robbins]

It looks like that’s an actual WordPress page named Chiquito Appetizers that’s showing up instead of a menu group. Make sure that the item in your navigation menu is a menu group and not a WordPress page.

It would also be a good idea to delete any pages that have the same name as a menu group. Empty out the trash too after you delete them. When a page has the same name as a menu group or post category it can cause trouble due to some uncertainty as to what is supposed to be displayed on a particular URL.

See how that goes and let me know,
Bill

[Fred Rogers]

Thank you. I deleted all the pages and also realized I’d originally stupidly created redundant menu groups in the Food menus area, which goes back to your point about how goofy it is that they call navigation in the Appearance section ‘Menus,’ so I deleted those. Now I just need to figure out how to get the links in the navigation bar go to the only current (tester) food menu I have. When I click on it now, instead of a blank page I get a Not Found page.

http://lagrangehouston.com/wordpress/chiquito-appetizers/

I literally accidentally got it right a few minutes ago and when I went back to change the target from Page (or Custom Link) to Menu Group, the option wasn’t there anymore. It’s like there’s one single box I’m not checking in order for the four menu links in the navigation bar to go their correct targets because when I ‘View’ the menus in the Menu Groups, they display perfectly.

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[Bill Robbins]

Looking at that screenshot, the Chiquito/Appetizers that’s in the navigation menu is still a page. If you’ve got the right one there, it’ll say “menu group” on the right of that item where it currently says page. I’ve attached a screenshot of what that looks like.

If that doesn’t do it, would you mind sending over a login? I’ll set one up for you right quick so you can see how it looks. You can mark a reply here as private and I’ll be the only one who can see it.

Bill

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   Screen-shot-2015-09-16-at-2.50.56-PM-556-x-323.png
   

[Fred Rogers]

BINGO!!! THANK YOU, BILL!

I’d mistakenly created those LINKS as pages in Appearance / Menus so I went back and deleted those links and then FINALLY figured out that I had to go to Menu Groups in that same section and View All and add the deleted ones back in.

Wow. It’s a good thing I dropped out of pre-med when I was a freshman. Thank you so much. I think we’re all done and now all I have to do is go add the rest of the menu items. Well, and then make four more of these sites for all the other places, which hopefully won’t take quite as long next time.

Thank you. I really appreciate it.

[Bill Robbins]

I’m glad you got it straightened out Fred 🙂

Good luck on the other sites. Let me know if you need anything.

Bill

[Fred Rogers]

I will indeed. You have been a productive pleasure to work with. Thanks for saving my bacon. (Apologies for the restaurant analogy.) Have a great week!

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