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Advanced Sidebar Menu icon

Advanced Sidebar Menu

v9.6.3
by Mat Lipe · 4.5 (37 reviews)

Fully automatic sidebar menus.

10K+ active installs Updated Jan 28, 2025 Tested to 6.7.2 Requires PHP 7.4.0
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Advanced Sidebar Menu

About Advanced Sidebar Menu

The Advanced Sidebar Menu plugin allows you to create fully automatic sidebar menus based on the parent/child relationship of your pages or categories. It keeps the menu clean and usable by only displaying related items and offers blocks and widgets for easy placement. The PRO version offers additional features such as customization options, accordion menu support, and priority support.

Screenshots

Advanced Sidebar Menu screenshot
Advanced Sidebar Menu screenshot
Advanced Sidebar Menu screenshot
Advanced Sidebar Menu screenshot

Frequently asked questions

What is the purpose of the Advanced Sidebar Menu plugin?
The Advanced Sidebar Menu plugin generates menus based on the parent/child relationship of your pages or categories. It keeps the menu clean and usable by only displaying related items.
What are the available widgets and blocks for displaying menus?
The Advanced Sidebar Menu plugin provides the 'Advanced Sidebar - Pages' widget or block, as well as the 'Advanced Sidebar - Categories' widget or block.
What are the features of the plugin?
The features of the Advanced Sidebar Menu plugin include page and category menu Gutenberg blocks, page and category menu widgets, the ability to order pages by date, title, or page order, the ability to exclude pages or categories, and more.
What are the options for the Page Menu?
The options for the Page Menu include displaying the highest level parent page, displaying the menu when there is only the parent page, ordering pages by date, title, or page order, excluding pages, always displaying child pages, and selecting the levels of child pages to display.
What are the options for the Category Menu?
The options for the Category Menu include displaying the highest level parent category, displaying the menu when there is only the parent category, displaying categories on single posts, displaying each single post's category in a new widget/block or in the same list, excluding categories, always displaying child categories, and selecting the levels of categories to display.

Changelog

9.6.3

  • Introduced advanced-sidebar-menu.blocks.preview.attributes filter.
  • Improved security of node packages.
  • Improved deployment workflow.
  • Tested to WordPress Core 6.7.1.

9.6.2

  • Improved block style handling during previews.
  • Disabled HTML editor for blocks.
  • Introduced is_server_side_render helper method on block abstract.
  • Improved isolation of passing block attributes to widget arguments.
  • Fixed double up of block shadow in previews.
  • Tested to WordPress Core 6.7.0.

9.6.1

  • Introduce JEST unit testings for the basic version.
  • Improved the automated testing suite.
  • Improved deployment workflows.
  • Fixed sourcemap generation on production builds.
  • Tested to WordPress Core 6.6.2.

9.6.0

  • Introduced Widget/WidgtId and Widget/WithWidgetId interfaces.
  • Introduced Widget/WidgetIdAccess and Widget/Checbox traits.
  • Improved debug handling in the browser.
  • Introduced advancedSidebarMenuDebug helper function.
  • Added support for PHP based translations.
  • Fixed ‘current-menu-ancestor’ CSS class on category menus.
  • Dropped support for PHP 7.2 in favor of 7.4+.
  • Dropped support for React 17 in favor of 18+.
  • Bumped required PRO version to 9.4.0.
  • Bumped minimum required WordPress version to 6.2.0.
  • Tested to WordPress Core 6.6.0.

9.5.2

  • Provided unique HTML ids for category widgets with multiple top level categories.
  • Continued work on converting the Menu_Abstract to an interface.
  • Fixed click handling of menu previews in the block editor.
  • Fixed fatal error when is_plugin_active is not available.
  • Implemented PHPStan array shapes for block classes.
  • Improved falsey conditions in the Utils::is_empty method.
  • Officially added support for PHP 8.3.
  • Tested to WordPress Core 6.5.3.

9.5.1

  • Improved the plugin readme.
  • Improved the translation headers.
  • Improved the List_Pages cache.
  • Added support to live previews using a playground blueprint.
  • Tested to WordPress Core 6.5.0.

9.5.0

  • Introduced is_truthy utility method.
  • Introduced get_post_type_label utility method.
  • Introduced is_empty utility method.
  • Introduced Menu interface and began promoting Menu_Abstract to it.
  • Introduced Utils_Interface to guarantee the existence of shared methods.
  • Included classic editor state in debug information.
  • Fixed the missing dashicons shown in the Preview component inside iframes.
  • Fixed PHPCS minimum_wp_version config.
  • Switched widget classes to trait/interface based structure.
  • Introduced full array shapes for widget settings.
  • Improved default widget settings.
  • Prevented conflicts with theme styles and widget fields.
  • Fixed excluding of child items if the top level parent is excluded.
  • Converted deprecated block registering args to WordPress 6.1 version.

9.4.3

  • Updated all block’s api version to 3.
  • Updated Node to version 20.
  • Updated Yarn to version 4.
  • Tested to WordPress Core 6.4.3.
  • Required PRO version 9.2.0+.

9.4.2

  • Fixed translation loading in blocks.
  • Improved CSS and JS linting.
  • Introduced ‘advanced-sidebar-menu/block-wrapper-attributes’ filter.
  • Fully support PHP 8.2.

9.4.1

  • Dropped support for PHP 7.0 in favor of 7.2.
  • Bumped minimum supported WordPress version to 6.0.0.
  • Improved block preview link handling.
  • Required PRO version 9.1.8+.

9.3.4

  • Passed block attributes and supports to JavaScript as well as PHP.
  • Fixed issues with block previews in WordPress 6.4.
  • Fixed issues with widget transformations in WordPress 6.4.
  • Improved styles of legacy widget’s info panel.
  • Updated PHPStan level to 8 and fixed all warnings.

9.3.3

  • Fixed issue with blocks loading in WordPress 6.4.
  • Tested to WordPress 6.4.1.

9.3.2

  • Fixed deployignore configurations.

9.3.1

  • Improved select input styles in widget settings.
  • Introduced ‘advanced-sidebar-menu/scripts/admin-scripts’ action.
  • Aligned supported browsers with WordPress core.
  • Updated the Node to version 18.
  • Fixed all ESLint and Stylelint notices.
  • Loosely a requirement for PRO version 9.3.0.

9.3.0

  • Modernized legacy widget JS and CSS into the Webpack structure.
  • Reduce bundle size of admin resources.
  • Renamed CSS files with the “advanced-sidebar-menu” prefix.
  • Added support for collapsing info panels on page builders and theme customizers.
  • Updated the block apiVersion to “3”.
  • Tested to WordPress 6.3.2.
  • Greatly improved widgets styles in Beaver Builder and Elementor.

9.2.1

  • Introduced transform legacy widgets to blocks prompts.
  • Moved configurations to the root of the plugin and general modernization.
  • Made “Go PRO” callouts more tasteful and less intrusive.
  • Improved styles of the info panels in widgets and blocks.
  • Improved styles of buttons and fields in Beaver Builder.
  • Updated WP-PHPCS to version 3 and fixed all warnings.

9.1.0

  • Separated the exclude pages/categories field into a filterable component.
  • Updated links to various documentation.
  • Added default values to most block attributes.
  • Updated block attribute TS definitions to accurately reflect default values.
  • Updated TS to version 5.
  • Updated PHPCS scanning to version 3 of WP PHPCS standards.
  • Loosely update the minimum requirement for PRO to version 9.2.0.

9.0.11

  • Changed default limit of child pages to 200 instead of 100.
  • Simplified and improved the List_Pages::parse_args method.
  • Added links to documentation in the plugins list.
  • Tested to WordPress core 6.3.1.

9.0.10

  • Fixed compatibility with Jetpack widget visibility.
  • Included the screen and section information in ErrorBoundary data.
  • Improved static analysis testing.
  • Improved unit testing for WordPress 5.8.
  • Tested to WordPress core 6.3.0.

9.0.9

  • Fixed conflict with Stackable WordPress plugin in the theme customizer.
  • Improved block script reliability.
  • Improved handling of Elementor previews.
  • Improved error boundary informational messages.
  • Removed conflicts with POST method requests.

9.0.8

  • Disabled legacy widgets by default see docs.
  • Update browser list support.
  • Improved the widget/block transformation logic and types.
  • Removed dangling WordPress version < 5.6 requirements.
  • Tested to WordPress core 6.2.2.

9.0.7

  • Fixed data-level on category menus larger than 3 levels.
  • Included classic widgets flag in debug information.
  • Required PRO version 9.1.2+.

9.0.6

  • Improved extendability by removing all private access modifiers.
  • Fully support PHP 8.1.
  • Tested to WordPress Core 6.2.0.

9.0.5

  • Switched to static uses of class constants to improve extendability.
  • Switched to full namespaced constants.
  • Improved PHPCS definitions.
  • Improved translations.
  • Included help information for the category widget exclude settings.

9.0.4

  • Added “current-menu-ancestor” CSS class to Pages and Categories menus.
  • Introduced “advanced-sidebar-page” CSS class to Pages menus.
  • Tested to WordPress Core 6.1.1.

9.0.3

  • Fixed issue with styles not loading in Elementor.
  • Tested to WordPress Core 6.0.2.

9.0.2

  • Moved advanced-sidebar-menu CSS class to block widget wraps.
  • Introduced isScreen helper to make screen conditionals cleaner.
  • Included “Display each single post’s categories” option on the customizer screen.
  • Included PHP version in debug information.
  • Improved readme.

9.0.0

Full release notes.

  • Introduced Gutenberg blocks.
  • Improved translations.
  • Improved Elementor support.
  • Removed all deprecated functionality.
  • Required PRO version 9.0.0+.
  • Required WordPress Core 5.8.0+.
  • Drop support for PHP 5.6 if favor of PHP 7.0+.
  • Numerous bug fixes.

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