BuddyRules

Steve, Thanks for you input. It turned out that using the Better Search and Replace plugin on a local copy of the problem website was a bit of a chicken and egg problem in itself. WordPress wouldn’t go into administration mode run unless I changed the links (addresses) in the local database as above. Once I got past that I was able to load and run Better Search and Replace, which was too little too late after I potentially created the same problem with serialized data all over again. At least it found one link that I missed.

Anyway, I finally found the problem and the solution. Permalinks. Apparently the (old) website that I could run properly locally had its permalink common setting to “plain”. The (new) website that I couldn’t run properly locally had its permalink setting to “Day and name”. (Has WordPress changed its default setting for permalinks?) By switching my permalink setting from “Day and name” to “Plain” the local website started working normally: meaning that I could use the menu to switch between pages. And I could see in the web address that it had switched to using the page_id= addressing mode.

So I get to have my cake and eat it, too. I get the friendly url for the website on the internet and still have it work locally with the not so friendly query string in the permalink.

That does exactly what I was looking for.

I’m embarrassed. I’ve been through Customize-Layout many times and never thought to change the Navigation Dropdown option to “Click-Menu Item”.

Thank you for helping with a problem that could be resolved in WordPress rather than GeneratePress.