[wp-hackers] new menu management 3.0

[Andrew Nacin]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 10:10 AM, Mike Schinkel <mikeschinkel at newclarity.net
> wrote:

> > I agree with Japh that if I setup a top-level menu it would be nice to
> *have
> > the option* to tell the menu to auto-populate the children (and keep them
> > updated when a new child is created).
> > The user could still go to the menu page and use the nice drag and drop
> > interface to remove or add items... but the basic structure would be
> > populated automatically.
>
> Sounds like a pretty trivial plugin to write prior to when (and if) such
> improvements can be made to the core.
>
> Best place for these suggestions, btw, are as tickets on
> http://core.trac.wordpress.org/


Just to address the feature request here. I think it's perfectly valid, and
I'm bummed we couldn't get it into 3.0. We did get auto-add top pages in,
because the UX and UI was straightforward.

However, dealing with the UX and UI surrounding auto-adding children was
more difficult, and after lengthy conversations (and attempted patches) with
some of the other devs, we just couldn't nail down what would be appropriate
functionality in order to make it happen in time. (I won't get into it here
unless someone wants to here it, but it is much more complicated than you'd
think.) We keep saying menus are just v1. We would definitely accept this
feature request for consideration for v2 of menus, and I'm pretty sure
there's already a ticket for it.

While building the menus system, I've seen various statements of "I guess
I'll just end up using other plugins and wp_list_pages/wp_page_menu then".
In some instances, they were legitimate weaknesses and we adjusted. But
often, wp_list_pages is far more suitable for the use case being described
anyway. ErinDS points out she will continue to use it and some plugins for
some clients, and that's perfectly valid.

Nacin