just widget link

Diana van de Laarschot

<p>The default custom menu in WordPress only allows adding a link that leads to a list of posts and pages belonging to a taxonomy (category, tag, etc). If you want to list the posts and pages themselves and if you want WordPress to do this automatically for you, then I hope you will find this plugin useful.</p>
<p><strong>Also works for custom taxonomies and custom post types</strong><br />
<strong>NEW: CPCM V3 now provides support for Full Site Editing with the Gutenberg Block Editor</strong><br />
<strong>WARNING: Coming from version 1.x? There are breaking changes, read the changelog before upgrading.</strong></p>
<h4>Using it</h4>
<p>Enable the plugin and go to either Appearance > Menus or Appearance > Customize or Appearance > Editor. Add a category (or other taxonomy like tag or custom) to the menu. Next, you can choose if you would like to replace the category by the posts or pages themselves.</p>
<p>For each Category in your menu, you now have the following extra configuration options:</p>
<ul>
<li>Replace by posts in the category y/n; </li>
<li>specify the (maximum) number of posts you want to show for this item (max 10);</li>
<li>their ordering ascending or descending by Title, Date or Menu Order;</li>
<li>specify the title for the menu items. For this you can use %post_title, %post_author and other wildcards, see ‘Other Notes > Wildcards’. Default value: %post_title</li>
</ul>
<h4>Wildcards</h4>
<p>You can control the title of the menu items generated by the plug-in with the following wildcards:</p>
<ul>
<li>%post_title</li>
<li>%post_author</li>
<li>%post_date for the unformatted post date: 2012-11-10 18:14:23</li>
<li>%post_date() for a formatted post date with the following default formatting: November 10th, 2012</li>
<li>%post_date(<your formatting here>) for custom date formatting. Example: %post_date(l jS \of F Y, h:i:s A). See <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Formatting_Date_and_Time" rel="nofollow ugc">https://codex.wordpress.org/Formatting_Date_and_Time</a> for formatting options.</li>
<li>%post_date_gmt</li>
<li>%post_date_gmt()</li>
<li>%post_date_gmt(<your formatting here>)</li>
</ul>


Category Posts in Custom Menu

Dynamic menus: List all posts from a category in your menu. Also works for tags, custom taxonomies as well as pages and custom post types.

just widget link vs Category Posts in Custom Menu