Joe Ponzio

The New Nine Menus Manager adds a section to the ‘Appearance -> Menus’ section of your dashboard so you can quickly and easily create and delete menu locations on the fly.
Why? Because we’re tired of jumping back and forth between our functions file and the dashboard. Because we’re tired of writing <code>register_nav_menu</code> over and over again every time we start a new site.
And because there seems to be a disconnect here – just about every site needs to have a navigation menu, there are no configuration options for <code>register_nav_menu</code>, and it just seems to make sense to be able to create and delete menu locations in the dashboard.
This plugin was built by <a href="http://www.newnine.com/" title="New Nine Media & Advertising" rel="nofollow ugc">New Nine Media & Advertising</a>.
Single Site & Network Compatible
The New Nine Menus Manager works on both individual sites and WordPress Networks.
MU Compatible
The plugin is also Must Use compatible for both single sites and network installations.

New Nine Menus Manager

Register new menu locations right from the menu screen. Never write register_nav_menu again and keep your functions file clean!

Amir Helzer

<h4>Update</h4>
Our new plugin, <a href="http://wpml.org" rel="nofollow ugc">WPML</a>, includes the functionality of CMS Navigation and is recommended for new designs.
It features much cleaner and simpler HTML and customization via the admin screen.
Additionally, we recommend you checkout our new CMS enabling plugins Types and Views.
<ul>
<li><a href="http://wp-types.com/home/types-manage-post-types-taxonomy-and-custom-fields/" rel="nofollow ugc">Types – The Custom Types and Custom Fields Plugin</a> – manages custom content type, including post types, taxonomy and custom fields.</li>
<li><a href="http://wp-types.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Views – The Custom Content Display Plugin</a> – displays custom content types in whatever way you choose.</li>
</ul>
With Types and Fields, you can achieve the functionality of this plugin yourself and customize it in whatever way you like.
<h4>Legacy Stuff</h4>
Do you want to use WordPress to create a full website, with easy navigation and menus? 
This plugin will let you add essential navigation functions to your template, including:
<ul>
<li>Top navigation bar, listing the top-level pages and their children (as drop-down items).</li>
<li>Breadcrumbs trail navigation that shows the path to the current page all the way from the home page.</li>
<li>Left navigation that shows where the visitor is next to the page’s parent and nearby pages.</li>
</ul>
No configuration is required. To use, add the calls that create each navigation element to your template. 
These calls can be added to any WP template
There are three template functions that can be used for displaying the navigation sections
<h4>Drop down top menu</h4>
Function: 
 cms_navigation_menu_nav($order=’menu_order’, $show_cat_menu=false, $catmenu_title=’News’)
This will display the top navigation – the top level pages with their sub pages as drop down elements. 
Additionally – if specified – the menu will include the top level post categories at the end.
Normally, this function is added to your header.php file, so that it applies to the entire website.
Examples:
<ul>
<li><code><?php cms_navigation_menu_nav() ?></code> – include without the categories menu.</li>
<li><code><?php cms_navigation_menu_nav('post_title') ?></code> – sort items by title.</li>
<li><code><?php cms_navigation_menu_nav('menu_order',true,'News') ?></code> – sort items according to the ‘order’ field.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Breadcrumbs trail navigation</h4>
Function: 
 cms_navigation_breadcrumb()
This will display a path from the current page all the way to the home page. 
It’s useful for visitors who land in your website to know where they are and be able to navigate to relevant pages.
For posts
<pre><code>Home >> CATEGORY-NAME >> Post title
</code></pre>
For pages
<pre><code>Home >> Parent pages... >> Page title
</code></pre>
All the items back to the home page will be clickable.
You can add this function to single.php and page.php so that it will produce trail navigation for every page or post.
<h4>Sidebar navigation</h4>
Function: 
 cms_navigation_page_navigation($order=’menu_order’)
This will display the sidebar navigation for pages. 
It will show a tree created the page parents and it’s ‘brother’ pages (other children to the same parent).
This function should be added to page.php, as it provides local navigation between pages.
<h4>Live example using this plugin</h4>
<a href="http://www.baripedia.com" title="Tourist resource site for the city of Bariloche" rel="nofollow ugc">Baripedia</a> is using this plugin (and other CMS related plugins we’ve written).
<h3>Version History</h3>
<ul>
<li>Version 0.1
<ul>
<li>First public release.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Version 0.2
<ul>
<li>Removed some of unneeded formatting.</li>
<li>Added option to set the tag around sidebar navigation heading.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Version 1.2
<ul>
<li>Handles setting static pages for homepage and blog page.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Version 1.2.1
<ul>
<li>Added static home page to top navigation</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Version 1.3
<ul>
<li>Works with IE6 as well as other browsers (didn’t support IE6 before)</li>
<li>Removed the gradient and simplified the CSS for customizing the menus</li>
<li>The top menu HTML has changed. If the encapsulating DIV has a background, you may need to change or remove it.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Version 1.4
<ul>
<li>Added feature to exclude pages from the top navigation.</li>
<li>Added GUI for controlling page settings (instead of editing custom fields).</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Version 1.4.2
<ul>
<li>Added migration instruction to <a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sitepress-multilingual-cms/stats/" title="WPML Multilingual CMS" rel="ugc">WPML</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

CMS Navigation

Out-of-the-box support for full CMS navigation in your WordPress site including drop down menus, breadcrumbs trail and sidebar navigation.

New Nine Menus Manager vs CMS Navigation