Guide

Navigation menus

2 min read 258 words Updated 14 August 2026

Menu structure is the one part of a site that cannot be reconstructed from the content afterwards — nothing in a post records which menu it belonged to, in what order, or under what label. Menus are exported into metadata.json, and WordPress gates them behind authentication.

Menu structure is the one part of a site that cannot be reconstructed from the content afterwards — nothing in a post records which menu it belonged to, in what order, or under what label. Menus are exported into metadata.json:

 1"menus": [
 2  {
 3    "id": 3, "name": "Categories", "slug": "categories", "locations": ["primary"],
 4    "items": [
 5      { "id": 41, "title": "Malta", "url": "/malta/", "parent": 0, "order": 1,
 6        "type": "taxonomy", "object": "category", "object_id": 5 },
 7      { "id": 42, "title": "About Us", "url": "/about-us", "parent": 0, "order": 2,
 8        "type": "post_type", "object": "page", "object_id": 7 }
 9    ]
10  }
11]

Item URLs follow --link-style, so navigation matches the exported permalinks. An item pointing at another host keeps its absolute URL. Items are ordered by menu_order, which is what the site renders by.

⚠️ Menus require authentication

WordPress gates /wp/v2/menus behind the edit_theme_options capability, so a public REST API still refuses them regardless of how the menus are configured:

1$ curl -s https://example.com/wp-json/wp/v2/menus
2{"code":"rest_cannot_view","message":"Sorry, you are not allowed to view menus.","data":{"status":401}}

Pass credentials to include them:

1wpexportjson export --url https://example.com --auth-user admin --auth-pass "app password"
2# or
3wpexportjson export --url https://example.com --auth-token "$TOKEN"

Without credentials the export prints a note and carries on — menus are simply absent. --no-menus skips the attempt entirely.