Drop Down/Sub Menu Item (Joomla 3)

Creating a drop down menu, or a sub-menu, is a popular way to increase the functionality of your site and to keep your articles organized and presentable. Assuming that you've already created menu items, this article will discuss how to create drop down menu items. It’s very important to note that not all templates support drop down menus items. Before attempting to add a drop down menu item, review your template settings to be sure your template supports them.

First, log in to the Administration area (the back end) of your site and open the Menu Manager. Once inside the Menu Manager, select the menu you’d like to work with. For the purpose of this article, we will work with our "Main Menu".

Once you’re looking at the menu items for the particular menu you’d like to work with, select the “New” button to create a new menu item. In the example images, we’re going to create a drop down menu item for a single article on Joomla 3.0. This will appear under the Category Blog menu item.

When creating the new menu item, first select the menu item type you'll work with. For the purpose of this article, we will use a "Single Article" menu item type.

Next, we'll select the article we'd like to connect to this menu item. We'll create a title for the men item and check the menu location.

Next, under "Parent Item", select the parent item under which the new menu item will appear. This is an important step – this is where you actually tell Joomla to make this a drop down menu item.

Once you save your work and return to the Menu Manager, you’ll see the new article you created. Notice how it is indented underneath the parent item. This is how you can be sure it is a drop down menu item.

Return to the front end of your site. The drop down menu item should appear underneath the parent item when you hover your mouse over the parent item. If the main menu is active in any other location, the drop down menu item will also appear there. If you've followed the steps above, but the drop down menu item doesn't appear, it's possible that the template you're using doesn't support sub menu items.