Dynamic Menu Item

This plugin is meant to help you create “dynamic” menu items. This is ideal for situations where you want to have custom pages that appear at certain times of the year or seasonal pages that need to change out every few months. Requires you use the built in Appearance->Menu to setup your menu links and not simply default the menu to all pages on your site. There are 2 types of dynamic menu items created, each work in conjunction with the other.

Default :: This only requires a starting month to work. What this does is assumes that all items within this section will be displayed without any gaps. These ideal for seasons and will be displayed if there are no other dynamic posts.

Set Dates :: This is ideal for things like holdiays or specials that you may only want to display for a set period of time (e.g., 1 day or a few weeks only, not the whole month). These are displayed first and if none are active, the active Default page of the period is selected instead.

1. Upload plugin-name.php to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Setup Pages
   1. Create a Default “Parent” page. This page will not be displayed but rather allows for you to “group” the pages into this category.
   2. Add one or more “Child” pages to this Parent page that will be pages which are to be displayed if nothing else is active.
   3. Create a Set Dates “Parent” page. This page will not be displayed but rather allows for you to “group” the pages into this category.
   4. Add one or more “Child” pages to this Parent page that will be pages which are to have set active dates to be displayed.
4. Go to Apperance -> Dynamic Menu Item
   1. Set the Parent pages for the two sections. Hit “Save”.
   2. Page will reappear with the corresponding Child pages now appearing. Set the start month for Default pages and start/end dates for Set Date pages.
   3. Hit “Save”.
5. Position the menu item in your Menu
   1. Go to Apperance -> Menus and create or display the appropriate menu you wish to update.
   2. Check off the “Dynamic Menu Item” box and click “Add to Menu”
   3. Move the “Dynamic Menu Item” to the position in the menu you’d like the dynamic item to appear.
   4. Hit “Save Menu”

What if I don’t set either the Default or Set Dates?

The program will simply ignore those options and you will not see any pages to set dates for. In addition, your menu won’t display anything in the space that would have been for this item.

How do I remove a page from this group?

You can remove a page from consideration in a number of ways: – Change the parent of the page – Set the page to “Draft” – Remvoe any dates or months on the Dynami Menu Item page

1. 

   How the setup menu appears in the Admin panel

2. 

   An example of the setup menu. *Note: You must have setup the pages prior to this step.

0.4

*Further refining of the calculations to account for year beginnings

0.3

*Further refined the seasonal calculations so they react better to changing seasons.

0.2

• Fix seasonal issue where summer wasn’t updating correctly

0.1

• First release