Customising the index page

Currently I’m using the default setup from your index dummy page demo:
[vc_row][vc_column][metaslider id=103][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][td_block_15 custom_title="Popular recipes" td_ajax_filter_type="td_category_ids_filter"][td_block_ad_box spot_id="custom_ad_1" spot_title="- Advertisement -"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_class="td-recipes-deserts"][vc_column][td_block_15 custom_title="Deserts" header_color="#dd4949" sort="random_posts"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_class="td-recipes-chicken"][vc_column][td_block_15 custom_title="Chicken & Beef" header_color="#3e8ebc" sort="random_posts"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][td_block_video_youtube playlist_title="VIDEO RECIPES" playlist_yt="aJdU-Y_4cig, 10zarkHqXRo, jOmD2tIvsJg, Fw5fBM2osSw, -JKtWOqARa4, tM5b0engFM0, m8WACcHLeeQ, uJsFkZBbn5w"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_class="td-recipes-instagram"][vc_column][td_block_instagram instagram_id="twisted_food" instagram_images_per_row="4" instagram_number_of_rows="" custom_title=""][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Only thing I’ve added is the slider on the top of the page.
What I’m trying to do now it to replace those dummy demo blocks with real categories which I’ve created.

For example first dummy block is “Popular recipes”.
[td_block_15 custom_title="Popular recipes" td_ajax_filter_type="td_category_ids_filter"]
1) How does this work? It should really work depending on the number of views on each recipes article, does it work that way?
2) Also how would i exclude some categories from this block?

Next block is “Deserts”.
[td_block_15 custom_title="Deserts" header_color="#dd4949" sort="random_posts"]
The problem is it doesn’t really show the deserts category.
1) How do I set it up to show the desserts category with descending order of the newest posts?

One more thing, I fucked up my main menu at http://www.myrecipes.ie
I don’t know how to create it the cool way that you guys have on the demo page, I would love to have categories shown in the menu this way: http://prntscr.com/ewc8tm
How do I do this, is there any documentation about this?

Ok the menu thing is sorted, the problem was if you have Ultimate Member plugin, it takes over Mega Menu options, you just don’t see them, so I needed to disable the Ultimate Member plugin to be able to see Mega Menu options.