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  4. Add Descendants As Submenu Items
Add Descendants As Submenu Items icon

Add Descendants As Submenu Items

Automatically all of a nav menu item's descendants as submenu items. Designed for pages but will work with any hierarchical post type or taxonomy …

By Alex Mills·Menu·Free
5(20 reviews)
·2.0K+ active installs·Updated 3 years ago
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As of April 2026, Add Descendants As Submenu Items is a WordPress menu plugin with 2.0K+ active installations and a 5/5 rating from 20 reviews. It has been downloaded 33K+ times in total. Requires WordPress false+ and PHP false+. Available on WordPress.org since 2011. Last updated 3 years ago — may have compatibility concerns. Downloads are down 7% this week. Top alternative: Admin Menu Editor.

5/520 reviews
2.0K+active installs
33K+total downloads
15 yearssince 2011

Overview

When adding a page, category, or any hierarchical custom post type or taxonomy to your navigation menu (Appearance → Menus), this plugin allows you to optionally automatically add all descendants (children) of that menu item as submenu items.

In short, you’ll no longer have to manually maintain submenus when you add a new child page to your site.

Read full description on WordPress.org

Screenshots

Ratings & Reviews

520 reviews
5 ★
20
4 ★
0
3 ★
0
2 ★
0
1 ★
0

Recent Reviews

Problem solver
by Dominik·3 years ago

Amazing product to add all child categories to the menu (subcategories). It works in the fly!

A must have plug in!
by carlosvai·3 years ago

I really can’t believe WP doesn’t have a function like this built in.
This plug in is amazing! I have a lot of categories in my menus, and we all know just how awful and difficult it is to add an item manually.

This plug in saved me a LOT of time and I can’t be grateful enough.

One caveat to all who try it, if you are creating new categories, make sure you have at least one post or page linked to it or else it won’t appear.

And another thing, the items will appear in the frontend menu, not in the menu admin page. So be aware of that and test simply hitting F5 in the home page.

Also amazing support, I had problems figuring out the issues I detailed above, and they were extremely helpful via the support board, so kudos to that too.

Thanks again for this lifesaver plug in!

Still Works with WP 5.1
by flyingkites·7 years ago·1 reply

Still works with WordPress 5.1 for Pages in menu. You need to add the Parent to the menu then save. Then edit again to see the checkbox to check the new flag.

I was wanting to use it for WordPress Product Categories but it does not work for them (probably never did?). Only the parent shows for me. Be good if it did.

Wow! Should be a part of default WP.
by mlipenk·7 years ago

I have a very large site with over a thousand pages. There are many pages in sections and subsections, sometimes to four levels, used in conjunction with main sections. To get what I need for a menu, sometimes I have to use Custom Menu Wizard. But in doing so, I have to create some very large, tiered, non-auto menus manually… sometimes in the hundreds of pages. If a user adds a page or re-orders a page, I’d have to go back into the menu used by Custom Menu Wizard and add/edit accordingly to reflect those changes. With this plugin and a simple checkbox I’ve cut the number of actual necessary menu items to a fraction of before, AND the user can make changes as they please. What a great plug in! It should be part of the default WordPress Appearance menu creator.

  • This topic was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by mlipenk.
Merece 1000 estrelas
by fabsmoss·8 years ago

Estou usando a versão 4.9.4 do WordPress e funciona perfeito.

Download Trends

Today: 2Yesterday: 3This week: 28Period total: 2K

Compatibility

WordPressfalse+ requiredTested up to 6.0.11
PHPfalse+ required

Version Adoption

v1.2
100.0%

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Frequently Asked Questions

Changelog

Version 1.2.2

  • Fix fatal error in customizer when using taxonomies in menus.
  • Add POT file for translations.
View full changelog on WordPress.org

Contributors

Alex MillsAlex Mills
Plugin Info
Version
1.2.2
Last Updated
Sep 6, 2022
WP Requires
false+
Tested Up To
6.0.11
PHP Requires
false+
Active Installs
2.0K+
Downloads
33K+
Added
Sep 5, 2011
Business
Free

Tags

menuchildrennav menudescendants

Developer

A
Alex Mills
5 plugins1.0M+ total installs
View all plugins →

Quick Compare

Add Descendants As Submenu Items vs Admin Menu Editor→Add Descendants As Submenu Items vs Max Mega Menu→Add Descendants As Submenu Items vs Menu Icons by ThemeIsle→

Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Analysis and metrics by PluginSift.