It is important for you as plugin and theme author to include options setting for your users. This allows users to customize their plugins and themes according to their preference. Creating administration menus is not as easy and you should have the required skills to add administration skills and knowledge to add the menus and screens to your site. You need to create a function that contains the building code for your menu, register the menu function using action hooks or either administration menu or network depending on whether your menu is an administration or a network menu. Finally, create the HTML code for the output of the page when the menu tab is clicked on by a user.
The three steps have to be followed accordingly or your menu will be flawed. If you are a newbie, you should look for guidelines especially if you have never done this before. Even intermediate and advanced wordpress site developers make the mistake of not including especially the second step; that of registering the menu function. They then wonder why they cannot be able to use the setting tab when testing yet they forgot to register the menu function.
Having created the administration menu successfully, you need to decide where put your menu. Always put the menu where your users expect it to be. Putting the menu in another place other than this will make it difficult for the users to locate the menu especially the settings tab. The most appropriate location for the menu is on the top of the site or at the left hand side. At the same time, you need to decide whether you will have top level menu or a sub level menu.
A top level menu is one that is usually displayed as a section of its own in the administration menus. This kind of a menu has sub level menu items which provide a platform to access other settings of the menu. On the other hand, a sub level menu does not exist as a sole section in the administration menu; instead, it is a part of the existing menu and provides access to the necessary settings. Addition of either top level or sub level menus is determined by whether you need several related screens or a single screen. If you need to have multiple screens, then the top level menu is idea while the sub-level menu is idea for singular screens.
Top level menus are created automatically by wordpress when there is need. An example is when a new content that dictates the use of top level menu is added to the wordpress. If a new top level menu is created in wordpress and you do not need it, you can change the settings of the menu like putting it under a top level menu of choice in the wordpress site. You can use the several plugins that have the option of inserting a sub level menu under an existing top level menu. It is imperative to know the taxonomy of the wordpress site, menu and sub-menu options to be able to work on the wordpress site as per the guidelines.
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