Rural Blog registers three menu locations. This page covers the first, the main navigation in the header.
| Location | Where it renders |
|---|---|
| Primary menu | The header bar, and the mobile panel |
| Footer menu | Under the copyright |
| Social menu | Icons in the header and footer |
Creating it
Appearance → Menus (or Customize → Menus, which previews live).
- Create a new menu, name it something like
Main. - Add pages, categories, or custom links from the panel on the left.
- Under Menu Settings, tick Primary menu.
- Save.
Drag an item slightly to the right to make it a sub-menu item.
If no menu is assigned
Nothing renders. There is no fallback list of pages, deliberately — a brand-new site does not silently grow a navigation of every draft page you made.
The “Skip to the main menu” accessibility link also disappears with it, so the header stays clean rather than pointing at nothing.
What the theme adds
The current page is highlighted. Both the item itself and its parent, in the header and in the footer menu.
Sub-menu items get a toggle button. A top-level item with children carries a chevron button that opens the sub-menu — so the dropdown works by keyboard and by touch, not only by hover. See Dropdowns.
The markup mirrors the Navigation block. Useful if you later move to a block theme, and it is what lets one stylesheet cover both.
One build, two places. The same menu markup is printed in the desktop bar and in the off-canvas panel, built once per request.
How many items
The bar has finite room, and the answer depends on your header layout:
- Logo left — the most forgiving; six or seven items are fine.
- Logo center — the menu is split around the logo. Four or five.
- Nav below — the menu has a full-width row of its own. As many as you like.
Above the tablet breakpoint the bar hides entirely and the menu moves into the mobile panel, where length costs nothing.
Styling it
- Colours: Design → Header → Navigation — see Header colours
- Type: Design → Header → Menu typography — see Menu font
The menu reads at body size and weight out of the box, in your heading font.