WordPress plugin which uses the parent/child relationship of your pages or categories to generate menus based on the current section of your site.
How It Works
When your users view a page or category, the Advanced Sidebar Menu plugin will calculate the related content based on what you have selected using the standard WordPress parent selectors.
The menu will be different for every page which displays the Advanced Sidebar Blocks because the menu is generated specific to the current page.
Depending on “Pages” block options, the menu will display:
- The current page.
- Parent page.
- Child pages.
- Grandparent pages.
- Grandchild pages.
- First level child pages related to the current item.
Depending on “Categories” block options, the menu will display:
- The current category.
- Parent category.
- Child categories.
- Grandparent categories.
- Grandchild categories.
- First level child categories related to the current item.
Menu Locations
Blocks may be added to:
- Page/post content.
- Widget areas.
- Theme customizer.
- Site Editor.
- Really anywhere blocks are supports.
Classic widgets are also available for areas like:
- Elementor.
- Beaver Builder.
- Sites with Classic Widgets enabled.
Any location which contains an Advanced Sidebar block and is included on the current page will generate any applicable menu.
The Menu Does Not Display In Some Areas
Some pages do not have parents or children and the plugin is smart enough to not display the menu nor menu header at all on these pages. If the menu will not contain any items, nothing will display so the menu will never look broken on any pages.
For example, lets say you add the “Pages” block to your homepage. Since most homepages do not contain any parent or child pages, the block will not display anything.
The PRO version does support defining a “Display menu on every page” option if you wish to have the menu generate and display everywhere the block is located.
Examples
Using the OnPoint Plugin Site
All of the documentation areas of this website use the “Advanced Sidebar – Pages” block to display related pages in the sidebar menu. You may see how the menu changes in actions by clicking to view the various pages found in the menu.
The shown sidebar menu uses:
- Only options found in the basic version of the Advanced Sidebar Menu plugin are used to populate the menu items.
- All menu styling is done via options found in the PRO version of the Advanced Sidebar Menu plugin.
- No customizations beyond what is available in the block settings have been used to create the sidebar menu.
Interactive Demo
The interactive demo demonstrates how the “Advanced Sidebar – Pages” menu will display on a site with the following pages.
- About
- Services
- Contact
- Office
- Field
- Hours
- Support
- Process
- Request
- SMS
Documentation
Notice the “Related Content” menu near the top of this page. Not only is the menu generated using this plugin’s “Advanced Sidebar – Pages” block, but it also contains helpful articles about working with this plugin.
A good place to start is Usage
Translations
This plugin includes the following languages:
- English (en_US)
- French (fr_FR)
- German (de_DE)
- Spanish (es_ES)
Features
- Page and Category menu Gutenberg blocks.
- Page and Category menu widgets.
- Option to display or not display the highest level parent page or category.
- Option to display the menu when there is only the highest level parent.
- Ability to order pages by date, title, or page order.
- Exclude pages or categories by entering a comma-separated list of ids.
- Option to always display child pages or categories.
- Option to select the levels of pages or categories to display when "always display child" is used.
- Option to display or not display categories on single posts.
- Ability to display each single post's category in a new widget or in the same list.
For more features Go PRO
- Navigation menu widget.
- Navigation menu Gutenberg block.
- Ability to customize each category or page link title with a simple text field.
- Click-and-drag styling for page, category, and navigation menus.
- Styling options for links including color, background color, size, hover, and font weight.
- Styling options for different levels of links.
- Styling options for the current page or category.
- Styling options for the parent of the current page or category.
- Blocked styling options including borders, border width, and border colors.
- Option to choose from 7 bullet styles or no bullets.
- Accordion menu support for pages, categories, and navigation menus.
- Accordion icon style and color selection.
- Accordion option to keep all sections closed until clicked.
- Accordion option to include highest level parent in accordion.
- Accordion option to use links for open/close.
- Ability to exclude a page from all menus using a simple checkbox.
- Ability to exclude category from all menus using a simple checkbox.
- Link ordering for category menus.
- Number of levels of pages to show when "always display child pages" is not checked.
- Ability to select and display custom post types.
- Ability to select and display custom taxonomies.
- Ability to display category post counts.
- Exclude pages or categories using intuitive search and select. New
- Option to display only the current page's parents, grandparents, and children.
- Option to display child page siblings when on a child page (with or without grandchildren available).
- Ability to display the menu on every page (including homepage if applicable).
- Ability to select the highest level parent page/category.
- Ability to select which levels of categories assigned posts will display under.
- Ability to display assigned posts or custom post types under categories or taxonomies.
- Ability to limit the number of posts or custom post types to display under categories.
- Support for custom navigation menus from Appearance -> Menus.
- Ability to display the current navigation menu item's parents and children only.
- Option to display the top-level navigation menu items when there are no child items or not viewing a menu item.
- Priority support with access to members only support area.