Add category page link to WordPress menu

Adding a category page link to a WordPress menu

If you have a blog or an online magazine then there is a high chance that your posts are organized by categories. By doing so, you improve a navigation of your site.

Usually, category links are shown in the post itself but there might be cases when you need to show these category links in your site menu. So this is the reason why we have created this quick guide of adding a category page link to a WordPress menu.

What is a category?

WordPress category is one of the default features in WordPress, meaning you do not need to install any additional plugins to have this functionality on your site. The main purpose of categories is to provide a way to group related posts together.

The location of the category section on your site varies from theme to theme. On the other hand, there are themes that do show categories at all. Even in this situation, it is still possible to have category links on the site and we would like to show you how to achieve this.

Adding category links to a WordPress menu

Mostly all the themes support WordPress menu functionality. Moreover, It is something that comes from the WordPress core by default.

If your theme, for some reasons, does not support it then you should contact the author of the theme for more information.

Example of the category links shown in a WordPress menu in the Aquine theme.
Example of the category links shown in a WordPress menu in the Aquene theme.

Let’s take a look at the Aquene theme. In the screenshot above, the theme displays categories above the post titles.

Also, the same categories are shown in the main menu, located next to the site title.

To have category links in menu, open your WordPress dashboard:

  1. In dashboard, navigate to Appearance → Customize to open the Customizer.
  2. In the Customizer, find Menus and click on it to open the Menu pane.
  3. In this pane, select the menu to edit.
  4. Click on Add Items. It will open a list of items that you can add to your menu.
  5. Select Categories.
  6. Click the Plus icon next to the category you want to add. WordPress will automatically add it to your menu.
  7. Click Publish to save the changes when you are ready.
A screenshot of the Menu pane located in the Customizer.
A screenshot of the Menu pane located in the Customizer.

2 responses

  1. Mel Kiry Avatar
    Mel Kiry

    Does nothing useful. I add posts to the category, they don’t appear in the menu unless I add them manually, every time. What good is that? It would be easier for me to program a website by hand, if I”m going to have to do that much work every single time I want to add a new post.

    1. Taras Dashkevych Avatar

      I’m sorry to hear that you’re experiencing difficulties.

      By default, WordPress is designed to automatically display the latest posts in the Category archive. This means that when the user clicks on a category link on a WordPress website, it should show the latest posts associated with that category.

      You can read more about this in the official WordPress documentation.

      If your posts aren’t automatically appearing in the category menu, it could be due to a variety of reasons such as theme or plugin conflicts.

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