Anatomy of a Magazine Style Premium WordPress Theme - Part 3.1 “Navigation – Second Level Menu”
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Magazine style themes overcome this limitation (or at least they should if they are charging you money) by using one or more of the following:
- Second level navigation
- Conditional menus
- Intelligent dropdown/slidedown menus
A good example of a magazine style themes using second level navigation to include category pages is WP Magazine and both archives and categories as dropdowns is Solostream 3. Both the themes are designed by Solostream.
An example of a magazine style theme using conditional menus is my own semi-magazine style theme Black+White, see the demo and click on either [Support] or [Archive] and a Submenu will show up in the navigation bar to the right.
The third and the most sort after navigation style is the intelligent dropdown or more appropriately “slidedown” menu using CSS and JavaScript (for IE). Examples include News by Bence Kucsan and the very popular Revolution by Brian Gardner.
There is no one method that is better than the other, it’s a matter of personal preference and site specific needs.
How do we add these Functions to our Existing Designs?
Since our tutorials are running longer than expected, we will focus on just the “second level” menu in this section.
February 12th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Awesome! I’ve never really been that technically-oriented, but you’re breaking down how these themes are made makes it so much easier to digest, thanks so much!
February 12th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
@ CleverSage
Thank you. I am glad I could be of some use
February 15th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Is it easy to customize the header on this theme w/ an image? I love it, but would like to plug in a logo instead of the text. Great work!
February 15th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Also - I notice that the posts are short and then say “Read More.” Does it only display a certain number of characters and then readers will need to click? Is that an option that can be turned off so that the entire post can be displayed?
February 16th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
I love how you provide some code and explain the variations.
For instance, the navigation in the header and the template ttag and code your provided.