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How To Point A Menu Item To An External Link In WordPress

There are many tips, tricks, hacks and so on that exist for tweaking and adjusting various functionalities in WordPress and while I’m not sure whether the subject of this post falls into any of these categories, it should still be helpful to one or two bloggers out there. The fact that many Web designers out there also use WordPress as a content management system (CMS) means that ways have to be found to carry out what could be described as straightforward actions in other CMS’s such as Joomla. Take for example, the problem at hand – how do you point a menu item to an external link instead of a page, in WordPress?

What to do

Normally, desperate problems are said to call for desperate measures, but in this case a simple problem requires a simple solution. Thus, to point a menu item to an external link in WordPress, there are two basic approaches you can take:

  1. In the title input area, enter the following: 
    [sourcecode language=”plain”]<a href="Enter external URL here">Menu Item [Space]</a>[/sourcecode]

  2. Alternatively, you can take the second approach that comes with the new of WordPress 3.0. Although your current theme must natively support menus, WP 3.0 does make it a lot easier to customise menu items without the use of plugins. First, from the Dashboard go to Appearance then Menus.
  3. wordpress-external-links

    Then create and save a custom menu to add your links to (you can also edit, delete or re-arrange links in the custom menu). Once the custom menu has been created, simply enter the URL of the external page in the Custom Links option (on the top-left-hand-side), enter the name of the menu item in the Text field and click on Add to Menu. Do not forget to save changes at when you finish adding as many custom links as required.

Talking Point

Do you agree with the concept of using WordPress as a content management system?

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9 Comments

9 Comments

  1. David

    December 18, 2010 at 8:15 am

    very interesting article keen to get my one for my own use

  2. Pingback: Tweets that mention How To Point A Menu Item To An External Link In WordPress

  3. Dewalt nail gun

    December 20, 2010 at 3:29 am

    this seems very interesting, how is this working for converting to sales? anybody have any ideas?

  4. iPad Application Development

    December 20, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    Great that you’ve mentioned this problem and explained how to fix it, but I think those who know even the basics of HTML wouldn’t have any difficulties with this. At the same time, I admit that there are many bloggers that don’t actually know much of HTML, so your tips will be very helpful for them I guess. Thank you!

  5. Jen

    December 31, 2010 at 7:37 am

    I agree with IPad Application Development, your tips could be very helpful to those who are not familiar with the HTML. I met this problem before, and I couldn’t solve it, but you helped me! Thanks!

  6. Admin

    January 6, 2011 at 10:50 pm

    Thanks for the comments!

  7. fantastic sams

    January 10, 2011 at 2:39 pm

    Very informative post about the wordpress. It is really CMS.

  8. Tracyann0312

    December 13, 2011 at 9:17 am

    The write up is very informative. I just notice that the dashboard sometimes has error. That is why we cannot easily add link into the site.

  9. Thomas

    November 13, 2013 at 12:40 pm

    Hello, You are really an awesome person as well as authentic informer. You provide all the information which I didn’t know about WordPress. I will use this on my personal blog.Thanks for your informative post.

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