Appearance → Menus → Menu Settings → Footer Menu.
What it is
A single row of links in the footer bar, alongside the copyright line. It is one level deep — sub-menu items are dropped, because a dropdown in a footer has nothing to open over.
With no menu assigned to the location, nothing is printed and the copyright line has the footer to itself.
What belongs in it
The links a reader goes looking for rather than browses to:
- About, Contact
- Privacy policy, Terms
- RSS, Newsletter
- Advertise, Corrections, Ethics policy — on a news site, the pages that say how you work
Keep it to five or six. A footer menu that wraps to three lines is a sitemap, and a sitemap belongs on a page.
Not a second navigation
If a section matters enough to be in the footer menu and the header menu, it belongs in the header. The footer is where the obligations go.
Styling
The footer menu takes the body font at a small size and the meta colour, like the copyright line beside it. There is no per-menu styling control; adjust it with Additional CSS if you need to:
.footer-menu a { letter-spacing: .02em; }