How to Edit the Header Menu in WordPress

The header menu is where visitors look for your key pages: About, Services, Products, Contact. How you edit it depends on the type of theme your site uses. This guide covers the three most common cases.

Back up your site before you start. The menu is the first thing visitors see, and a wrong edit can remove the link to an important page.

1. Classic themes: Appearance → Menus

Applies to most themes, such as Astra, Flatsome, GeneratePress and OceanWP.

1. In the dashboard, go to Appearance → Menus.
2. In Select a menu to edit, choose the menu shown in your header (usually called Main Menu, Primary or Header).
3. Add items: in the left column, tick pages, posts or categories, or use Custom Links for any URL, then click Add to Menu.
4. Reorder: drag items up and down. Drag an item to the right to make it a sub-item (a dropdown).
5. Rename or remove: click the arrow on an item to change its label, or click Remove.
6. Under Menu Settings, check that the menu is assigned to your theme’s header location (Primary, Header Menu…).
7. Click Save Menu.

You can do the same in Appearance → Customize → Menus to preview changes on the live site before saving.

2. Block themes: Appearance → Editor

Applies to block themes such as Twenty Twenty-Four and Twenty Twenty-Five. These themes don’t have the old Menus screen.

1. Go to Appearance → Editor.
2. Choose Navigation to see your menus, or open the Header template and click the Navigation block.
3. Add items with the + button, drag to reorder, and click an item to change its label or link.
4. Click Save.

3. Headers built with Elementor Pro

If your header was built with Elementor Pro → Theme Builder, the menu items still come from WordPress:

1. Edit the menu items as in section 1 above (Appearance → Menus).
2. To change which menu is shown, go to Templates → Theme Builder → Header, edit the header in Elementor, click the Nav Menu widget and pick a menu in the Menu field.
3. Click Update.

Check your changes

• Open your site in a private window so your login doesn’t affect what you see.
• Check on desktop and mobile: the mobile menu (☰) usually uses the same menu but can be a separate one.
• If your site uses a caching plugin (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache…) and you don’t see the change, clear the cache.