Simple Sidebar Navigation Plugin for WordPress

Details

Simple Sidebar Navigation is a WordPress plugin that allows you to easily create custom sidebar navigation widgets. By simply selecting existing pages from the list or adding custom links you can create sidebar navigation blocks in seconds without any PHP knowledge.

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Current Versions:
- 2.1.2 for WordPress 2.8 and newer
- 2.0.9 for WordPress 2.7 and older

Earlier versions are available as well.

Features Include:

• Flat and multi-level navigation hierarchy for existing pages and custom links.
• Very flexible conditional appearance options (greatly expanded from before 2.0 version).
• Out-of-the-box Suckerfish support.
• Option to add navigation links with custom title, url and target attribute.
• Unlimited number of navigation widgets.
• Optional setting includes blog posts into the navigation selection list (only pages are available by default).
• Support for custom drop-down menus CSS.

Known Issues:

1. Non-English alphabet makes links to disappear in the right selection list after saving.
2. There is a fluxing behavior when child links can not be added under custom links. Happens rare, but I caught it a few times.

Support Forums:

I had to close comments under this post because it's getting hard to manage them and follow the conversations. If you would like to submit a bug please do the following:

1. Register in the Forums.
2. Login and go to the User Control Panel (User CP).
3. Under Group Membership join "Approved Registered Users" group (if you skip this step, you won't be able to post in the forums).
4. Then post your message in the Simple Sidebar Navigation thread.

Demonstration

Video Demonstration

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Instructions

Feedback is appreciated! If you have any troubles with the plugin, submit your questions to the Support Forum.

From the readme.txt

The data storing conditions have been changed since 2.0 version.

• The plugin will try to convert your existing simple sidenav widgets, but I suggest you to backup or make notes about your existing simple sidenav widgets, in case something goes wrong, so you can restore or duplicate your previous settings.

Installation - like any other basic plugin:

1. Upload simple-sidebar-navigation folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
3. Go to the Widgets dashboard, scroll to the bottom to add the desired number of widgets. Add widgets to your sidebars and edit them. The edit window should be self explanatory.

Top Navigation Management functionality:

• Edit your theme's header template or the correct template that contains header navigation. If you have static navigation links in your template or any other functions that generate your top navigation - paste it instead of this tag <!--YOUR OLD NAVIGATION -->.

<?php
if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Simple Top Nav') ) : ?>
<!--YOUR OLD NAVIGATION -->
<?php
endif;
?>

Until the "Simple Top Nav" widget is created in the administrative widgets dashboard - your old navigation will still be functioning. The same applies when the Simple Sidebar Plugin is disabled or removed.

• Go to the administrative Widgets dashboard and select "Simple Top Nav" as your current widget. Add one of the available Simple Sidebar Navigation widgets to the sidebar and edit it.

Suckerfish or Drop-Down Menus:

• Suckerfish.css default stylesheet is included. If you would like upload your own, separate from your main CSS file, drop-down menus stylesheet - you can specify its path via Settings => Simple SideNav.
• You can generate a custom stylesheet with this Multi-Level Navigation CSS Generator, but you'll have to append each #suckerfishnav ID with .sf Class. To do so, simply search and replace [#suckerfishnav] with [#suckerfishnav .sf], without the square brackets, using any text editor. Make sure you enter a space between the ID and the Class as shown above.

Notes:

• If you add more than one widget to the Simple Top Nav sidebar - it may break your theme's design or layout since only one list of links is usually expected to be there.
• Widget's Title in the Simple Top Nav sidevar should be blank - otherwise it will be hidden via inline CSS as display:none. I couldn't figure out how to alter the widget "on load" to remove it's title since it shouldn't be in the top navigation.