Alternative plugin for page (and menu) order management

[nv1962]

I see the <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/my-page-order/">My Page Order</a> plugin is mentioned as a tool to manage the sort order of pages (which drives the order of items in the menu). I haven’t tried it, but trust it does its job well.

However, there’s another plugin which does the same (it also offers easy and very fast AJAX drag-and-drop sort ordering) but on top of it also allows to "hide" pages from appearing in menus (without altering their real visibility on the site – it’s just hiding them from appearing in menus) and also has a quick link to edit the content of pages: it’s called <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pagemash/">PageMash</a&gt;.

I have it running on a few WP2.7 sites, one of them with the Multi-level Navigation plugin, and it’s smokin’! From what I can tell it’s just a drop-in – install the plugin and it just works. I thought I’d mention it here for the takers in search of an alternative for menu item order management…

[malcalevak]

I actually use pageMash myself and like it a lot. I didn’t even realize it had the ability to hide items, and never thought to look. I’d just gotten it for ordering purposes shortly before I discovered the multi-level navigation plugin and started contributing.

I haven’t tried the My Page Order plugin myself either.

Both appear to be extremely popular, though pageMash slightly more so (more downloads recently and a higher number of raters and rating). pageMash also (according to the WP pages) appears to support a wider range of WP releases.

If anybody has tried both out they should share their thoughts.

[nv1962]

Just to clarify, in excess perhaps: the pageMash option of hiding items <b>only</b> in menus is <b>not</b> the same as WP’s built-in option to yank visibility of a page "out there" from visitors who are not logged in. The pageMash "hide" option is functionally equivalent to the <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exclude-pages/">Exclude Pages</a> plugin, which does just that – offer an extra check box on the page edit page to hide it from appearing in menus, but not from visibility as a page itself.

[imported_Ryan]

Thanks for the info. I briefly tested a couple of these sorts of plugins recently to find a plugin to recommend for users of the Multi-level Navigation plugin to control their WP Pages. There is a link to the My Page Order plugin in the new admin page I think (either that or my test version, can’t remember), but I’m happy to recommend whatever you guys think works best with it.

Even better would be to implement that sort of functionality directly into the existing plugin ” title=”Smiley” />

[nv1962]

That’s why I posted the alternative here, as it’s mentioned in the docs of Multi-level Navigation. One additional benefit of pageMash over My Page Order is that in pageMash you can select and rearrange sub-(sub-sub-sub…)pages directly and move them around to a different hierarchy level or parent page even, without having to select a parent page first (i.e., moving to a different parent or level can’t be done via My Page Order) which works much, much faster if you have many pages and/or more complex menu nesting. Just a matter of convenience; I’ve now tried out My Page Order also, and I do like that it’s so lightweight.

Edited to add: Ryan, it’d be wonderful to have that functionality added directly to the Multi-level Navigation plugin – but if there’s a neat plugin that takes care of arranging both the pages’ order and the pages’ hierarchy, why bother? To me it seems that both plugins complement each other magnificently! Perhaps a conditional "hook" or link to the settings of that other plugin (if installed & active) would be nice, but… That’d be enabling sheer lazyness!

[imported_Ryan]

[quote:2ljeoydy]… it’d be wonderful to have that functionality added directly to the Multi-level Navigation plugin – but if there’s a neat plugin that takes care of arranging both the pages’ order and the pages’ hierarchy, why bother? To me it seems that both plugins complement each other magnificently![/quote:2ljeoydy]

I’d rather avoid expecting users to add extra plugins just to improve my own. Installing/updating a single plugin is a lot easier for people than using two.

Having said that, this is fairly low on the priority list at this stage. If I can figure out a way to integrate the plugin code of one of these other plugins into the Multi-level Navigation Plugin I might try that, but only if I think I can maintain it/offer bug fixes. If the code looks too confusing or difficult to maintain then I’ll leave it to the other developer … or ask them to contribute to this project.

These are just ideas though, will probably not end up happening in the end as time is always an issue.

[Velojet]

Just installed pageMash – love it already! Now I can uninstall the Exclude Pages from Navigation plugin.

And here’s a feature of pageMash that I don’t think has been mentioned here but that I for one will find highly useful: the immediate access to the page ID on the flyout.

Thanks a bunch, Joel!

(Oh and thanks enormously to Ryan, if you’re still listening, for your Multi-level Navigation Plugin – absolutely superb!)

John V

[imported_Ryan]

I’ll have a good look at the way the PageMash plugin works before I do another overhaul of the Multi-level Navigation plugin. It would be nice if I can implement the same features directly into our own plugin.

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