7 Useful Menu Plugins For Wordpress

Wordpress is a great software package for building sites that range from a personal blog to a full blown corporate website. It is easy to use and comes with thousands of plugins to do nearly what ever you want. One thing that is missing from Wordpress is the ability to manage menus as you would with Joomla and Drupal though. Thank god there are wondelful plugins out there that make this possible.

These are our favorite Wordpress plugins to create custom navigation for your website.

1) AllWebMenus

A great plugin to create menus for your Wordpress powered site. It works in combination with AllWebMenus Pro, a desktop application from likno software and allows you to create custom menus from your site’s structure, add external links, customize colors and behavior and many more.

Major features :

• Full cross-browser support (Internet Explorer – including v8, all Mozilla based browsers (Firefox, etc), Opera, Safari, Google Chrome and many more)
• Optimized menu building with separate javascripts for different browsers
• Full Search Engine Optimization (SEO) support
• Edit CSS menu properties through a WYSIWYG interface
• Use your own HTML code on selected menu items to achieve enhanced formatting or advanced functionality
• “Auto Item Highlight”
• Vertical Scrollbar for vertical Groups with “Automatic Scroll on Mouse Over”
• Multiple Rows and Columns on submenus
• Floating Images can be added to any of your menu items
• Create any kind of web menu fast by using pre-designed menu themes from the Theme Gallery
• Can display all languages in the javascript menu text through full unicode support
• Use “separate” borders on any side (top, bottom, left, right) of Groups or Items
• Full documentation on all features and properties
• Use three flexible ways to position your menus
• Choose among many options on “How”, “When” and “Where” the submenus appear
• Choose among many options on “How”, “When” and “Where” the submenus disappear
• Use the Advanced Copy/Paste functionality to quickly transfer any value among menu items
• Use Sticky submenus. A sticky submenu does not close unless you move to another item that has a submenu or click on the page. This is how the Windows “Start” menu works.
• Use popup and hidden menus that appear on events specified by you
• Use static or animated images for both background and content
• Create effects by using different property values for three different item states: the “Normal”, “Mouse Over” and “Mouse Click” item states
• Floating menus: Keep the menu visible in the same position while scrolling using either smooth or immediate scroll. Specify Javascript Commands to be executed when any menu item gets clicked, when any submenu appears or disappears, when the Main Menu appears or disappears. This feature allows you to create fully extensible menus
• Use both vertical and horizontal submenus at any possible combination
• Use Header and Footer on the submenu groups and allow the user to drag the menu from its Header
• Use “Distances between menu items” and assign optional “Statusbar Text” for each item
• Use Custom Variables instead of actual text
• Use several unfolding effects for the submenus
• Add AJAX menu effects to your items

Helpful Links:

• Wordpress plugin Download and Information
• Plugin Page on Likno Software
• AllWebMenus Pro Download

2) WordPress Menu Creator

This is one of the easiest and most configurable menu plugins for Wordpress. You create as many menus as you want from within the plugin’s panel and you place them in the template by using the template tags provided by the plugin. You can create nested menus with sub items using internal or external resources and create cascading menus. You can also set the cascading level by using the appropriate template tag.

It supports:

• OpenCube Menus
• Suckerfish

Helpful links:

• Download the plugin
• Plugin Information

3) Admin Drop Down Menu

This is a very helpful plugin that is useful for Wordpress administration since it replaces the typical admin menu found on Wordpress admin panel into an easy to use, customizable dropdown menu. Even though it is of no use for the frontend, this plugin is a must have for productive environments.

Features:

• Customizable color scheme with a neat color picker
• Normal mode for regular users, compact mode for real estate maniacs, minimal mode for those who never have enough
• Optional cute icons from FamFamFam
• Enhanced compatibility with handheld devices

Helpful Links:

• Download the plugin
• Plugin Information

4) PixoPoint Multi-level Navigation

If you need a plugin to create beautiful dropdown menus, then this plugin is exactly what you need. The plugin generates the code necessary to create a Son of Suckerfish horizontal dropdown, vertical flyout or horizontal slider menu. The plugin produces W3C valid HTML and CSS and only requires JavaScript to function for very old browsers such as IE 6. The Javascript is held in an external file which is linked via IE conditional comments, so only the browsers which require it will download the file. You have control over what items (pages, categories, archives, blogroll etc.) appear in your dropdown via the plugins options page.

Helpful Links:

• Download the plugin
• Plugin Information
• Customize the appearance of your menus

5) Wordpress Custom Menu

A very simple plugin that simplifies the process of managing your menus without hacking your templates each time you add a new section on your site.

Helpful Links:

• Download the plugin
• Plugin Information

6) NAVT

The WordPress Navigation Tool (NAVT) plugin is a powerful tool designed to provide you with complete control over the creation, styling and contents of your web site’s navigation. The plugin gives you the ability to create unique site navigation from your pages, categories and users using a Drag ‘n Drop Interface; arrange the items within a group in any arbitrary order. Navigation groups may be composed of any combination of pages, categories, Authors, (Editors, Contributors, Subscribers), internal/external links and list dividers.

Some Features:

• Navigation items can be duplicated and may appear in more than one group. Each item (even if duplicated) can be independently configured.
• List item names (called a menu alias) can be set to a name that differs from the name used as the page title or the category name.
• Create navigation items to be displayed in one of the following format:

1. 1. Text only
   2. Text over graphics
   3. Text with side graphic
   4. Graphic only

• Group items can be constructed to appear as a hierarchy – parent/child relationships can be formed between all types of items.
• Navigation menus may be styled using NAVT provided CSS classes, standard Word Press classes, or NAVT will apply user specified CSS classes.
• Supports BreadCrumb navigation.
• Supports navigation trees. Clicking a parent navigation item on a page reveals all child navigation on the subsequently displayed page.
• Navigation menus can be displayed (or not displayed) on any combination of user selected posts, pages, home page, archives, 404, search pages.
• Theme integration options allow you to insert a navigation group anywhere in your theme (without editing your theme).
• Create navigation using HTML Selects. Create multiple selects in a single group by using dividers.
• Embed navigation lists inside your posts and/or pages.
• Privacy settings for all navigation items and entire groups allows you to hide navigation items in a menu if the user is not logged into your site.
• Supports Gravatars for user navigation items.
• Transparently supports Word Press widgets.

Helpful Links:

• Download the Plugin
• Plugin Information

7) CustomNav

A fully customizable menus creation plugin that allows you to do anything you want with your menus. You can set title attributes, relations and custom icons or separators. CustomNav allows the administrator to easily create and add a horizontal navigation menu or even a vertical navigation menu if you wish to a WordPress based site.

Helpful Links:

• Download the plugin
• Plugin Info

Popularity: 9%

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