WordPress Menubar Plugin

Posted May 21, 2007

In an older post (WordPress navigation bar howto) I tried to explain how to build a simple horizontal menu in WordPress. While that little tutorial is reasonably easy to follow, it requires modifications to the theme you are using, and this way the menu becomes part of the theme. If you switch themes, you have to start all over again and rebuild your menus.

So I started writing this plugin. Since a plugin can be activated independently of themes, using a plugin you can change themes without losing your work on the menus. And now, after many trials and errors, the WordPress Menubar Plugin is ready. It builds one or more menus for you and has additional features like dynamic highlighting (the currently selected menu entry is highlighted).

I hope you like this plugin (Download). If you have suggestions for improvements, if you need some help, or if something is not working for you as expected, you can drop me a comment (please be patient if I can’t answer immediately).

Happy menus, with the WordPress Menubar Plugin!

149 Comments so far

3stripe on June 23rd, 2007

Great wee plugin, thank you!

One question, how can I configure the links to be the same as my permalink setup?

Cheers.
andrea on June 23rd, 2007

Hello 3stripe,
[edit: it's the default with Menubar version 2.1, thanks to Karsten for his contribution!].
angela on June 26th, 2007

hello
why doesn’t mine work?
andrea on June 26th, 2007

Hello Angela,
did you remember to add the required line of code at the end of header.php? You can find the line of code in the post above, and the file header.php in the wp-content/themes/default folder of your WordPress installation.

Please let me know!
Victor on July 5th, 2007

Hi, I have the same problem… the menubar doesn’t appear though I followed the instructions (which i hope i did afer a number of retries).

What could be the possible mess i did? Thanks…
andrea on July 5th, 2007

Hello Victor,
as you have already discovered, you have to add at least one menu item to the menubar in order to see it.
You can add items via the “Manage Menubar” administration panel.
Karsten on July 10th, 2007

Thanks for the plugin. I’ve done some work writing a version which uses permalinks instead of the id based links. Also, I’ve customized the admin menu in order to localize the entry name. I provide a modified Italian and the first version of a German translation. If you wish, feel free to add anything of it to your distribution.

Please see my above website for the links (in German). I had them in my comment originally, but your server abandoned my posting in fear of spam (three links) and I had to type over again.
Chris on July 10th, 2007

Hello Andrea,
I am wondering how I can get the menubar placed below my header. It seems to default above my header and stretch across the page. I changed the size from 100% to 960 but that didn’t help. Sorry if I sound clueless.

Thanks, Chris
andrea on July 10th, 2007

Hello Karsten,
thank you for your contribution! [edit: It's now included in version 2.1].
Thanks again, and sorry for the anti-spam problem.
andrea on July 10th, 2007

Hello Chris,
I am not familiar with the BlueCrunch theme you are using, but I have downloaded it and I’ll get back to you as soon as I have an answer. Thank you for your patience!
Chris on July 11th, 2007

Your’re awesome Andrea!
andrea on July 11th, 2007

Hello Chris,
since you are currently using the BlueCrunch theme, in order to place the menubar below your header you have to:

* open the index.php file in the wp-content/themes/bluecrunch folder,
* insert the do_action line (as mentioned in the instructions) right before the line

<div id=”content”>

(or right after that line, if you prefer a shorter menubar).

The same with archive.php, page.php, single.php, search.php and 404.php, so a total of six files have to be modified.
The good news is that you don’t have to undo these changes even if you decide to remove the menubar: just deactivate the plugin and the menubar is gone.

Hope this helps, and thank you for your interest in WP Menubar!
vanBetty on July 11th, 2007

Thank you bigtime for this plugin! Greetings!
Karsten on July 23rd, 2007

Hello Andrea,

as you’re now finalizing version two, one think I forgot to mention about 1.1:

The administration interface has all these wonderful link types (page, external, etc), but they are only translated in the lower part for editing a single record, the table above has the (English) keys. In the German version I tryed to mend this by giving the original keys as in the table with properly localized explanations.

Please consider either running the table entries through translation as well or not translating them at all.

Grazie, tanti saluti, Karsten
andrea on July 23rd, 2007

Hello Karsten,
thank you for your comment! Right now I am testing a version 2.0 in order to release it in July, afterwards I’ll try to improve it and I’ll surely adopt one of your suggestions. Grazie ancora!
Emz on July 24th, 2007

I’m currently using Menubar – and really like it! You’ve done an excellent job with this plugin!

My only gripe with it is it shows the links as page id’s, and as said in the first comment, it would be great if it showed links the same as my permalink structure currently established.

If you could work this in the (very near) future – I would be deeply thankful (and ultimately amazed!).
andrea on July 24th, 2007

Hello Emz,
this feature has been implemented and made available by Karsten (see comment 7), and I plan to merge it in version 2.x very soon.
Thanks for your interest in this plugin!
Emz on July 25th, 2007

Karsten has only done it in Italian and German though, right?

Neither of which I can speak or read!
andrea on July 25th, 2007

Don’t worry Emz,
you’ll get this feature soon, it’s the first on my list! I’ll keep you informed.
Emz on July 26th, 2007

Thanks!

I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited, or had such a smooth running plugin before – so please excuse my, well, almost desperation!

I shall sit contently for now

Thanks Andrea!

[edit: version 2.1 is ready, I hope you like it! -- Andrea]
Daniel on August 1st, 2007

Is there a way to make links that are set as external open up in a blank window or even better a pop up? I don’t want viewers being taken away from my site. Thanks
andrea on August 1st, 2007

Hello Daniel,
yes, you have to edit the wpm.php file inside the wp-content/plugins/menubar folder, find the lines:

elseif ($item->type == ‘External’) :
$output .= ‘<a’.$class.’ href=”‘.$item->selection.

and add the text marked in bold:

elseif ($item->type == ‘External’) :
$output .= ‘<a’.$class.’ target=”_blank” href=”‘.$item->selection.
Toby on August 6th, 2007

Hey Andrea

Thanks a million for the great plugin…

How would I make the menu align in the centre of the page?

ta.toby (wordpress novice)
andrea on August 7th, 2007

Hello Toby,
open with your text editor the file wpm.css in the folder of your menu template (if you are using the ‘red’ template, the folder is wp-content/plugins/menubar/red) and after the first line:

.wpm_red {

add the following line:

text-align: center;

That’s all! Have fun with WordPress!
Barbi on August 21st, 2007

Hello Andrea,
I’m having two problems one is that it’s showing that the menu bar is deactivated but its working and when it says its active its not working. What should I do? Also I tried to follow the instructions for the blue crunch theme, i have purple crunch, but the menu bar is still above the header. Please Help
andrea on August 21st, 2007

Hello Barbi,
the do_action line I mentioned in the BlueCrunch comment was incomplete (it’s fixed now), and that explains your second problem (sorry). Please try inserting the complete do_action line, including your menu name.
The first problem could be a browser cache problem, if so it should disappear by itself in a short time.
Keep me informed!
Barbi on August 23rd, 2007

Thanks so much for your help!
Jason on August 31st, 2007

Hi…

I am having trouble adding multiple menu items which I want them to be sitting in one line just like the one on this mage…
samplemenu1 | samplemenu2

But my try puts them into separate lines
samplemenu1
samplemenu2

I am currently calling do_action (‘wp_menubar’, ’samplemenu1′); do_action (‘wp_menubar’, ’samplemenu2′); to add them to the header.php file and it is creating two DIV layers…

[div class="wpm_clear"] [!-- WordPress Menubar 2.0 --]
[a href="http://localhost/dev/WordPress/?cat=1" title="" ]Test1[/a]
[/div]
[div class="wpm_clear"] [!-- WordPress Menubar 2.0 --]
[a href="http://localhost/dev/WordPress/?cat=3" title="" ]Test2[/a]
[/div]

Any way to make it work correctly???

Appreciate your help…
andrea on August 31st, 2007

Hi Jason,
probably the best solution is to put all your menu items in the same menu, say samplemenu1. Please let me know if this works for you!
Jason on September 1st, 2007

Ah… I NOW get it… Thank you…

Jason
Toby on September 12th, 2007

Hi Andrea

Is there a way to make the Menubar “external” funnction open in a new window? I’m thinking forum here…

thanks, toby
andrea on September 12th, 2007

Hello Toby,
open the file wpm.php in the wp-content/plugins/menubar folder and find the lines:

elseif ($item->type == ‘External’) :
$output .= ‘<a’.$class.’ href=”‘.$item->selection.

then add the text marked in bold:

elseif ($item->type == ‘External’) :
$output .= ‘<a’.$class.’ target=”_blank” href=”‘.$item->selection.
Cocky on September 21st, 2007

Ciao Andrea!
I appreciated a lot your plugin, as you can see on my site. As I needed to open some links in the same window and other in a new one I made a little mod to your code. Even if it’s a simple mod I publish it so if you want you can study and even implement in future versions.

In wpm.php, plus or minus line 38 I add the following few lines:

elseif ($item->type == ‘External2′) :
$output .= ‘selection.’” title=”‘.$item->comment.’” target=”_blank”>’.$item->name.’‘.”\n”;

then I modify directly in database the items I wanted to open in a blank target (I know that modify the admin pages was even simple but I didn’t want to make too mess ) writing “External2″ under the type, and the trick is done.
I don’t need to make it by now but I think it would be even simple putting a variable instead of “_blank” and add a voice in the admin section to decide the target of every link, and so on, and so on….
Grazie mille per il tuo lavoro!
Ciao, Co
andrea on September 21st, 2007

Hello Cocky,
nice idea, I’ll try to put this feature into the next release of WP Menubar.
Grazie, ciao!
Steve on October 8th, 2007

Great plugin and integration, thank you!

I am currently having an issue getting the style to apply correctly. After adding the correct code to the Header of my wordpress, the text and links appear correctly in the right location. However, the styles are not being applied correctly. Instead of the Menubar style, wordpress has retained my theme CSS style.

My suspicion is this is caused because my weblog is a sub-directory of the main URL. In other words, I installed wordpress into the directory ‘/tsw/’ instead of the main public_html directory. Would this create problems with the php in terms of referencing the css file in the correct location? I have had issues with Gallery2 integration because of this issue as well. Perhaps I could simply edit the php to redirect the css location correctly? The other solution would just be applying the css directly to my wordpress css file.

Thoughts? Thanks!
andrea on October 10th, 2007

Hi Steve,
looks like you are using a modified default theme – please make sure that your file header.php still contains the line:

<?php wp_head(); ?>

right before the line:

</head>

If not, please add it and the menu stylesheet will be applied correctly!
Steve on October 11th, 2007

Hmm, yes that did the trick as that line had been omitted from my header.php. I need to adjust my CSS and php files to correctly link my header image to the top of the header. Thanks for the assist, I should be able to figure it out from here. Great plugin, thanks again!
manual on October 11th, 2007

Hello,

I’m using the theme SummerFruit and my Wordpress version is 2.1. I believe i have done everything but what i see is only the Home menu in the menu bar which was by default there. Am I missing something ?
andrea on October 11th, 2007

Hello Manual,
I have downloaded the theme you are using, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I have an answer. Thank you for your patience!

Update: the answer to your question is here:
http://www.dontdream.it/en/wp-menubar-and-summerfruit/
Hope it helps!
Michael on October 21st, 2007

I’ve activate the plugin and I get this error message:

WordPress database error: [Table 'wordpress.wp_menubar' doesn't exist]
SELECT DISTINCT selection FROM `wp_menubar` WHERE type = ‘Menu’;

How can I fix the problem?
andrea on October 21st, 2007

Hello Michael,
you can try the Reset Menubar command in the Manage – Menubar administration panel. This command rebuilds the database table. Please let me know if it works!
Michael on October 21st, 2007

Hello Andrea,

Thanks for your support. Unfortunatly I can’t access the Menubar administration panel. If I activate the plugin a white page appears with the following error »message« in the address bar of my browser:

http://localhost:1234/blog/wp-admin/plugins.php?error=true&plugin=menubar%2Fwpm-main.php&_error_nonce=a41dd5be8b
tom on October 22nd, 2007

Hi, this is a great plugin except of one thing I could not manage:

I just wanna have an external link playing an internal role – in this case I wanna take the url from my zenpress-gallery and add it to my navigation bar. And of course it should be selected then. But it doesn’t.

I tried something to change the attributes of following code in wpm.php:

case ‘External’:
$url = $item->selection;
break;

But I’m no programmer and so I just got errors or the link was always active. Maybe there is a nice solution?
tom on October 22nd, 2007

another thing I discovered:

So I’m using your script for my main-nav. But when I’m going into the blog-section, selecting eg a category or archive in my sidenav, the selection of the main-nav disappears.
tom on October 22nd, 2007

ok, I just copied the function-attributes of ‘category’ and ’single’ to “home” and it worked!

anyway I couldn’t get a clue about the external-link-thing ..
andrea on October 23rd, 2007

Hello Tom,
I’m glad to see that you managed to solve your second problem. Regarding the first problem, I think the script has no way to tell when a certain external URL has been selected, but I have to study the zenpress case, and I’ll be back to you as soon as I find an answer!
JP on November 19th, 2007

Hello,

I’ve been looking for such a plugin for a while ! I’m integrating it in my theme for the moment. Is it possible to have a kind of drill down vertical menu with this plugin ? Has anyone made a css for that need ?

Thanks a lot !
JP
andrea on November 20th, 2007

Hello JP,
I’m currently working on such a menu, I hope it will be ready before Christmas. Thank you for your interest in WP Menubar!
JP on November 23rd, 2007

Thanks, I’m looking forward to it !
Mattz on January 8th, 2008

Hi,

This is a very good and solid plugin I must say, thanks !

Will there be a future-feature that we can select pages or categories when we want an internal link ?

Two order buttons would be nice too, so that order of the menu can be simple “clicked”.

Like here:

http://imthi.com/blog/programming/menu-manager-for-wordpress-by-flip-media-dubai.php

Keep up the great work !

Thanks a lot.
andrea on January 8th, 2008

Hello Mattz,

you can already select pages or categories, by ID, and yes, I’m planning to add a selection by name.
I also like your second suggestion, but I have to study it a bit.

Thank you for your interest, your suggestions, and for pointing me to another nice menu plugin!
Mattz on January 8th, 2008

Hi Andrea,

Nice to hear, I look forward to it.

I think my “order suggestion” is not very difficult, it’s done by a simple query that you can see in the plugin I pointed to you.

Thanks !
Mattz on January 21st, 2008

Hi Andrea,

Maybe I got you wrong, but I’m not able to select pages or categories by ID, I have to enter the ID’s always manually.

Did you mean that by “selecting” ?
andrea on January 21st, 2008

Hi Mattz,
yes, I meant enter manually the ID. A true selection by name is coming with the next WP Menubar release.
Mattz on January 21st, 2008

Hi Andrea,

I’m really waiting for it, hope to see it soon.

Let’s hope you have some time… it’s really a great plugin !

Thanks again.
Philip Churchill on January 22nd, 2008

Hey Andrea,
Trying to use your plugin on my site http://mswhs.com and all is fine apart that the background behind the menu labels does not reach to the sides of the site. Can you help?
Philip Churchill on January 22nd, 2008

Sorry gave you the wrong link to my test site it is http://67.228.102.93/ and NOT http://mswhs.com
andrea on January 22nd, 2008

Hello Philip,
I don’t see any problem in your site, probably you did the right thing changing the margin property in the wpm.css file. Thank you for reporting the problem, I’ll try to write a guideline to CSS customization for WP Menubar templates!
Hamdani on January 25th, 2008

I have added the code but seem to be not working with my theme ( I am using, Almost Spring Theme). I attached below my header code:

(… code removed, doesn’t display correctly …)
andrea on January 26th, 2008

Hello Hamdani,

could you please activate the plugin in your site, so I can take a look? Otherwise I can’t tell what is possibly wrong, thanks!
Andy on February 2nd, 2008

Hi and thank you for making this great plugin available to us. I have (sort of) got it working on our new community site but have disabled it until I figure out how to correct the problem I have.

I’m using the ‘1 Blog’ theme V1.2.1 (http://1blogtheme.com/features-and-download) that has 2 right sidebars and if I place the code at the end of the header.php file the menu appears at the top of the left panel page content rather than below the header as a bar along the whole page width. The effect is that the menu looks like a ‘page content’ menu rather than a site menu. Do you have any idea where I could place the code? I’ve tried a few places to no avail, but honestly, I’m not php-savvy at all!

Many thanks again, Andy
andrea on February 2nd, 2008

Hello Andy,
go to the end of header.php and move up two lines, between the line that begins with “include” and the one that begins with “echo”. Now insert the line:

do_action("wp_menubar","menu-name");

without the <?php and the ?> parts.
Please let me know if that works for you!
ZuZi on February 4th, 2008

Hello andrea!
I just used your wordpress menu bar plugin ver.2, and do as your instruction, but it is not appear the menu, I use the bloggingpro theme, could use mind to check for me.
You are so kind!
andrea on February 6th, 2008

Hello ZuZi,
the BloggingPro theme doesn’t call the wp_head function, so you should insert the line:
<?php wp_head(); ?>
in your header.php file, right before the </head> line.
Then you can insert the line:
<?php do_action(“wp_menubar”,”your-menu-name”); ?>
at the end of your header.php file, or one or two lines before the end, just try and see how you like it best.
Let me know if this helps!
Mattz on February 6th, 2008

Andrea,

Do you need some help on the new version or are you already making progres.

Please let us know.
andrea on February 7th, 2008

Hi Mattz,
I’d appreciate some help with beta testing, and possibly with translations in more languages (currently only English and Italian are available).
The beta version is almost ready, I’ll keep you informed!
Mattz on February 8th, 2008

OK great ! We can test if you want
Jarred on February 26th, 2008

First off, great plugin!

Now, my issue…My menu works fine for Firefox, but not for Internet Explorer…

When I mouse off of the menu item, the sub menu does not disappear in Internet Explorer. I personally do not use Internet Explorer, but many of my users will.

I am using the Suckerfish template.

Please, Help!
andrea on February 26th, 2008

Hi Jarred,
probably the JavaScript of the Suckerfish template conflicts with another plugin you are using. Could you please deactivate all plugins, then activate them one at a time to determine the conflicting plugin?
Please let me know!
Jarred on February 26th, 2008

Hi Andrea,

I’m not sure if it is because of the latest version of IE or what, but in the stylesheet i added

display:none;

to the left:-999em declaration.

and it worked fine. So I’m not sure if its a problem (enhancement) of the latest version of Internet Exploder or not, but this did work for me.
andrea on February 26th, 2008

Hi Jarred,
I’m glad you solved that IE problem. Thank you for posting your solution!
rayeniguard on March 5th, 2008

Thanks for the menubar plugin. It saved me, a non-programmer, a lot of time.
Herman on March 14th, 2008

Thanks for the great plugin..your menu plugin is the only one I found on Google.

I have a couple of questions:

How do I remove the shadow under the menu on http://www.articlerewards.com/ ? I tried removing then changing the shadow.png image but I’d prefer not to see the shadow.

What CSS code do I edit to get a hover effect with a different color to blue as shown in the menu on this page.

Thanks
andrea on March 14th, 2008

Hello Herman,

to remove the shadow, find the #wpmnavclear rule in wpm.css and delete the line

height:6px;

In the same rule, you could also remove the border, or modify the margin (10px -> 0px) to extend the border to full width.

To change the hover color, find the rule

#wpmnav li:hover,
#wpmnav li.wpmhover {
background: #1C86EE;
}

and change the background color code.
Hope it helps!

Note to readers: Herman is using Menubar 3 beta, Menubar 2.2 is a little different.
Jaime on April 8th, 2008

Hi Andrea:
How can i made to have horizontal or vertical layout?
Tnks!
andrea on April 8th, 2008

Hi Jaime,
I am working to a vertical layout, but it’s not ready yet, so only horizontal layouts are currently available. I’ll let you know when a vertical template is ready!
Ellen on April 16th, 2008

Hi Andrea,

seems like my wordpress installation does not save the menus and menu items (when I add a menu, it does not appear in the drop down). Any idea what went wrong? Permlinks also don’t work, though I made .htaccess writable. Maybe that’s due to the same problem?

I’m using version 2.2 on wordpress 2.5.

Thanks and keep on with the good work,
Ellen
andrea on April 16th, 2008

Hi Ellen,
I’m sorry, Menubar 2.2 doesn’t work well with WP 2.5, I’m going to release 2.3 in a few days.

If you are brave enough you could try Menubar 3.0 beta, but please be advised that version 3.0 is still under test.

Regarding the permalink problem, I think that’s unrelated to Menubar. Thank you for your report!
Ellen on April 18th, 2008

Now it works, great!

Thanks a lot, Andrea. It looks great and is easy to use
Tom on April 22nd, 2008

I’m really reliefed about your plugin .. it’s all I need for horizontal menus

The only problem I have now is, that the mainmenu “news” (the blog-section) is not highlighted as “active” (current) at single posts, archives and so on.

I’m using WP 2.5 und your version 3.04 beta
andrea on May 1st, 2008

Hello Tom,
sorry I didn’t notice your comment earlier. I’m looking into your request, to add it into a future release. I’ll let you know!
Lewis on May 7th, 2008

Thanks for the plugin! It was nice to find just what I was looking for so quickly.

I’m using 3.05 beta. I’m not sure if you’re planning to implement something like drag and drop capability for changing the order of the menu items, but if you did it would be sweet. Even a less fancy method for changing their order without having to delete and re-add items would be super helpful. I do see an Order column, so perhaps you are working on just such a thing.
andrea on May 7th, 2008

Hello Lewis,
actually in the Order column you should see two arrows (up and down) and clicking one of those arrows you should be able to move the selected menu item up or down in the list.
Perhaps something is preventing the display of the arrow images? Please let me know!
Lewis on May 9th, 2008

Hi Andrea,

In Firefox 2.0.0.14 I see no arrows, unfortunately. In Safari 3.1.1 I see question mark icons instead of arrows, but they are functional.

I forgot to mention that I’m using WP 2.5.1.
Erica on May 12th, 2008

I love your plugin! Thank you for creating it for us WP users

I have ran into a bit of an error however. I am trying to find out how to have it link to a category and not the category archive like it currently does.

I am trying to get one link in the menu to point to one blog category and another link to point to another, but nothing is working. And “blog” doen’t even show up on the menu bar unless I include a “news” link on the menu.

Any help would be greatly appreciated
Erica on May 12th, 2008

Oh, I forgot to add that I am using the 3.0 menubar version with 2.5.1 wordpress
andrea on May 16th, 2008

Lewis,
could you please check whether your folder wp-content/plugins/menubar contains the two arrow images up.gif and down.gif?
andrea on May 16th, 2008

Hi Erica,
a link to your blog would be helpful to better understand your problem.
Please let me know!
Dana on May 20th, 2008

Hi, and thanks for this wonderful plug-in. I look forward to the upcoming addition of vertical menus. Can you please tell me, now that I have created a menu with your plug-in that acts that way I want it to, how do I get rid of the existing vertical list of pages on the sidebar without deleting or deactivating the pages themselves? I imagine there must be a line of code somewhere that I remove in order to have them cease displaying. The template I am using is called jewelbox1. Thank you for any help you can provide. What a wonderful gift to the world!
Dana on May 20th, 2008

Well, I figured out that deactivating the Pages plugin does not deactivate the pages themselves, only their display on the toolbar. So nevermind, and thanks again for all the great info here.
andrea on May 20th, 2008

Hi Dana,
thank you for your kind words! A vertical menu template, suitable for a left or right sidebar, is almost ready, and I’ll let you know when it’s available.
Howard on May 21st, 2008

Hi
Updated Tarski and also your latest release both today
Have been dropping that line of code all around to no avail

Hope you can look at Tarski at some point?

Your my only hope Obiwankanobi
andrea on May 21st, 2008

Hi Howard,
looks like you are using in your line of code the name of a menu you haven’t created yet.

You should first create your menu (let’s call it mymenu), and then place the line

<?php do_action(‘wp_menubar’,’mymenu‘); ?>

in your theme.

Let me know if this fixes your problem, and … may the Force be with you!
Howard on May 22nd, 2008

…a Jedi feels the force flow….

fixed!
with my title recreated and a re- upload to the menu bar-folder, menu-bar bliss!

thank you Obiwan
[I 'feel' the good in you]
andrea on May 22nd, 2008

Hi Howard,
that’s great, now I can see Menubar working on your site!
Don’t underestimate the Force …
Arielle on June 3rd, 2008

Hi Andrea.

I love your plug in but am having a problem. All of my menu items appear on the home page but when I select one of them, the some of the items disappear. I’m hosting this locally until it’s ready to launch but was hoping you could maybe help anyway… PLEASE!?!
andrea on June 3rd, 2008

Hi Arielle,

if you deactivate all plugins, except Menubar, and switch back to the default theme, does the problem stay the same? Please let me know!
jordan on June 7th, 2008

how did you do the dropdown menu in the menubar item MENUBAR on this page??? Is that a category tree or something?
andrea on June 7th, 2008

Hi Jordan,

with Menubar 3, when you add a new menu item you can specify, in the Parent field, whether the new menu item will be a top level item (selecting Top Level) or a sub-item of an existing one (selecting the item name from the list).

This way you can build any hierarchical menu, mixing posts, pages, categories. In the instance you noted, WP Menubar is a category, parent of WP Menubar 3.0 beta, WP Menubar 2.3 (two posts) and Download (a page); WP Menubar 2.3 , in turn, is parent of three more posts.
frank on June 15th, 2008

the menubar looks great in safari, but in firefox, only half of the titles appear. do you know how to fix this? thanks
andrea on June 16th, 2008

Hello Frank,
I’m not aware of this problem, could you please point me to a page displaying the bug, so I can investigate? Thank you for your cooperation!
frank on June 17th, 2008

fsmuscara.org
it works fine in firefox 3 beta, but not earlier versions.
thanks for looking into this.
andrea on June 20th, 2008

Hi Frank,

I have found the fix to your problem, and I’ll add this fix to the next plugin release.

In the meantime, you can open wpm3.css in the wp-content/plugins/menubar/Suckerfish folder, find the first CSS rule

#wpmnav {
margin: 10px 10px 0 10px;
…
}

and add this line

#wpmnav {
margin: 10px 10px 0 10px;
…
text-align: left;
}

By the way, you could also play with the first line (margin: …) in order to adjust the width of your menubar. Thank you for reporting this problem!
Georges on June 27th, 2008

Hi Andrea,

Once more thanks for plugin and templates, and for your programming style ! Good code for breakfast reading…

I’m using 3.05 beta and i’m wondering wether LC1 template works with that version ?

In fact, I uploaded the LC1 folder (wich contains wpm.xxx while Suckerfish contains wpm3.xxx) under the menubar folder but LC1 doesn’t appear in Edit Menu Template List.

As said earlier, active menu item is not highlighted. Is it easy to fix ? If so could you give an hint please ?

Thanks
andrea on June 27th, 2008

Hi Georges,

unfortunately templates for Menubar version 2 and version 3 are not compatible – sorry!

I noticed you are using a page as your main page (as opposed to the usual blog home page), so you should use the ‘FrontPage’ menu type instead of the usual ‘Home’ menu type. That should fix the highlighting problem, please let me know if it works!
cybervirem on June 29th, 2008

Hi Andrea,

In fact I use FrontPage type (I use wp mainly to structure a web site, with a blog).

Then i tried to find out what could be wrong.

I first modified active bgcolor to black in wpm3.css
-> nothing changed…

So I took a look at wpm3.php (under Suckerfish) :
you get an item with readnode then you test the value of item->cssclass…

I then looked at the sql table… The cssclass attribute is always empty…

So, if i understand, $item->cssclass is always set to “” and then $selected is always set to “active” (from wpm3.php:149)

In fact, if i land to the site by its url, everything is active
If I click first level menu item, everything is active (I mean visible first level items)
If I click one submenu item nothing is active…

After several tests, i think that something somewhere went wrong… with javascript… — for example, I can’t manage to change colors from the wpm3.css file.

Same result with firefox and konqueror…

Any hint ?

Thank you Andrea
cybervirem on June 29th, 2008

cybervirem==Georges
just to avoid pollution by posting directly
Georges-- on June 30th, 2008

Hi Andrea,
This morning, when i connected, all color changes were ok… So opening a window and reload from the same window is different… This is clearly my nav tool…
Active item still doesn’t appear so… I will wait for tomorow morning…
andrea on July 5th, 2008

Hi Georges,

sorry for this late answer, I’ve been without Internet access for a few days. Your analysis of wpm3.php is correct, $selected is normally set to “active”, then we examine $item->type and set

$class = $selected;

only if certain conditions are met. This logic works in simple cases, but not always, so I’m trying to find something better, hopefully for a future release. Thanks for your feedback!
phillip on July 8th, 2008

Hello, Im trying to make the menu bar extend to the end of my page. Right now, it stops in the middle of page. Ive seen previous post of how to do it in menubar 3.0, but how do it for menubar 2.3? thanks
Lisa on July 10th, 2008

Hi
I have downloaded it, unzipped it, uploaded it, put it in the right place and activated it but I don’t get any new menubar panel opening up below the activated plug in.
What did I miss?
andrea on July 10th, 2008

Hi Lisa,

you did everything right, the new Menubar panel is under the ‘Manage’ tab in your WordPress administration (not under the ‘Plugins’ tab).

Hope you’ll like Menubar!
Lisa on July 10th, 2008

got it!
you are a clever bunny, it’s fab, thank you!
davide taibi on August 27th, 2008

Interesting plugin but… why do not change the theme path in order to allow to insert the wpm.css file in the current stylesheet directory?

It would be really useful for theme designer.
andrea on August 27th, 2008

Hi Davide,
nice idea .. I’ll try to add this in the next plugin release. Thank you for your interest in Menubar!
mark on October 9th, 2008

Hi can you create a drop down menu from a direct link?
or can you create one from a static link that doesn’t link, then goes into a drop down where each item can link off to separate url?

thanks
mark
andrea on October 9th, 2008

Hi Mark,
the answer is yes to both questions. When you add a new menu item, you can specify its parent item without limitations.
mark on October 14th, 2008

i worked that out,sorry really stupid of me,thanks for replying.how would i center the menu bar?

thanks
andrea on October 15th, 2008

Hello Mark,
the simplest way is to adjust it manually in wp-content/plugins/menubar/Suckerfish/wpm3.css setting the second and fourth #wpmnav margin values, e.g.

#wpmnav {
…
margin: 10px 50px 0 50px;
…
}

If you need to split the menu in two rows, you could build two different menus instead, one for the first and one for the second row.
Adnan Fakir on October 23rd, 2008

Hello Andrea,

I am trying to set up the menubar at the site mentioned (www.findingbangladesh.com) and I make the necessary changes in the header.php file but the menu does not appear. =(

I am using the Chaoticsoul theme (v1.3) and maybe the code has to be placed somewhere else? Could you please look into this. Thank you so much! =D

Sincerely,
Adnan
andrea on October 23rd, 2008

Hello Adnan,
if I add the do_action() line at the end of the header.php file of the ChaoticSoul 1.3 theme, it does work fine for me.
Could you please activate the plugin in your site, so I can look at the problem? It doesn’t seem to be activated right now.
david on November 12th, 2008

I have added the menu bar to a black buttons template and selected “clear” as the menu style. No matter what I do I cannot change the text buttons from times font or the colours from blue with red rollover. I have changed the clear style sheet and uploaded and nothing happens ..please please help thanks David
andrea on November 12th, 2008

Hi David,
I see you found the way to change the style, probably there was an initial cache problem to delay the effect of your changes.

To other interested readers: if you modify the stylesheet of a menu template (that is the .css file inside a menu template folder) and nothing changes, just clear your browser’s cache and try again. That could solve the problem!
richard on November 18th, 2008

Firstly , thank you very very much for this plugin. i am an idiot but i have managed to get the menu up at least.

The trouble is i cannot alter the text size or the positioning even after a refresh of the browser. I am updating the clear css file.

I would say that without doing any changes i did not have the red colour for selected or hover from the start.

would my overall css theme be overriding anything that i amend.

hope you can help , cheers
richard on November 18th, 2008

aaaaah , ok ……Your theme must include a call to the wp_head() function

what kind of syntax do i need to add this piece of code, cut and paste doesnt seem to work.
richard on November 18th, 2008

ok , worked it out , thx
andrea on November 18th, 2008

Hello Richard,
I’m glad you have already solved your problem, thanks for using WP Menubar!
Craig S. Kiessling on December 4th, 2008

Hi there.

I am using 2.3, and the site is http://www.pathsatlanta.org.

I’ve used this plug in to create a vertical dropdown menu. Thus far, everything is working fine in Firefox & Chrome, however in IE I am having issues.

When you mouseover items, I want them to obviously cover the underlying content. I use a transparent background on the main ul/li and when a dropdown happens, I changed it to white color.

It works in Firefox, but in IE, it is still transparent and the text is jumbly-wumbly.

If you (or anyone reading this) has any suggestions, please let me know.
andrea on December 5th, 2008

Hello Craig,
I noticed you are now using Menubar 3.0 beta 7, and are customizing the sf-vertical CSS file; I think that’s the right path to follow. If you still need some help, please let me know!
Craig S. Kiessling on December 5th, 2008

Hi Andrea,

Yes, you are correct – that’s exactly what I am doing. I still need help unfortunately, as it’s still not working properly in IE
Tony on December 6th, 2008

I have a series of Wordpress-based pages, http://techinhiding.com/ It’s currently on 3.0beta 7. Do you know if there is any way to have a common menubar referenced to the same menu list instead of having to set it up for each separate install?
I really like the menubar, it really helps my navigation through my site. Thanks for your great work!
andrea on December 6th, 2008

Hello Tony,
if your WordPress installs are on the same database, with different prefixes, then you can force Menubar to always use the same database table without a prefix.

You need to go through three files, wpm-admin.php, wpm-main.php and wpm-tree.php, and replace each line like:

$table_name = $wpdb->prefix . $wpm_options->table_name;

with:

$table_name = $wpm_options->table_name;

Please let me know if that works for you!
Craig S. Kiessling on December 6th, 2008

Andrea, Do you think you can help me with this or no? I can’t see the problem in the css at all.
andrea on December 6th, 2008

Hello Craig,
I’ve not found the source of the problem yet. I’m going to do some more testing on Sunday, I’ll let you know the outcome!
Update:
unfortunately I’ve not been able to find and fix the Menubar problem with the Blue Mini Theme I think you are using. I am keeping this in my to-do list, and I’ll keep you informed!
Tony on December 7th, 2008

Andrea, Thanks for your reply.
My databases are labeled like this: tcardone_wrdp10 for one blog and tcardone_wrdp11 for another. So they aren’t on the same database, but on the same server.
andrea on December 7th, 2008

Hi Tony,
with your current settings it’s not possible to share a Menubar, but you could manually copy the Menubar table from the first database to the second.

Should you prefer to actually share a single Menubar, you’ll need to install both blogs on the same database (changing $table_prefix in wp-config.php for the second blog) and then apply the changes detailed in the previous comment.
Alexandra Scherbich on December 16th, 2008

Hi Andrea,

Thank you for the plug in. It is very useful and intuitive. Could you please help me resolve one issue. Is it possible to exclude certain categories from automatically displaying the title tags? I understand that the title tags are derived by the description field in the categories. Keep up the good work.
Alexandra
andrea on December 16th, 2008

Hi Alexandra,

currently it’s not possible, but I can suggest a workaround.

You could use Menubar version 3.0 beta 7 instead of version 2.3, use the Category menu type and build your menu tree manually (adding the main category menu item first and then the sub-category menu items one at a time). This way you can have full control over the menu title tags.
Mimi on January 27th, 2009

FEATURE REQUEST:

Could you please add a way to create self-explanatory or “speaking” menus?

For example: “About – a few words about who we are”
you can see more examples in this article http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/26/navigation-menus-trends-and-examples/

Maybe you could add an extra field in admin for the extra line of content that details the section. And that could be styled separately (most certainly smaller font).

thank you very much for a lovely plugin!
Keep up the good work!
andrea on January 29th, 2009

Hello Mimi,

thank you for your suggestion, the “speaking menu” feature is very interesting and I’ll try to implement it.

The current version does allow something similar: if you insert title=”whatever you like” in the Attributes field of a menu item configuration, you’ll get a tooltip saying whatever you like when your mouse hovers over the menu item. Maybe that helps?
mimi on January 31st, 2009

aah, good to know that “title=” attrib. is taken care of. ty

also, could you please add a “subscribe to comments” plugin to this blog? so it would be easier for us to keep track of the discussions?

anyway, your menubar plugin is a must for any serious site based on wordpress. ty for your efforts. keep it up, one day who knows what…
curt on January 31st, 2009

Hi Andrea,

I just installed your plugin about an hour ago, it’s exactly what I imagined a menu should look like, thank you!

So the functionality works great, but the CSS is really messed up (not because it came that way, because I haven’t been able to customize it yet!)

It’s almost as if the CSS for the menubar is clashing with the CSS for the WordPress template, but the instructions for installation don’t say I have to edit any WordPress template CSS.

Could you look at my site? My menubar CSS is here:

http://nwucase.net76.net/wp-content/plugins/menubar/Suckerfish/wpm.css

And the template CSS is here:

http://nwucase.net76.net/wp-content/themes/corporate-theme-v2/style.css

Thank you!!
andrea on February 1st, 2009

Hi Curt,

you are right, the two CSS were probably clashing, but I see you have already solved this conflict.

My best suggestion is to use Menubar version 3.0 anyway, it’s still in beta but it’s usable and it solves a few problems of version 2.3.
Mungo.ca on February 5th, 2009

Hey, thanks for the plug-in
We’re trying to move all the tabs / buttons closer to the side, any suggestions on how to move them without moving the background?
andrea on February 5th, 2009

Hi Mungo,
you can alter the margin and/or padding property values in the CSS of your menu template, to get the result you like. If you need more specific suggestions, please send me a link to the page you are building.
mimi on February 8th, 2009

Andrea, here is the subscribe to comments plugin. Maybe you’ll consider adding it to your blog.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/
andrea on February 11th, 2009

Mimi,
thank you for the suggestion and the link!
Subscribe to comments is now active, I’m waiting for the first subscribers!
John Burgoon on February 23rd, 2009

Andrea,
Thanks so much for sharing your work. I was able to walk through your code so easily and now I understand how to utilize menus in WP.

I’m adding myself to your subscriber list, looking forward to seeing what else you do.

Cheers from Indiana,
John
andrea on February 23rd, 2009

Hello John,
thank you for your interest, I appreciate your subscription!

WordPress Menubar Plugin

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