Menu not receiving necessary styling.

I have encountered the same problem and found my solution. The key is, you need to make sure you spell "primary-menu" consistently inside functions.php and header.php. Make sure you use dash (-) in both files; or, use underscore (_) in both files. You can't mix and match.

To elaborate, in functions.php, you refer to this location as "primary-menu". So later in header.php, you tell WordPress that you want to create a menu in the location of "primary-menu" you just declared in functions.php. If you use the wrong sign (dash or underscore), WordPress won't know you're referring to the same thing.

Anyway, that was the mistake I made; I fixed that little thing, and everything works. I don't have to change any of Zac's code.

For easy reference, here is the code I wrote:

In functions.php:

<?php 
function register_theme_menus () {
    register_nav_menus( [
        'primary-menu' => _( 'Primary Menu' )
    ] );
}

add_action( 'init', 'register_theme_menus' );
?>

In header.php:

<?php
$defaults = array('container'      => false,
                  'theme_location' => 'primary-menu',
                  'menu_class'     => 'no-bullet');
wp_nav_menu( $defaults );
?>

I put .. 'container' => true, .. and it works. Also 'menu' instead of 'theme_location' (as was mentioned above) works too. Could someone describe why?

Main fix, eventually (and actually only difference with video) on my side was checkbox Theme locations - Primary Menu (Dashboard, Menu Settings).

Try setting container to '' empty string instead of false and see if that helps.

I had a similar issue, mine was a spelling error. Within your functions.php file is the slug you used in the array for register_nav_menus the same as the one you used in theme_location for the wp_nav_menu function? I basically misspelled primary-menu in one of the functions.

For example:

function register_theme_menus() {
   register_nav_menus(
   array(
      'primary-menu'    => __( 'Primary Menu' )
      )
   );

$defaults = array(
     'container'       => false,
     'theme_location'  => 'primary-menu',
      'menu_class'      => 'no-bullet',
);
 wp_nav_menu( $defaults );

I had the same issue, it was because I didn't have Primary Menu selected in the Menu settings. Also by leaving the theme_location string empty it worked.

Zac Gordon, Jeffrey Cunningham, et al.,

well, i'm going to camp on this one also as i cannot get the no-bullet CSS class to show up for me to save my life at this point.

no matter what i try, the slug line for the ul in the generated HTML from the PHP in WordPress still looks like this —

...
<ul id="menu-main-menu" class="menu">
...

^^^^^ always with a CSS class of menu, never no-bullet, no matter what i do.

here is the pertinent code from my functions.php file —

<?php

add_theme_support( 'menus' );

function register_theme_menus() {

  register_nav_menus(
    array(
      'primary-menu' => __( 'Primary Menu' )
    )
  );

} 
add_action( 'init', 'register_theme_menus' );
...

and here is the pertinent code from my header.php file —

...
        <?php

          $defaults = array(
            'container'  => false,
            'theme-location'  => 'primary-menu',
            'menu-class'  => 'no-bullet'
          );

          wp_nav_menu( $defaults );

        ?>
...

some things to note —

• yes, I have tried the things suggested in this support thread above.
• yes, I tried changing the false after 'container' to an empty string ('') — didn't work, still no no-bullet class.
• yes, i tried changing 'theme-location' to 'menu' — still did not work, no no-bullet class
• yes, i made sure that i chose "Primary Menu" for the Main Menu in the WordPress dashboard > Appearance > Menus and saved that change in the menus. still did not work, no no-bullet class.
• i also tried refreshing my server each time between these changes by restarting the apache2 and mysql servers and then refreshing the page. still did not work, no no-bullet class.
• i have tried just about everything except taking the code out for chinese food, still never get the no-bullet class for the ul selector

and, of course, if you make any of the menus a sub-menu, like putting "Contacts" under "About," the unwanted bullet shows up —

and here is the relative generated HTML code from the WordPress PHP in the Chrome Dev Tools, still just menu class in CSS, never no-bullet as desired —

so there you go. any help with this, please, would be appreciated.

on another note — WordPress has upgraded/iterated several times since this course was published, we are now on WordPress v4.6, and there have been many, many fixes and upgrades, particularly to internal WP code and hooks, since then. looking at the questions for this particular course module, it appears many others have also stumbled and getting the container argument and the menu-class argument to work properly. perhaps it is time for Zac and the other course creators/editors at Treehouse to review the content for this course and update both the course content and videos accordingly, please? my suggestion, at least.

i await your response.

best,

— faddah portland, oregon, u.s.a.

What does the source code look like for the menu compared the static example file? Are certain classes missing?

Patrick Boehner Mine was actually a different issue. I could not select the solution as the best answer because it was a comment but if you look above at the comment from birendra Limbu I had to change the menu location from theme location to menu location.

I ran into the same problem, but changing the code in header.php to the following, fixed everything. Super strange...

<?php 

    $defaults = array(
        'container' => false,
        'theme-location' => 'primary-menu',
        'menu-class' => 'no-bullet' );

    wp_nav_menu( $defaults );

?>

basically, theme-location/menu-class as opposed to theme_location/menu_class

Anyone know if maybe something has changed since the video? Or is the video mistaken? Would love to know what the actual proper way to do this is.

Jamie Dodds —

that did it! no more little "o" circle as a bullet before my sub-menus. thank you.

Zac Gordon & anyone else at Treehouse staff — it would be nice if this Treehouse module was updated so we can see this change, in other words, you need to re-do your style.css downloadable file for this learning module. thanks.

best,

— faddah portland, oregon, u.s.a.