The problem
The default navigation menu for WordPress consists of links to parent pages and a sub-menu that drops down for the respective child pages. It's been pointed out to me that it's not obvious that the primary (parent) links are selectable i.e. when the drop down child page links appear the user apparently might disregard the primary link to the corresponding parent page.
An example
Have a peek at the main navigation menu on this website:
http://www.directsponsor.org/forums/
My question
In my mind, the default WordPress navigation menu set-up is semantic, intuitive and best practice. To the non-technically inclined mind, is the menu intuitive enough? i.e. will all users observe the parent link or do I need to reprogram the menu?
Potential solutions
- It's been suggested to me that I reiterate the parent links in the drop down menu. This seems like terribly bad practice and breaks the overall semantics of the menu. It's my opinion that the selectivity of the parent page links are already implied by the hover state.
- Using CSS to more obviously imply the selectivity of the parent page links.
- Reprogram the menu altogether.
