Menu Creator 1.1.9 Mega Update

After going over all the new features in WordPress 3.0 and the inclusion / integration with WordPress Multi User, we decided to take a good long look at the Menu Creator to see what would and would not be a worthy update. So, as we looked at all the support forum and blog comments in addition to all the emails we started making a master task list. Keeping in mind that the reason the plugin is so popular we made sure our list will not make theme developers nervous. The Menu Creator is distributed with about 16 – 20 commercial and non commercial themes that we know of and we want to make this a lot easier for theme developers to include an easy menu management solution with their themes. Lets run down the list highlighting the checklist first then more details.

• We are adding in a new set of options for menu layout that will expand the potential for design professionals.
• New layouts will also support images as menu items.
• Adding in a new feature that will put CSS editing right in the menu creator.
• The next release will include pre formatted menu examples (lots of requests for this).
• Menu Creator can be used for slide shows and in fact content sliders as well.
• MU Support for global menu usage, this means you could create a menu that shows on selected MU blogs.
• User Defined script includes so you can add custom JS to the header section of your blog dynamically.
• Opt in features for things like jquery, mootools and other scripts that are core with WordPress.
• Category menus and special conditional menu features are being expanded.
• Adding a new class for “ACTIVE” so you can style active links.
• Menu management in Pages / Posts so you can publish a link directly from the post editor.
• Assign links on a page by page basis so the links in the menu can show up on targeted locations
• Full URL or Short URL options for each menu link. An SEO Feature.
• New Page / Post item selector. No more looking up ID’s before creating menu items.
• Improved Drag Drop features for menu management.
• IMPORTANT:  Theme code snippets for theme builders. See below.
• IMPORTANT:  Import Pages / Posts option for new menu items. This will allow you to instantly create a new menu based on existing pages by default.
• IMPORTANT: In line HTML Wrappers will allow you to nest menus (not just menu items) within another menu.
• Short Code, will allow you to publish menus within actual pages and posts.

Theme – Options Panel for Menu Management

The idea behind this is simple, we needed a way in our own themes to have an option in the options panel.  If you are a theme developer and you need to provide menu management to your theme users (commercial or gnu/gpl) then we are adding code snippets for your use. You simply paste in the code we provide into your functions.php for your options panel and your end users can use default code for menu management based on available menu options you build.

For instance lets say you are really wanting to publish your new cool theme and you want to have menu management as a feature of your product. You simply include the Menu Creator with your package and the options code and your end users can enable or disable the use of Menu Creator as an alternative to default navigation. Why do something like this? Because you don’t really want to ask your end users to modify template code in order to use Menu Creator.

Thesis Code Snippets

We are adding more THESIS support to the Menu Creator so you can easily hook into predefined areas with actual widget code. Although the approach is not anything new the process is much simpler now.

WordPress MU 3.0 Menu Management

Wouldn’t it be nice to add better menu management for your WordPress blogs? This feature came as a request from users of Buddy Press for a school district. What they asked for was a way to control a menu item site wide (including selected blogs) from the master admin location and also extend the ability for all blogs within MU the ability to setup their own unique menu navigation on a per blog basis. So we are adding this in as a feature.

When will 1.1.9 Be Released?

We wont finish up edits until months end but beta testers can request a copy at any time.