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Drupal > WordPress migration part II: The ultimate WordPress menu manager

In my quest to convert CERF to WordPress (see previous entry), I have run across the best menu manager I have ever seen.

The secondary navigation spec for CERF states that a few things must happen:

When a user is visiting a site area (About Us, for example) the name of that site area must appear above the secondary nav. This gives the some good orientation about where he or she is in the larger context of the site.
The child pages of that section (Our Staff, Our History, etc) must appear below the heading.
The child page that the user is currently visiting must retain an active state (to further give notice of where the user is).
Any grandchildren or great-grandchildren must be displayed when viewing their parent or grandparent (facilitating the display of third and fourth level pages).
The grandchildren and great-grandchildren must display an active state upon display

Out of the box WordPress provides some pretty nice menu features (using the get_pages function) but this spec is a little beyond what is available.

My hunt for a plugin left me passing up the popular Fold Page List plugin and moving onto Collapsing Page Menus by Cam Fraser. It was nearly what I was looking for.

I wrote to Cam and he agreed to make some quick modifications to the code. The world now has a very-reusable WordPress menu manager that fits the bill for intuitive and accessible site navigation. Cam tells me he will be rolling the new features into the next version of his plugin. Look for it at his site. If you are in a rush contact me and I’ll send you what you need.

What’s next…

Coming up I’ll write about my solution for building the entire site information architecture using Pages while still allowing users to enter content using Posts (and making sure the right posts are aggregated on the correct pages). The solution is wonderful and really increases the flexibility of using WordPress as a CMS. Once I clean the code up a bit I will make it available. For sure.

Some Past Projects:

Network of Ensemble Theaters: A dynamic community of independent Ensemble Theaters in the US. This WordPress site features autonomous theater profile, image, and event management as well as some nice google maps mashing and social networking. Design by Design for Social Impact and tech by Vernal.
Freedom to Roam: A broad initiative to enhance and protect wildlife corridors and landscape connectivity in North America. Created in WordPress.
RSF Social Finance: An interesting example of using WordPress as a content management system. This collaboration between Vernal and Free Range Studios features highly advanced mapping and dead simple content management.
Crazy Sexy Life: Design by Free Range Studios and WordPress programming by Vernal. A great project for some wonderful people.
Timber Frames by Collin Beggs: Wacky design meets high functionality. Check out this WordPress marvel.
Center for Justice: The Center came to us for a redesign and CMS solution for their advocacy work in Spokane, Washington. It has some nice flash video worked in, lots of interesting publishing features, and a squeaky design.
Saving Paradise: A small WordPress powered site for our friends at Beacon Press. Features some interesting gallery functionality.
Furthur Foundation: A quick one-pager for a good friend.

MaintainIT Project: A collaboration with our good friends at Floatleft. We did the design and they did the Drupal backend.
Ada Kay Lemieux: A certain kind of magical project. Baby pushing and pre-natal by Denise. Postpartum joy with Vernal.
Voices for Vermont’s Children: A nice WordPress based site for some good folks here in Vermont. Simple, clean, quick.
ZeroDivide: Another joint project with Floatleft. Design by Vernal.
Ringtones08: Post and share ringtones about the 2008 US election – for FREE. Oh wait, that’s over with and it went beautifully.
Community Partners: Branding by Matthew, Drupal coding by Johanna, design by Vernal.
Stories for Change: Our first project with Floatleft. They took care of the Drupal implemenation, we handled the branding and design. A very nice community driven video site.
River Arts of Vermont: A simple WordPress site for one of the best arts organizations in Vermont.

Some New Projects:

California Faith for Equality: California Faith for Equality is the leading organization working at the intersection of faith and LGBT equality in California and the largest interfaith network of its kind in the nation. And now they have a really nice WordPress based campaign site! Design by Freerange.
We Are America: A WordPress 3.0 site featuring user-submitted video testimonies of everyday immigrants. Give it a try. You can even record one with your webcam directly in your browser.
Act-o-matic: Just launched as a cross-promotion with Free Range Graphics, this flash/wordpress mashup provides inspiration and plenty of cool technology.
Square Deal Farm: Good syrup from some great folks. This is another simple one-page WordPress site.. modeled after the previous for Cleary Family Farm.
Cleary Family Farm: Ah, finally something close to home. So close, in fact, I can see it from my window! This was a quick exercise in using WordPress as a CMS for a one-pager website. It worked wonderfully.
Population Justice Project: Another collaboration with Free Range Studios. The heavy lifting is done by WordPress. I really love it as a CMS.
It’s Game Time, Obama: A quickie campaign site (built in WordPress) to encourage the Obama administration to take more action on climate change.
Earthfire Institute: Another large WordPress managed site featuring plenty of fanciness. As and organization Earthfire is doing very interesting work in offering profound interactions between people and wild animals.
Covering Copenhagen: A WordPress-powered information clearinghouse to assist journalists covering the Copenhagen climate talks.
No Impact Project: A beautiful and truly fun project done in tandem with Free Range Studios. WordPress, of course. The site features geographic event management (by the amazing Dylan Kuhn), inline ajax-based content management, and user-contributed content.