How to Make Parent Non-Clickable in Drop Down Navigation Menu for WordPress
on August 15, 2011
Customize your WordPress nav menu to make parent links non-clickable
The following steps will allow you to configure your parent navigation (nav) menu links so that clicking them does not take a user anywhere. This is useful when the page the parent links to has no content, but the pages the children link to have important content.
- Upload the Page Links To plugin for WordPress. You can download the plugin and upload it via FTP or you can upload the plugin directly in the WordPress Admin > Plugins > Add New > Search for “Page Links To” in the “Search Plugins” area of the page. Once you have located the plugin, click upload.
- Once uploaded, activate the Page Links To plugin for use
- Open the page or post corresponding to the parent link.
- The “Page Links To” section will be located the bottom of each page or post.
- To make the parent unclickable, enter “#” without quotes into the “Point to this URL:” text field.
- Save the page / post.
Have a look at the nav menu on your WordPress blog. If you have followed the above steps properly, your parent navigation menu item is not clickable.
You can also go to the menu section. Create a custom menu. Create a custom link. You must add an URL here. Add this custom link to the menu. In the menu remove the URL from the custom link. This menu item is then not clickable at all. You do not see a little hand or anything like that wich suggest the menu item is clickable.
Thanks for sharing this alternate method Barbara!
Thanks Barbara that works great!
Perfect solution, Barbara. Worth recommendation. Thank you.
This is exactly what I was looking for. Easy and works perfectly. Thank you for taking the time to post this!
You’re welcome Rick. Glad is was a help!
Barbara’s solution will be best but it has a limitation. Maximum page link supports dropdown for its sub pages directly but not custom menu.
Doesnt work on mobile devices Barbara :/
Love the plug-in. Saved the day!
I am new to WordPress and am in the process of making the transition from Blogger. Thank you so much for this info, worked perfectly!
Fantastic! Such a simple fix. Thank you!
You’re welcome! Glad it helped.
This worked great for my site, and no issues on mobile. Thanks for posting!
Perfect – just what I was searching for! Thanks!
Just tested it on my mobile devices and it doesn’t work. Bummer
I really need an option that is accessible. Having the category link that goes no where is confusing to those who are are using readers and tactile devices, but not having the drop down list is worse.
Hi Elizabeth, have you figured this out yet? If not, try looking under Appearence > Menu. You can specify custom URLs (or none) here.
Thank you for the plugin and the post about how to use it.
Works well in 2022 with Classic Press, which is a fork from WordPress 4.9 (pre-Gutenberg).