Unsure about main menu structure on a big magazine site

[Wedideas]

We've got a well-established Wordpress magazine-type site with over 3000 posts and quite a lot of categories (100) and tags (117). These categories are needed as we write about quite a diverse subject, but I've been having a look at our current menu setup (megaMenu type affair with a lot of links) and I was wondering whether it's worth moving to a simpler/more streamlined main navigation and showing the sub menu items in a different way. The reason I say this is most cats/tags are used in the main menu which is a lot, and that's before any on page links are taken into consideration.

I've also been looking at the analytics and seeing what the most popular cats/tags are - Do we want to concentrate on those only, or from a usability perspective should we give users as many options to find what they may be looking for instead?

Would appreciate some help to get my head round this

[Linda-Vassily]

It sounds like you have quite a lot of categories! Can any of the categories become the main categories and other categories sub-categories beneath them?

[Wedideas]

Hi Linda, yes we do have a lot

Do you mean in the main menu structure or the actual categories/tags structure in wordpress that has parent and child categories?

Thanks,

James

[Linda-Vassily]

The main menu structure is where it would be important. Does your layout now have a menu with 100 links?

If your hundred categories can be sorted into five or ten more general categories with other categories under those, it would make navigation easier.

You can still keep all of your categories as first level under the domain in the URL, even if they are drop-downs (or however you want to do it) under an over-category.

If the point is to get away from so many links in the header, even if they are not immediately visible, then the question is how important are all the categories. Can some be consolidated?