During my escapades with WordPress and various templates we’ve put together and worked with, I’ve discovered an interesting problem with a number of the DHTML menus that are generated from the WordPress categories or pages (using wp_list_categories or wp_list_pages).

If you have a hierarchical page system (which this blog and performs a nice demo site for my plugin!) then it may very well be that the item that forms the top menu item is not actually a page you want people to be able to visit – but WordPress forces all Categories or Pages to be clickable links when they’re returned through wp_list_categories or wp_list_pages.

Take for example the following menu structure;
Home Marketing & Design Company
Web Site Design About Us
E-Commerce Testimonials

It’s highly likely that the menu items Marketing & Design and Company do not need to have pages of their own, but because the DHTML produces a drop down menu, they still need to be clickable links, so that the menu will drop down when you hover over the top.

This is where my plugin comes in. It will alter the destination urls for the top menu items (ie, Marketing & Design and Company) so that instead of going to a page they actually just go to ‘#’ – which most browsers will simply ignore when you click – but still allows the browser to display the drop down menu when you hover over the item.

To install the plugin, first determine if you’re working with categories or pages, and then download the appropriate plugin below. Install it into your WordPress installation in the normal way. Go to your Administration for WordPress, choose Filter Top Menu under the Settings and enter the page/category numbers of the pages/categories that you wish to not have actual pages. It’s that simple!

Filter Top Menu

I signed up for a membership at Elegant Themes which I’ve been meaning to do for ages. You can’t go past their great pricing ($39usd a year for all themes) and as a WordPress programmer and designer myself, I can say that their coding is excellent in standard. I’ve used a couple of their templates now and I’ve never had to repair any of their code like I have had to do on other crappy WordPress themes I’ve purchased before.

So, the latest theme on my blog comes from Elegant Themes and is called ‘Bold’ along with a few personalised tweaks. Look out for a new theme from them shortly on ReviewMacSoftware.com too :)

I also signed up for their affiliate scheme so if you happen to ever want to sign up, please use this link.

Speaking of WordPress, I am loving Twitter and being able to connect with other WP lovers from around the globe. Have already found lots of new info through this network. Very handy.