Tag Archives: wordpress menus

How To Schedule WordPress Menus With Expiration Dates?

The Menu Expiration Control plugin is an essential tool for WordPress users looking to add flexibility and control over their website’s menu display. With this plugin, you can set specific start and expiration dates for each menu item, making it perfect for temporary promotions, seasonal offerings, or event-based menu items.

Whether it’s a limited-time offer, a seasonal special, or a date-specific announcement, this plugin provides a seamless way to ensure your menus are always relevant to your audience.

Why Use the Menu Expiration Control Plugin?

The Menu Expiration Control plugin allows you to manage menu items more dynamically by setting start and expiration dates. Here’s what makes this plugin valuable:

  • Control Visibility of Menu Items: Show or hide menu items based on specific timeframes, ensuring that your navigation is always up-to-date.
  • Perfect for Promotions & Events: Easily schedule when a promotional link or event announcement should appear or disappear from your menu.
  • Seasonal Menus Made Easy: Set visibility dates for seasonal offerings or limited-time items, such as holiday promotions or special menus.
Key Features Of Menu Expiration Control Plugin:
  • Date-Specific Display: Choose exact dates for each menu item to be visible, ideal for items that should appear only during particular times.
  • Customizable Date Format: The date format is set as YYYY-MM-DD by default, but advanced users can modify this directly within the plugin’s code.
  • User-Friendly Interface: Manage dates right from the ‘Appearance’ > ‘Menus’ section in the WordPress admin panel, without the need for coding skills.

This plugin is especially useful in scenarios such as:

  • Seasonal Campaigns: Automate the display of holiday-themed menu items, like Christmas sales, New Year offers, or Halloween specials.
  • Limited-Time Promotions: Set menu items for flash sales or exclusive discounts, ensuring they only appear for the duration of the campaign.
  • Event Announcements: Control visibility of links for upcoming events, webinars, or local gatherings without manually updating the menu.
How To Use the Menu Expiration Control Plugin?

Follow these simple steps to install and start using the Menu Expiration Control plugin:

  1. Install and Activate the Menu Expiration Control plugin.
  2. Navigate to Appearance -> Menus in the WordPress admin area.
  3. Open any menu for editing or select Create a new menu at the top of the page
  4. Enter a name for your new menu in the Menu Name box and click the Create Menu button.
  5. Locate the left pane to select the pages, categories, custom links etc that you want to add to your menu.
  6. Click the Add to Menu button located at the bottom of this pane to add your selection(s) to the menu.
  7. Set specific start and expiration dates to any menu item for customized display.
  8. Click the Save Menu button.

By using Menu Expiration Control not only enhances your website’s functionality but also improves user experience by ensuring visitors see only relevant, time-specific menu items. By keeping your site’s navigation current, you provide a more organized, user-friendly experience that is sure to keep visitors engaged.

With its easy setup and powerful functionality, the Menu Expiration Control plugin is a must-have for any WordPress site looking to optimize their menus with time-sensitive content.

How To Show/Hide WordPress Menus With Conditional Statements?

You can use each item of WordPress menus with your conditional statements. The plugin allows visibility features to all WordPress menus you manage from the dashboard’s appearance section. It allows you to display or hide menus based on conditional statements such as show/hide this menu if the page is a single page, if a user is logged in etc.

To start, first install and activate the If Menu plugin then visit your area Dashboard -> Appearance -> Menus page and select a menu from the ‘Select a menu to edit‘ drop box. [Read: How To Create & Manage WordPress Menus?]

Let’s say you want to add a ‘Login’ link in your navigation menu but you want to show it only to logged-out users (as it is of no use for logged-in users) then first add the custom login to your menu structure and tick ‘Enable Conditional Logic ‘ checkbox.

As you tick this option it starts showing a show/hide dropdown box with if conditional logic options as shown in the given screenshot. Now select a show or hide option and then choose your visibility conditions.

How To Use Conditional Statements With WordPress Menus?

In the above example, we have selected the hide option with the conditional statement ‘if a user is logged in’ to make the login button automatically disappear for all logged-in users. Alternatively, in the above-given case, we can also use the ‘show’ option for all ‘logged out’ users.

The plugin lets you set basic visibility rules such as the user is logged in, its user role, the page type (front page, archive page, search page single page or post), or the visitor device is mobile. It also offers a premium version with an advanced set of visibility rules such as the visitor’s location, visitor’s language, based on WooCommerce subscriptions or memberships, his WishList, and its subscription level.

How To Create & Manage Menus In WordPress?

In a website, menus are the set of content filter links typically placed horizontally at the top of a website to provide easy navigation. A Menu shows what you are offering on your website.

For example: If you are running a blog on recipes then you can use navigation for offering various dish types like separate menus for dishes, soups, desserts, fast foods, detox meals, etc. In this lesson, we will guide you to the WordPress menu system covering all its important parts so that you can create new menus and add them to specific locations.

Different themes provide you with different menu locations and by default most themes use the page links in navigation menu locations. The reason is generally users create a website with typical pages like About, Contact, and Home, and a blog page. Hence these pages are shown automatically in the menu bar.

But WordPress allows you to create custom menus containing links to pages, categories, and other specific links. So if you don’t want to display pages in a menu location then create menus and assign them to display on a menu location that your theme provides.

How To Create A WordPress Menu?

Step-1: Creating A New Menu

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To create your first WordPress menu, log in to your WordPress admin area (yourdomain.com/wp-admin) then navigate to Appearance -> Menus page, click the create a new menu‘ link, give your menu a name (this is not visible on the front) and click ‘Create Menu‘ link.

Step 2: Adding Menu Items

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After the menu is created, you can add menu items from the left column to the menu structure box. Example: For adding a custom link:

  1. Click ‘Links’ (on the left column)
  2. Type or paste the link
  3. Type link text
  4. Click the ‘Add to Menu‘ button.

Step 3: Creating Multilevel Menus

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After creating navigation links, you can drag-drop to reorder them. You can make navigation go deep by adding submenus. To add a submenu, simply drag and place a menu item a little bit right to its parent as shown in the given screenshot.

Here are the steps to create sub-menus:

  1. Position your mouse over the ‘child’ menu item.
  2. While still holding your left mouse button, drag it to the right and release the mouse button.
  3. You can repeat these steps for each sub-menu item then click the Save Menu button visible in your Menu Editor.

Step 4: Set The Menu Location

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After the menu structure is created, assign it to a theme location. Scroll down to the ‘Menu Settings‘ section and choose a theme location.

[heading size=”17″]Step-5: See How It Looks[/heading]
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Visit your website’s home and see what it looks like. Given screenshot shows the menu we have created in the top primary location of the Twenty Fourteen WordPress theme.

How To Manage Multiple Menus?

You can create several menus, and assign them to different locations. If you are using the default Twenty Fourteen then you can add a menu on the top of your website, and another menu in the left sidebar’s vertical menu location. WordPress also provides you a menu widget (in Appearance -> Widgets page) you can use for manually displaying any menu in your sidebar or footer widget area.

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To manage your menus, menu items, their structure, and location, visit the Appearance -> Menus page and select a menu to edit. Another tab with the title ‘Manage Locations‘ allows you to manage menu locations in bulk.