05.20.10
Custom Menus – WordPress 3 – Large Menu Tricks
The new WordPress 3 custom menu bar is extremely flexible but a little clunky as your menus get larger. A few tricks will decrease your setup time. As menus get larger they take longer to move items to the correct spot. Preplanning can add your items to the correct spot and avoid slow moves.
If you know your menu’s complete structure (as of today, anyway) resist the tempation to insert the primary menu items first and then work down. Things will go faster if you start with your first parent menu item and then add all of the children/grand children first. All you will have to do is order within the submenu and then drag the parent to the correct menu level.
Repeat with each item on the main menu line, in descending order. (left to right on a horizontal menu bar.)
There comes a time when someone decides to add fruit to your lovely 100+ cheese menu and all the preplanning in the world didn’t help you forsee this. You are not doomed to tedious additions of one fruit at a time, jumping over all the cheese types you’ve already entered. Fortunately WordPress moves entire menu structures (parents and the associated children) together throughout the menu.
Instead, add you parent and sub menu fruits (or whatever). Arange the submenus at the bottom of the structure. If you are adding fruits & wines to the top of your cheese menu, set up both at the bottom and make the wine selections a subset of the cheese. Move the entire thing up past all 100 cheeses and park at the top. Then just left-justify wines so it too is a primary menu item.
