How to add dropdown menus in the Wordpress Cutline theme?

[SamuelScott]

I've got a fan website for a cult US TV show (that also sells merchandise as an affiliate). The site's design is about five years old, and I should probably revamp it at some point: http://www.btvsonline.com/

Anyway, the site's Cutline theme (http://cutline.tubetorial.com/) does not support native headers, and the header menu shows only a text list of my top-level pages. There are many subpages below these pages, but it's hard for users to find them without going to different pages to try to find things. What I'm looking for: if someone hovers above "Store" in the menu, a dropdown menu showing all the product pages would appear.

I've tried to find Wordpress plugins or PHP hacks to add dropdown menus and I have gone through Cutline's support site, but I have had no luck. Anyone in the Moz community have any advice? Perhaps I just need to revamp the site with a new and modern Wordpress theme? Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

[spencerhjustice]

As far as I can tell Cutline's css doesn't include support for dropdown menus. Does Cutline's main menu use the wordpress menu editor under appearance > menu in the main dashboard?

[Travis_Bailey]

My development skills aren't that hardcore, but it sounds like you would want to develop a child theme. If you're editing the actual theme, it's just going to get overwritten with the next theme update. But that sounds like a lot of trouble when you can probably find something that works for $50.

[spencerhjustice]

It doesn't look the theme has been updated since 2011, so I don't imagine that it will be updated again, but a child theme would be best practice.

Samuel,

If it is using wordpress's built in menu editor I rewrote the css from the twentytwelve theme's menu to work with Cutline's theme. You should just be able to add this to the main css file. I don't think the theme will ever be updated again so I don't think that this will cause an issue.

/* Dropdown Menu */

ul#nav li {
position: relative;
}
ul#nav li ul {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
position: absolute;
top: 100%;
z-index: 1;
height: 1px;
width: 1px;
overflow: hidden;
clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);
}
ul#nav li ul ul {
top: 0;
left: 100%;
}
ul#nav li:hover > ul,
ul#nav li:focus > ul,
ul#nav .focus > ul {
border-left: 0;
clip: inherit;
overflow: inherit;
height: inherit;
width: inherit;
}
ul#nav li ul li a {
background: #FFFFFF;
border-bottom: 1px solid #ededed;
display: block;
line-height: 2.181818182;
padding: 8px 10px;
padding: 0.571428571rem 0.714285714rem;
width: 180px;
width: 7rem;
white-space: normal;
}
ul#nav li ul li a:hover,
ul#nav li ul li a:focus {
background: #e3e3e3;
color: #444;
}
ul#nav .current-menu-item > a,
ul#nav .current-menu-ancestor > a,
ul#nav .current_page_item > a,
ul#nav .current_page_ancestor > a {
color: #636363;
font-weight: bold;
}
ul#nav li ul li a {
padding: 5px;
margin: initial;
margin-top: 0px;
}
ul#nav li ul li {
padding: 0px 0 0 0;
text-align: left;
}

[SamuelScott]

Thanks so much for taking the time to write that!

Unfortunately, I don't know exactly where to put it. I copied exactly what you wrote first at the bottom of this CSS file: http://www.btvsonline.com/wp-admin/theme-editor.php?file=style.css&theme=Cutline-1.4-3ColumnSplit (Stylesheet)

And then I placed the code here:

http://www.btvsonline.com/wp-admin/themes.php?page=editcss (CSS Stylesheet Editor)

After I tried both options, my horizontal menu doesn't provide any dropdown menus. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks SO much again!

[SamuelScott]

No, Cutline does not use that Menu function at all.

[spencerhjustice]

Ah, yeah then their isn't really anyway for you to get dropdown menus unless someone modifies your header.php to add them. My css would only have worked if cutline was using wordpress's built in menu function.

[SamuelScott]

Hey, if I PayPal you $25 and give you my login details, could you modify the header.php file and get the dropdown menu to work? I'm sure it'd take just a few minutes. I don't know that much PHP.

My e-mail address is in my Moz profile -- feel free to e-mail there.