littlejon

LJ Custom Menu Links is a plugin that allows you to put extra links in the menus of most WordPress Themes. It is unique in the way that it doesn’t require any code changes to your theme as the extra links are added within WordPress core functionality. This plugin requires no technical knowledge to administer, it is all contained within the WordPress admin pages with a consistent look and feel for ease of use.
Functions:
<ul>
<li>Add Extra Menu links to your theme</li>
<li>Use pages as placeholders for menu links (This allows you full customization as to the location of your links)</li>
<li>Control if menus items are shown based on if a user is logged in</li>
<li>Shows a logout link if a user is logged in</li>
<li>Provides the ability to provide a link back to your admin pages only if a user is logged in</li>
<li>Full menu sorting available</li>
<li>You can now take full control of how you want Custom Menu Links to operate, fully automatic integration or manual integration (modifying your theme for LJ Custom Menu Links).</li>
</ul>
If you are having compatibility issues with LJ Custom Menu Links outputting its links inside other plugins or sidebar widgets then this update is for you. Currently due to core wordpress limitations, if you use LJ Custom Menu Links there may be compatibility issues with other plugins. You now have the option (via the Advanced Options page) to turn off <code>Use wp_list_pages Filter</code> option and insert the required code to make LJ Custom Menu Links work without interruption within your own theme.
To add flexible location links (Dynamic Links) you need to create a new page as a placeholder for that link, under the edit page menu is a box to control what link to show. Please see the screenshots on the next page for a description. Links created in this way don’t have the ability to choose the target window (you may still control the visibility of the link via the private or public based on the page settings, and also the ordering based on page settings).
The admin page now also contains a list of Dynamic Links, which can be deleted or edited from within the LJCustomMenuLinks admin section.
To add LJCustomMenuLinks please use the LJCustomMenuLinks item in the Admin section, these links are added to the end of the standard wordpress menu system but have full customization ability.
The plugin has also had an attribution function added. If you would like to provide attribution for the plugin then add the following code into your wordpress theme. The footer is a good place for it.
<pre><code><?php
 if (function_exists('LJCustomMenuLinksAttribution')) {
 LJCustomMenuLinksAttribution(); 
 }
?>
</code></pre>

LJ Custom Menu Links

LJ Custom Menu Links is a plugin that allows you to put extra links in the menus of most Wordpress Themes.

Diana van de Laarschot

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.
Also works for custom taxonomies and custom post types 
NEW: CPCM V3 now provides support for Full Site Editing with the Gutenberg Block Editor 
WARNING: Coming from version 1.x? There are breaking changes, read the changelog before upgrading.
<h4>Using it</h4>
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.
For each Category in your menu, you now have the following extra configuration options:
<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>
You can control the title of the menu items generated by the plug-in with the following wildcards:
<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.

LJ Custom Menu Links vs Category Posts in Custom Menu