One of the most cohesive elements in any WordPress blog is its pages. Many turn to WordPress for that feature which allows users to create a website look on their blog. The most common way the pages have been displayed was through itssidebar widget. For themes that have allowed it, the fairly recent Menus feature under Appearance on the Dashboard has allowed users to customize a Navigation Menu (and sometimes a sub-menu as well).
While there are a lot of features if your theme allows customization of a Navigation Menu, users could further customize their sidebar with a widget more robust than the standard Pages widget in WordPress. The Flexi Pages offers a number of features including options to select how sub-pages are displayed, options to exclude or include select pages, ability to use the widget more than once and customize the display (add title, choose sort orders, display formats, etc.).
Installation of Flexi Pages Widget
Search for Flexi Pages Widget in the Add Plugins dashboard. Install and activate according to the installation directions in the WordPress details window.
Set-up of Flexi Pages Widget
Visit Widgets in the Appearance panel. Find the Flexi Pages widgets under the Available Widgets box. Drag and drop it to the desired widget area that is part of your blog’s theme. Click the down arrow to expand the customization area.
Set-up Title
Add a title to the widget, especially if you intend to create more than one on the same sidebar with different filters. Internally it will be helpful for you to label each widget so you remember the use of the particular copy of the widget you are customizing.
Set-up Sort by
You can sort your page list in ascending or descending order by Page title, Menu order, Date created, Date modified, Page ID, Page author ID, or Page slug. Depending on what you use your pages for, this is a nice feature.
Include or Exclude Pages
Each time you use the widget you can choose to exclude or include one or more pages to display. This filter is helpful if you have a reason to show more than one widget in a sidebar.
Show Sub-pages
Users have the ability to show all sub-pages, show related sub-pages, or show strictly related sub-pages. This is handy if you have a theme with custom widget areas for pages. If they came a particular page via a search engine a widget filtering out related pages to the same page helps to target specific information to interested visitors.
Show Hierarchy
Select how many levels deep you wish to show the sub-pages.
Additional Settings
Additional settings include the ability to show the home page and date in the sidebar and the capability to show the list as a dropdown.
Remember this widget can be used more than once on a blog. If you have a number of widget areas (Primary, Secondary, Footer, etc.) you can customize each and target the traffic flow from one area of your blog to the next.
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