10/05/2011

Simple Retail Menus version 2.0 Released

I updated the plugin with a couple of minor but useful changes.

The first change is that you can now add a menu to the Sidebar of your WP site by adding the menu shortcode to the Sidebar Text Widget.

The second update is a change in the shortcode markup. Previously the menu was designated in the shortcode by the name of the menu, which limited the characters you could use in the menu name. I’ve changed this to use the database ID of the menu, which is a little more robust and will add more flexibility to the plugin.

You can still use ‘name’ in the shortcode, but going forward, using ‘id’ is the better way to do things.

You might also notice a more prominent reminder that I do like donations… they encourage me to keep developing this plugin :)

09/06/2011

Simple Retail Menus Custom Class Example

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If you want to do some custom styling for your menus, here is an example of acustom CSS class that can be applied to a SRM menu. To use this, add it to your WordPress template stylesheet.

You also need to set the class option in your Shortcode to include class=”custom-menu”.

Of course, you can edit and rename these style to suit your application.
(more…)

07/05/2011

Simple Retail Menus 1.1.1 now available. Please Update!

As soon as WordPress 3.2 was released an issue showed up with SRM that caused the menu item list fields in the Admin view to be disabled, and upon hitting “Update” the menu could be wiped out. Ahhh!

With a quick change to the javascript code I think I have that problem fixed in version 1.1.1.

PLEASE UPDATE!

06/28/2011

Simple Retail Menus v1.1 supports HTML tags!

Updates are coming fast. I realized the great benefit of being able to include links and images in the menu data, so I rewrote the display php functions to allow HTML tags and entities to pass through and render in the browser. It was a simple change and something I probably should have done from the start, but as is probably true of the birth of most plugins, I wrote this one for a specific application with a specific set of requirements which did not include links and images.

So if you are updated to v1.1, you can put things like <img src="" />, <a href="">link</a>, style="", <strong>, <em>, etc. in any of the menu fields.

A few things I have in mind for future updates:

- Adding alerts before deletion of menus & items

- Using slug text rather than the menu name in the shortcode. This would give users more freedom with menu names without breaking the plugin.

- Adding multisite support.

- Allowing users to define the number of columns in a menu. Currently you are locked into the three columns: Item, Description, Value. If you could create a menu with as many columns as you want, then the sky is the limit for uses of this plugin.

All in good time…

06/15/2011

Simple Retail Menus WP Plugin now Available

I successfully submitted my first WordPress plugin. Simple Retail Menus is now available for download from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Here is an example menu of items created with the plugin. As you can see, it’s useful for more than just food, service and retail lists.

Cars

I've owned a few terrible cars in my time

1968 VW Bugbroken$400
1974 VW ThingCool but loud$3000
1961 Morris MiniVery Small$2300
1968 Austin Americajust a big mini$999
1981 Puma GTICool looking but terrible6000

Cars

I've owned a few terrible cars in my time

1968 VW Bugbroken$400
1974 VW ThingCool but loud$3000
1961 Morris MiniVery Small$2300
1968 Austin Americajust a big mini$999
1981 Puma GTICool looking but terrible6000