Jon Christopher

NOTE: If you’re looking for something more user-focused, take a look at <a href="https://organizewp.com/?utm_source=wordpressorg&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=readme" rel="nofollow ugc">OrganizeWP</a> which is complete rethinking of Hierarchy!
Custom Post Types (sometimes) need context, Hierarchy allows you to rework your content management workflow by essentially moving Custom Post Type admin menus into your Pages list. What this does is mimic the navigation you’ve set up on your site by placing Custom Post Type edit links amongst your Pages where they belong.
<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/hierarchy/screenshots/" rel="ugc">» Check out the screenshots to see Hierarchy in action</a>
Hierarchy removes unnecessary entries from the Admin Menu and instead injects theme where appropriate amongst your Pages, grouping everything under a single ‘Content’ Admin Menu entry.
<h4>Custom Post Types NEED context</h4>
Custom Post Types are great, but the editing workflow can be improved. Adding a Custom Post Type likely results in another WordPress admin sidebar menu, abstracting the management of that content from the main organization of your site, Pages. Hierarchy intelligently extends your Pages menu by including your Custom Post Type admin links within the Page structure, allowing for a much more natural workflow when managing your content.
<h4>Examples</h4>
Chances are you’ve customized your <code>Front page displays</code> setting to display a static page instead of your latest blog posts. Now you’ve got a sidebar link to manage your Posts and a WordPress Page called “Blog” that sites in your list of Pages doing absolutely nothing. Hierarchy remedies both problems by converting the “Blog” page link to be one that lists your Posts. It also hides the Posts sidebar entry (if you want it to).
It’s also likely that you’re utilizing Custom Post Types to power sections of your website, but it’s awkward to manage the content of an internal section of your website using the main WordPress admin sidebar links to your Custom Post Type. Hierarchy will allow you to hide those sidebar links and instead nest them amongst your Pages, providing contextual links to manage the content of your Custom Post Types.
<h4>More information</h4>
If you’d like a lot more information on the implementation and workflow changes, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/hierarchy/screenshots/" rel="ugc">check out the screenshots</a> and please see <a href="https://mondaybynoon.com/introducing-hierarchy/" rel="nofollow ugc">the introduction</a> and <a href="https://mondaybynoon.com/hierarchy-1-0-is-here/" rel="nofollow ugc">the follow-up for 1.0</a>.

Hierarchy

That cleans up things in your WordPress as CMS installation.

Cool plugin

Move your Pages/Posts/Custom Post Type admin links from the sidebar to a Content menu that nests everything where it should be

Oomph, Inc.

Ben Byrne

kenjigarland

Jake Goldman

Adds a new widget type you can deploy in your sidebar regions (and/or elsewhere) to display section-based navigation, along with the ability to exclude certain pages from showing up.
The title of the widget is the top level page within the current section. The widget then can show all of the page’s published siblings (except on the top level page), all parents and grandparents (and higher), the siblings of all parents and grandparents (up to top level page), and any immediate children of the current page. It can also be called by a function inside template files.
It includes a simple widget configuration panel. From this panel you can:
<ol>
<li>Determine whether the widget should appear on the home page</li>
<li>Override standard behavior and have the widget show all pages in the current section</li>
<li>Determine whether the widget should appear even if the section only has one page (the top level)</li>
<li>Provide a list of pages to exclude from the output</li>
<li>Determine whether the section navigation should still appear when viewing excluded pages</li>
<li>Use a specific widget title (i.e. In This Section), or just use the top level page title</li>
<li>Determine whether the section title should be linked</li>
<li>Determine page sort order (defaults to menu order)</li>
</ol>
The widget uses standard WordPress navigation classes, in addition to a unique class around the widget, for easy styling. The UL of the page list also has a custom class, <code>bsn-list</code>, that can be altered via the <code>bsn_list_class</code> filter.
Beginning with version 1.5, Better Section Navigation also incorporates the features of the defunct <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/exclude-pages/" rel="ugc">Exclude Pages</a> plugin, giving you the ability to selectively exclude specific pages from appearing in the widget generated by Better Section Navigation. This per-page control is managed via a metabox on the post edit screen. Note: On activation, BSN will automatically import the list of “excluded pages” set via that plugin, so you don’t have to manually re-assign excludes pages before deactivating the old one.
Compatible with WordPress Multisite.
This plugin started life as <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-section-navigation/" rel="ugc">Simple Section Navigation Widget</a>, but since that plugin hasn’t been updated in a while, we’ve taken up the reins with the goal of keeping it up to date with the latest WordPress conventions (i.e. getting rid of deprecation warnings) and adding a few nice-to-have features while retaining some of the simplicity of the original plugin.
Simple Section Navigation Widget is incompatible with PHP 8.x, so as of October 2022, Better Section Navigation is now a drop-in replacement for Simple Section Navigation Widget. If you’ve been using Simple Section Navigation, you can now use this one instead without changing any settings! NOTE: Deactivate Simple Section Navigation Widget before activating Better Section Navigation.

Better Section Navigation

Creates a new widget for listing section-based navigation -- essential for contextual navigation. Also implements a template function and a shortcode.

Hierarchy vs Better Section Navigation