Differentiating between custom & default menus

• Default: Themes, Media, Options, etc.
• Custom: Added by plugin

Requirements

• Obvious that the page is added to default or custom menu
• When defining page
• Unambiguous
• Minimize additional text required to indicate default or custom

Implementation (Options)

1. Reserved words
• Maintain list (array) or reserved menu names that match default menus
• Example: [theme, media, ...]
• Menus will not be created if they match a reserved word (e.g. an existing default menu)
• + Simple: No overlap
• - Must maintain parity with default WP menus
• If WP adds/modifies menu names, conflicts may occur
• Not future-proof
2. Check function name
• Existence of add_{name}_page() function = WP Menu
• Ex: add_media_page() adds page to default Media menu
• On demand + cached check
• Check for function when page added, add to static array for future checks
• + Simple
• - Restricted naming of custom menus
• Cannot use reserved words
• May create conflict if new menu added to future version of WP that matches custom name
3. Wrap default names
• Wrap name of menu in characters to indicate default menu
• Ex: [theme] indicates that a page should be added to the WP Theme menu (not a custom menu named “theme”)
• + Clear/obvious default menu is desired
• - Requires additional characters to define
• + Allows same names for custom menus (prefixed anyway)
• + WP menus will get custom methods anyway
• Wraps core method and passes wrapped name
• + Only used internally for most part
• + Pages can be added to WP menus even if custom methods are not defined (e.g. in a future version of WP with new menus)