Hi Juan,

I think what you’re referring to is actually, “Theme Locations” not simply, “Location”. I didn’t see anything titled, “Location”. However, with “Theme Locations” located at the bottom of the Appearance > Menus page there is a check box option for either “Navigation Menu” or “Footer Menu”. Navigation Menu is checked which is allowing my current navigation menu to show up. Unfortunately, when I uncheck the Navigation Menu box, my primary navigation goes crazy and still, my “Menu > dropdown menus” all come up blank, even with the “Navigation Menu” box unchecked.

I decided to keep this thread alive here vs. just emailing privately so people might be able to benefit from this should they experience the same problem. I hope by being specific, I’m helping to solve the problem faster and in the future, helping others. I’m still thinking this must be an easy fix…?

Thanks,
JayTea

Hi Juan,

The version of WordPress I am using is 3.7.1

Curious to know what to do next.

Thanks,
JayTea

Hi Juan,

So, I went to Appearance > Menus > Manage Locations > Navigation Menu and deselected PRIMARY and in it’s place selected “—Select a Menu—” and saved. When I toggled back over to the Edit Menus tab and scrolled down to the bottom of the page, I saw that Navigation Menu was now unchecked… ok… fine (kind of) but when I go back to the site view the Primary Nav is still messed up…

The primary Nav should read as follows:

ABOUT | MENU | GALLERY | EVENTS | TEA TRAVEL JOURNALS | CONTACT US

The messed up primary nav reads as follows:

ABOUT | CONTACT US | EVENTS | GALLERY | HOME | TEA MENU | TEA TRAVEL JOURNALS | MENU

As you can see, the primary nav is two pages too long (tea menu and home don’t belong) and it’s not in the correct order.

What to do now?

Sorry this is such a problem. There should be an easy way.

JayTea

Hi Juan,

I believe you’re correct in saying that the problem is fairly simple. I just don’t know if the solution is as simple as you’re suggesting it is.

Your ideas:

1) Create a navigation menu and assign it to a menu location.

My response: I already have a navigation menu created – it’s called PRIMARY. All of my new pages and subpages live under this navigation menu. When I try giving it the location of MENU, none of my dropdown pages are populated with content when you click on them. However, when you go into view all pages and find those very same dropdown menu items and click on them there, you can clearly see the content. It just for whatever reason will not show up on the actual site. Something is blocking it. This is the real problem.

2) Leave the location blank and then the site will show the pages you have for your site. You’ll need to set the pages order and hierarchy.

My response: I had already looked into this a few different times and could not find any place to set the page order on each page other than under Appearance > Menu and looking in the right column where the PRIMARY menu hierarchy is already setup the way I’d like it. Did you look at my site? Did you go into the the Dashboard > Appearance > Menu like I’ve requested you do and see how I’ve set it up? If you had, you would have seen that my PRIMARY nav menu is ready to go with primary nav and sub nave all indented in order.

Lastly, you said “I’m not sure how is that you want to order your menu items…”. I don’t know how you could say that when I clearly layed the heirarchy out in my last letter – here it is again (from left to right as it would appear on the site’s primary nav):

ABOUT | MENU | GALLERY | EVENTS | TEA TRAVEL JOURNALS | CONTACT US

What are you not sure about? This (above) is exactly how I want to order my menu items. If you’re referring to my dropdown menus – the ones that for some still unexplained reason aren’t allowed to show their content – I just get blank pages, all you have to do to see “how I want to order my menu items” with those dropdown menus is to look at the site and hover over the primary nav item: MENU and their all listed under there in hierarchical order. That was simple. That same hierarchy exists under the PRIMARY nav menu list on the Appearance > Menu page in the dashboard.

Why does it seem like we’re crossing our paths here? Are we speaking the same language? It seems so. I understand what you’re suggesting – the problem with it is that if you dig into what I’ve already done, you’ll clearly see that I’ve already done these things. Sometimes you cannot suggest solutions from afar without actually looking at the specifics because again, you end up with vague directions and nothing gets solved.

All I’m asking for here is to figure out why when I shut off the BBQ Food Menu and Menu Categories and setup new PRIMARY subpages – why those subpages are showing up blank on the site when each of those pages contains content when you look at them under PAGES. This my friend, makes no sense whatsoever. Your idea of creating navigation menu and assigning it to a menu location already exists. You could see that if you’d look at Appearance > Menu. Your idea of assigning the page order and hierarchy seems to be already set up = also in Appearance > Menu. Again, I don’t get what I haven’t done here.

I thought you’d be able to look at my site and determine what the problem is by actually clicking around and seeing the issues I’ve been explaining to you. Maybe it’s something in the code that is only giving permissions to the BBQ Food Menu? If so, I wouldn’t know the first thing about that but maybe you would? Maybe, like you say, it’s really a simple problem. I don’t know why if it’s so simple why the solution hasn’t happened yet. Everything you’ve suggested I do is already done – already set up.

This is frustrating. Like I said, I’m 99% of the way with the site – this is the last thing holding the site up from being finished. Those subpages under the MENU in the primary nav have no visible content on the live page. If you look at each of them under PAGES you’ll see each has content. So why isn’t that content showing up on the live site? Weird, weird, weird.

Do you see?

Thanks,
JayTea

I solved the problem a different way.

I went back in and created a different page titled, MENUS and assigned all of my dropdown menus to that one and then dumped MENU in Appearance > Menus > Primary. It worked. I think that the original page titled, MENU which had been previously occupied by the BBQ Theme’s Food Menu setup had somehow been altered only allowing the Food Menus and Categories to show and since I had deleted all of those files, it was showing anything connected to it (dropdown menus) as blank pages.

Word of advice to the users: If you find out that the BBQ Theme’s Food Menu setup becomes too cumbersome or doesn’t allow you the flexibility you need for your restaurant’s various different menus, you should follow my lead and set up your own menus using Pages and ignore the BBQ theme’s Food Menu and Menu Categories but know that if you use the Primary Navigation title “Menu”, that name seems to be associated with the BBQ theme’s special menu system. You may have to delete Menu and then create a new one in Pages which may break the link and allow you the flexibility you need. Wow. What a bunch of rigamarole! Also, if you have any questions for Juan, he seems to be a good guy and gets back in touch right away but know that he likes your questions to be very succinct and doesn’t like a lot of explanation so get to the point quickly… and I suggest be patient with him since he sometimes doesn’t relay specifics so you might have to ask more questions to get those specifics. I’d have to imagine he’s fielding a lot of questions and doesn’t have much time to devote to each one. Imagine being in his shoes. It must be tough. Thank you, Juan for at least trying with what little time I assume you must have. The theme rocks and everyone loves it who has seen it. Best of luck!

JayTea