Setting Up Your Menu

Upon installation the default Vantage menu will be active. To setup and activate your own website menu, navigate to Appearance > Menus.

Navigate Appearance Menus

Creating a New Menu

Upon navigating to Appearance > Menus you will be presented with the framework of a menu called “Main Menu”. This is merely a suggested menu layout. You can edit this Main Menu to suit your requirements or create your own menu from scratch, by clicking on the “create a new menu” link.

Create a New Menu

You can create multiple menus with a variety of layouts to use in different areas of your website, such as the header or footer.

Menu Name

Specify your menu name (e.g. Menu 1 or Main Menu) by editing the text field next to the heading “Menu Name”. Each time you edit your menu click the “Save Menu” button.

Menu Name

Activating a Menu

Activate any menu by clicking on the “Primary Menu” checkbox next to the title “Theme Locations” under the menu settings. Then click the “Save Menu” button. That menu will now become your primary menu, overriding any theme default menu.

Primary Menu Setting

Adding Links to a Menu

There are three types of links you can add to your menu.

A Link to a Page

To create a page link, click on the “Pages” tab. Select the pages you wish to add to your menu by clicking on the checkbox next to each page. Then click add to menu.

Add Pages To Menu

A Custom Link

A Custom Link allows you to specify a URL of your choice. This could be a URL to an image, a post, a page or external website page or any other link you wish to have in your menu.

To add a custom link click on the “Links” tab. Fill in the URL and the Link Text and click “Add to Menu”. You cannot leave the “Link Text” field blank. You can however put a # in the URL field. This creates a dead link in your menu bar. Useful for creating drop down menu titles.

Add Custom Link To Menu

A custom link is also used in Vantage in conjunction with the home page icon. When the home page icon setting is activated and the specified “URL” in your custom link is that of your root directory, for example “http://yourdomain/”, a home icon will display in front of the chosen navigation label in the menu. In this example we titled the label “Home”.

Links Home Icon

Home Page Icon 

To enable and disable the home page icon, navigate to Appearance > Theme Settings > Navigation. Next to the title “Home Page Icon” click the checkbox.

Home Page Icon Setting

A Category Link

A category link will open a page displaying an archive of blog posts of that specific category. To create a category link click on the “Categories” tab. Select the categories you wish to add to your menu by clicking on the checkbox next to each category. Then click add to menu.

Add Categories To Menu

Menu Order

The order of the menu links from top to bottom will be displayed left to right in your website menu.

Menu Order

Website Menu Order

You can drag and drop each link to select the position of the link within your menu.

Menu Drag Drop

Creating a Sub Menu

To create a sub menu or drop down menu, simply drag and drop a link into the sub item position under another link. In this case the Test page has become a sub item of the Sample page.

Menu Sub Items

The Test page will display as a sub item of the Sample Page when the cursor hovers over the Sample Page link.

Sub Menu

Menu Icons

Vantage comes bundled with FontAwesome, a collection of over a hundred free icons. These icons are integrated in a few ways. For one, you can use them in the Circle Icon Widget.

Circle Icon Widget

You can also add icons to your main menu. It adds a professional touch to your website and helps users navigate your site faster.

Menu Menu Icons

For pages in your menu, you need to tell Vantage which icon to use. Navigate to Pages. Select the page you wish to assign an icon to. In the page editing interface, you should see a metabox called Menu Icon.

Menu Icon Drop Down Metabox

Select the icon you want to use from the drop down menu.