In the WordPress 3.0 version called the “Menu Update”, there were some nifty things added to the menu options but only a few of us uses them. The reason for this is, because they need to be activated. These options are not shown as default we need to activate. But if we make use of these options we can do a lot of cool stuff to make our blogs, websites more unique.
How to Activate the WordPress Advanced Menu Options
To activate these options, go to your WordPress dashboard then Appearance -> Menus. When you are at the menu options look for a button called, screen options, it should be at the top right of your screen. When you click it the following should appear.
Then you can activate the ones you would like to. After you activated them, when you add a new menu item or you modify one, the options for you should look like the following:
Link Target
The first option is the “Link target” this is pretty self explanatory. Using this option you can change how the links in the menu open. If you tic the check box the if you click on the menu link, it will open in a new tab in your browser.
CSS Classes
Using this option you can add custom CSS classes to each of your menu links. And with that you can stylize each menu link separately. If you know a bit of CSS the possibilities are endless. For example: name our menu item dev and we add the following Style to it:
.dev {
background:#efefef;
}
We should get something like this:
Link Relationship
Link Relationship is used to make relationships between links and websites easier. You can define it as “friend”, “nofollow” or what ever you’d like to. This option is the most useful when we are talking about backlinks. Using this method search engines can understand the relationship between the websites linked to each other via backlinks.
Description
You can add descriptions to any of your menu links using this options. Through not many themes support this. But you can add this option so your theme will display the description of each menu link if it is set by created a walker script then implementing it into your menu registration.
The walker script
Open your theme’s functions.php and add the following code at the bottom:
class My_Walker extends Walker_Nav_Menu
{
function start_el(&$output, $item, $depth, $args) {
global $wp_query;
$indent = ( $depth ) ? str_repeat( "\t", $depth ) : '';
$class_names = $value = '';
$classes = empty( $item->classes ) ? array() : (array) $item->classes;
$class_names = join( ' ', apply_filters( 'nav_menu_css_class', array_filter( $classes ), $item ) );
$class_names = '';
$output .= $indent . '<li id="menu-item-'. $item->ID . '"' . $value . $class_names .'>';
$attributes = ! empty( $item->attr_title ) ? ' title="' . esc_attr( $item->attr_title ) .'"' : '';
$attributes .= ! empty( $item->target ) ? ' target="' . esc_attr( $item->target ) .'"' : '';
$attributes .= ! empty( $item->xfn ) ? ' rel="' . esc_attr( $item->xfn ) .'"' : '';
$attributes .= ! empty( $item->url ) ? ' href="' . esc_attr( $item->url ) .'"' : '';
$item_output = $args->before;
$item_output .= '<a'. $attributes .'>';
$item_output .= $args->link_before . apply_filters( 'the_title', $item->title, $item->ID ) . $args->link_after;
$item_output .= '<span>' . $item->description . '</span>';
$item_output .= '</a>';
$item_output .= $args->after;
$output .= apply_filters( 'walker_nav_menu_start_el', $item_output, $item, $depth, $args );
}
}
?>
Then add your new walker script to your menu. This is NOT in your functions.php, you can find the code below where you menu is displayed.
<?php
$walker = new My_Walker;
wp_nav_menu(array(
'theme_location' => 'primary-menu',
'walker' => $walker
));
?>
Conclusion
As WordPress updates, they add a lot of cool new features for us to use. So why not play attention to them? Many people didn’t know about these options because they are hidden and require ONE click to be shown. The options listed above can make a huge difference in your blog.
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About 
Nice wordpress feature i really like it. Thanks for sharing.
Earlier wordpress was just a blog platform but they really work hard. Now WordPress has really developed and loaded with great features. You can customise in any way you want. It’s really cool feature you shared here. I was not aware of the same but will try to use on my blog.
Prashant recently posted – How to Restore a Bad Superblock in Solaris 10
Yes, I agree. They should not hide them like this.
Andor Nagy recently posted – How to Use WordPress Advanced Menu Options
Great this post is really helpful for the beginners thanks.
I will say this post making my mind to use WordPress platform in Advance way to Make nice posts. Really helpful & easy step by step description of features. Going to share this post to my friends community who are really interested in making Good blog posts.
Narendra Kumar recently posted – How to Create Windows 8 Bootable USB flash Drive from ISO Image
Gret post!
I must say I am just starting to use wordpress and what you say is really helpful …
Thank you and I hope to read you soon!
Daphne
I have two websites that build on WP. I am thankful to you to post this. Such a helpful post.
Great article.
I am using WordPress platform.
This is more useful for me.
Pavan Lipare recently posted – Waterproof Cell Phones
This is quite interesting..I never thought there will be an option which will allow the blogger to specify the relationship of the backlink with the website..Pretty cool stuff.
Joe Hart recently posted – Dental Implants
I’ve been using WP for about 3 years. Thanks for these tips, I want to try them in practice. They look rather trustworthy))) Please wish me good luck
Anna recently posted – 9 Cool Websites of 9 MotoCMS Clients – Can You Do Better?
All the best for your future success, WordPress is best CMS, good choice.
This article is useful for me as i use wordpress. Thanks for sharing this article.
Visit this link:- http://kushagrabajaj1.blogspot.com/
khusi singh recently posted – Kushagra Bajaj
Wow this information so inspiring. Previously i am not aware about this. Thanks for your sharing bro.
Julidarma recently posted – Best Food To Fight Acne Naturally
For my own site, there’s no real advantage as I’m happy to code the menu manually. But if you are writing a theme that other people will use, that makes it much easier for the end user.
Note also, that the vast majority of the 10 million people using WordPress are not web developers, so they are probably much more comfortable using a menu interface compared to manually coding a menu.
Paul D. Mitchell recently posted – Way to reset wordpress admin password if you can not log in
Hi, I code my menus manually as well. But when it comes to theme making this makes a huge difference. Since only 1-5 % of the current themes support these settings.
Also I agree with that most of the users of WordPress are not developers. But there might be some who are interested in editing their theme a bit.
Andor Nagy recently posted – Guest Blogging: The Right and Wrong Way to Guest Blog
Many features that WP provide.
This ease of acces makes webmaster set their website option simply.
I think I should try this good tips.
Thank you.
Artikel Kimia recently posted – Tata Nama Keton
Hi. Thanks for the article. This is definitely very helpful. I’m wondering how — if at all — these instructions would differ for buddypress. I’ve created a custom menu in my WordPress theme, but it’s only showing up on the front page of my site. How can I get it to show up on every page of my site? Will this need to be done in header.php, functions.php and in buddypress_navigation.php? Anybody know?
Binh Le recently posted – The Free Traffic Boom Review
Hi,
Your menu should be called in the header.php, since it’s called on every page. And not sure about the buddypress_navigation.php. I think this only appears on pages that uses the BodyPress templates.
Best Regards,
Andor Nagy
Andor Nagy recently posted – Guest Blogging: The Right and Wrong Way to Guest Blog
it is a great tip, and it is very useful to me and i learned more from it,
keep sharing.
Thanks a lot for the info. I just recently shifted to wordpress and found it really hard to cope up. But your explanation is very clear, it surely has made difference to my site.
Regards
Rushikesh
Rushikesh recently posted – Safari Download Manager for iOS 6
Creating menus in normal site is a difficult task. Helpful feature for those who are not expert in coding.
Bretcutts recently posted – Top Japanese Songs – Best Songs List
WordPress Custom Menus is a great addition to WordPress that now we can easily create custom navigations and also menus for sidebar and footer. Andor Nagy you wrote a superb article and completely explain the whole scenario of custom menus. Thanks
Anjum Hashir recently posted – Update AT&T LG Nitro HD P930 To Android 4.2.2 AOKP Build 6 ROM
Thank You for this great tutorial….let me test this on my WordPress site. You have written a fully explained post.
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