WordPress CSS Drop-down Menu

May 07, 2012

WordPress CSS Drop-down Menu Plugin

Use Wordpress' nav menu system to create left/right widget flyouts, with support for Superfish

Note: This plugin requires PHP 5

Warning: This plugin requires knowledge of CSS to use adequately in widgets

Features at a glance:

  • Widgetised to make it really easy to add multiple dropdowns anywhere on the page you have sidebars
  • Ability to create the menu wherever you want with PHP Classes
  • Leverages the new WordPress 2.8 widget settings to allow quick and easy multiple widget instances

Theming options:

  • Multi-level dropdown (CSS included)
  • Multi-level left/right flyouts (CSS included)
  • Support for Superfish Javascript (CSS included)
  • Works with other CSS (within reason)

If you want me to modify the CSS for you simply contact me and I will do it easily and quickly for you for a moderate sum.

It uses Stu Nicholl’s final drop-down code which is a complete CSS solution – no Javascript required!!

You can look on Stu’s site for other drop-down code as I got the flyout left and right code from there. Don’t forget to donate if you’re using his styles.

Most of his CSS should work just fine with the menu. I’ve made it so that the plugin automatically finds menu.css in the plugin’s folder and loads it in your WordPress site so you can instantly see how it will look. If you want to create your own CSS simply create menu.css in your theme’s root directory and the plugin will load that automatically for you.

Please note that if you’re upgrading you will need to change your theme files to suit the new approach. See Installation for further information.

Installation

  • Upload the ‘wordpress-css-drop-down-menu’ folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory or install it from WordPress.org’s Plugin directory inside your WordPress installation.
  • Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  • Add the required code to header.php in your WordPress theme

    orientation=”top”; */
    $myMenu->show();
    }
    ?>

    You can place the above code anywhere in your theme, not just the header. Options available to you are:

    $myMenu->orientation – Values are ‘top’, ‘right’, ‘left’ – default is ‘top’
    $myMenu->name – WordPress menu id, slug, or name
    $myMenu->container_class – the class that is applied to the container
    $myMenu->theme_location – The location in the theme to be used (defined via register_nav_menu)
    $myMenu->menu_class – CSS class to be used for the ul element which forms the menu

    These are a subset of the options given here: https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_nav_menu

    • Or, add a sidebar to your theme if you don’t already have one

If you want to show the widget in the header of your theme, add a sidebar to your header.php file and update your functions.php file to add a new sidebar there.

PHP for your sidebar.php file in your WordPress theme:

<?php if ( function_exists ( dynamic_sidebar('menu') ) ) : dynamic_sidebar ('menu'); endif; ?> 

Example PHP for your functions file:

<?php if ( function_exists ('register_sidebar')) { register_sidebar( array( 'name' => __('Menu', 'menu'), 'id' => 'menu', 'description' => __('Shows a dropdown menu in the header.', 'menu'), 'before_widget' => '', 'after_widget' => '', 'before_title' => '', 'after_title' => '' ) ); } ?> 
  • The plugin defines its own menu.css in your theme’s header. If you have your own menu.css file in your theme folder the plugin will check for that and load that for you automatically. It may be easier to simply copy across menu.css from the plugin folder and use that as the basis for your own. Or, browse the internet for unordered CSS list menu styles. Stu’s site is a good start.

  • You can also activate the JS addon plugin to use Superfish javascript. This plugin uses its own Superfish CSS which you can find in the plugin js/superfish directory. It has been modified for use with WordPress. Place superfish.css into your own theme folder to avoid having your CSS overwritten on a plugin update!
    It’s also possible to use other Superfish menu variants but you will need to edit and include them yourself using functions.php in your theme folder. Please also note that right/left widget items won’t work with this menu type installed right now.

  • If you get ‘broken image links’ in IE it’s because the background dropdown images in your menu.css file are set to Stu’s original ones. You will need to change these.

FAQ

It doesn’t work with IE x

(Un)fortunately the WordPress nav menu system doesn’t use the browser hacks Stu Nicholl used. There are many other CSS navigation menus out there these days, do a quick Google search, pop it into your own menu.css file, and target the correct class. It’s easy to drop over the top!

I Need HELP!!!

That’s what I’m here for. I do WordPress sites for many people in a professional capacity and
can do the same for you. Check out www.zackdesign.biz

I’m getting strange class errors

You need PHP 5 to run this

Where’s the dynamic width gone?

I left dynamic menu width code in until a replacement CSS menu can be found… it should not break existing dynamic CSS, but you can no longer change the options in the WP Settings.

Contact me to suggest a good alternative, and if you need to change any of the options found in the css_dropdownmenu_css function use functions.php and this as a guide: https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/update_option

Changelog

4.0.2

  • Added licensing information and tested in WP 3.3.x

4.0.1

  • Fixed the CSS appearing in WordPress admin

4.0

  • Set the plugin up for WordPress 3, and removed all unnecessary code

3.0.9

  • Added category ordering by description/name

3.0.8

  • Reintroduction of deprecated function in an attempt to get people back on track.

3.07.1

  • Minor fix – valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional (target=”” removed)
  • Changed CSS slightly (current_page_item > current_page and deleted drop.gif)

3.0.7

  • Added URL target for WP links
  • Added drop class for parent menu links
  • Fixed dodgy css classes for WP links
  • Added current_page for post categories

3.0.6

  • Fixed ‘division by zero’ warning which occurs when there are no links for the dynamic menu to use

3.0.5

  • Found that IE6 didn’t play nice when excluding parent URLs, added href=”#” parent A tags to fix issue

3.0.4

  • Added widget title
  • Also created ability to do a menu drilldown style in the sidebar, visible here: http://www.brakes.no/v2/produkter/

3.0.3

  • Gives users ability to override superfish.css with their own superfish.css in their current theme folder (this is for the JS sub plugin)
  • Also added PHP enclosing tags to README

3.0.2

  • Allows users to create static non-flyout left/right menus with drilldown functionality (only shows children of currently selected menu item)

3.0.1

  • Found there was a problem with dynamic menu widths due to using the classes. Assumes that the last top oriented menu defined is the one to set dynamic CSS for. This will need to be addressed in later versions.
  • Menu titles for QTranslate broken when using htmlspecialchars. Removed.

3.0

  • Uses all the WordPress heirarchical elements – links, post categories, pages
  • Attempts to make the installation process as simple as possible for non-savvy users (Auto CSS inclusion, allows user to define their own, user-friendly improvements)
  • Includes sub-plugin – the superfish menu dropdown script
  • Additional links in the plugin menu so that the user can quickly find the plugin setup area
  • Updated README file to reflect new changes and all links to Zack Design are now for this plugin category
  • Rewritten for PHP Classes
  • Widgetised!!!

2.3.7

  • Authenticated menus
  • Ability to set further fine-grained controls from the code
  • Added some extra code to try and make IE6 dynamic widths work properly

2.3.6

  • Now allows you to rename the additional ‘Home’ button
  • Added an extra ‘else’ to try and clear any unnecessary parent CSS

2.3.5

  • Alphabetical sorting

2.3.4

  • Top-level parents optionally have no URL

2.3.3

  • HTML special chars for the title (noticed some XML errors)
  • Multi-lang plugins supported with apply_filter on post title…

2.3.2

  • Further classes. New link ones, a new parent class, and the return of the current_page class.

2.3.1

  • Added classes back into the
  • HTML elements. Sorry! Forgot to add them back in when changing over the code…

2.3

  • Minor bugfixes
    • list of IDs for which to not make an URL fixed up so that you can put in more than one
    • found some bugs in menu children URL removal
    • IE8 testing – Now works in IE8!!!
  • Completely re-written recursive menu generator. You can have as many levels as you can write CSS for! 😀

2.2.2

  • Can now add a home-page by ticking it in settings
  • List of IDs for which to not make an URL

2.2.1

  • Added a way to make wrapped pages auto-dynamically factored in
  • Fixed some minor bugs

2.2

  • Added a start parent
  • Moved dynamic width to settings only. No real point in forcing it to be stuck in functions.php.

2.1

  • Makes it so that if the width of top elements are wider than a certain amount the bottom level grows with it

2.0

  • Proper dynamic width using CSS
  • Added an admin option to set which class we use when generating dynamic width css, defaults to .menu

1.2

  • Noticed some things weren’t working quite right (e.g. extra

    tags were apearing when no children were present)

    1.1

    • Able to pass certain directives to tell the menu what things to output

    1.0

    • Added third level flyouts

    0.3

    • Fixed some bugs with the code. Sorry, I accidentally left some test code in!

    0.2

    • Added admin page

    • Can now stop certain pages showing… at the moment just doesn’t fetch the pages (some parentless child pages
      are fetched but now shown)

    0.1

    • First build

    Details

    • Version: 4.0.2
    • Active installations: 100
    • WordPress Version: 3.0
    • Tested up to: 3.3.2

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