Chris K Designs

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With the release of WordPress 3.0 came one of the most sought after features from the WordPress Community, custom menus. Custom Menus allow users to create menus in a visual editor and, given their theme supports it, assign them to different types of pages or posts. Previously it was up to the theme developer to give you the option to change the navigation. As with anything in WordPress, there’s the basic functionality and then there’s taking it to the advanced level. Did you know there are advanced settings for your custom menus? You can alter the ‘target’ a menu open loads into, the CSS Class of this item, or even the ‘rel’ type? It’s all cleverly hidden from the everyday user in the ‘Screen Options’ item in the upper right corner of the Appearance -> Menus area of wp-admin.

After you click on the ‘Screen Options’ item shown above, a menu will expand giving you access to the following list of options:

The ‘Show on Screen’ item are the ones that appear in the left Column of the Menus page and consist of lists of items you can place into your menus. The ‘Show advanced menu properties’ are seen by expanding a current item in your menu. Here is what changes, the left is the ‘Show on Page’ column, and on the right is the menu items, which when expanded will display the item settings, including whatever items are checked in the ‘Show advanced menu properties’ setting.

Are you using the Custom Menu feature of WordPress? If so, how has it made things easier for you and what advice can you offer?