MenuBuilder

First stable release of MenuBuilder for Craft CMS 5.

Added

Menus

• Create and manage multiple named menus with handles, descriptions, enable/disable status, and ordering.
• Free edition supports one menu; Pro supports unlimited menus.
• Configure maximum menu nesting depth from 1–10.
• Restrict menus to specific sites.
• Configure menu CSS classes and validated HTML attributes.
• Duplicate complete menus, including their settings and menu items.
• Reorder menus using drag-and-drop or keyboard controls.

Menu Items

• Eight menu item types:

  • Entry
  • Category
  • Asset
  • Custom URL
  • Anchor
  • Non-clickable heading
  • Separator
  • Dynamic navigation
• Live element-link resolution per request and site.
• Configurable fallback behavior for unavailable linked elements.
• New-tab targets with automatic rel="noopener" handling.
• Preset and custom rel attributes.
• Icons, badges, descriptions, images, featured status, CSS classes, HTML IDs, and custom HTML attributes.
• Accessibility fields including ARIA labels and title attributes.
• Enable/disable and duplicate menu items, including their complete subtrees.
• Custom fields for menu items using Craft field layouts, including Matrix and relational fields.
• Field conditions and multiple field-layout tabs are supported.

Visibility, Mega Menus, Mobile & Dynamic Navigation

• Visibility rules for:

  • Logged-in users
  • Logged-out users
  • User groups
  • Sites
  • Date ranges
  • Environments
  • Always-visible items
• Combine visibility rules using AND logic.
• Mega menus with 1–6 columns and configurable child-item placement.
• Mobile-specific menu presentation settings without maintaining a separate mobile menu.

• Dynamic navigation generated from:

  • Entries by section
  • Categories by group
  • Assets by volume
• Dynamic navigation limits and supported ordering are validated server-side.

Control Panel

• Drag-and-drop hierarchical menu editor.
• Full keyboard alternatives for menu and item reordering.
• Slide-out item editor with full-page fallback.
• Quick-add panel.
• Search and filtering.
• Bulk enable, disable, and delete actions.
• Visual indicators for children, disabled items, and mega menus.
• Link-health indicators for internal links.
• Menu-wide link-health summary with direct navigation to affected items.
• Preview screen for saved menus across selected site, audience, region, and device settings.
• Preview of rendered markup.

Developer Features

• Twig API:

  • craft.menuBuilder.get()
  • .breadcrumbs()
  • .getGroup()
  • .getItem()
  • .iconAsset()
• MenuBuilderNode as the stable public navigation object.
• Breadcrumbs based on the menu hierarchy rather than URL segments.
• Optional Twig macros for trees and breadcrumbs.
• Optional navigation asset for enhanced mega-menu keyboard behavior.
• Navigation field for integrating MenuBuilder navigation with Craft field layouts.
• GraphQL queries for MenuBuilder navigation.
• REST API endpoints for read-only navigation access.
• REST API support for ETags, CORS allowlists, and rate limiting.
• Extension events for registering custom link types and visibility rules.

Editions

• Free and Pro editions using Craft's commercial plugin licensing system.
• Free edition supports one menu.
• Pro edition supports unlimited menus.
• All other MenuBuilder features are available in both editions.
• Edition limits are enforced server-side through the menu service.
• Existing menus and data are preserved when Pro access expires or is downgraded.
• Menu rendering and existing menu editing remain available after downgrade.
• Commercial licensing uses Craft's licensing infrastructure; MenuBuilder does not maintain its own license system.

Performance

• Resolved menu data is cached per menu, site, and configuration version.
• Visibility rules and active-state resolution are evaluated for each request.
• Targeted cache invalidation is used for menu, item, element, container, and site changes.
• Draft and revision saves do not unnecessarily invalidate menu caches.
• Element links and custom-field content are batch loaded.
• Menu trees use efficient flat queries and batch loading to maintain predictable query counts.

Security

• Five MenuBuilder permissions:

  • menuBuilder:view
  • menuBuilder:create
  • menuBuilder:edit
  • menuBuilder:delete
  • menuBuilder:manageSettings
• Server-side permission enforcement for all protected actions.
• All control-panel mutations require POST requests and Craft CSRF protection.
• Control-panel actions require valid control-panel requests.
• URL, HTML attribute, ID, and CSS class validation rejects unsafe values and executable schemes.
• Custom HTML attributes are validated during saving and filtered again during rendering.
• GraphQL and REST visibility resolution is performed independently of the caller's identity to prevent cached visibility decisions from leaking between users.
• REST API request and failed-authentication rate limiting.
• Rate limiting can be controlled through the plugin's rateLimit configuration.

Accessibility

• Navigation output uses named <nav> landmarks and semantic lists.
• Active links use aria-current="page".
• Separators use semantic <hr> elements.
• New-tab links provide a hidden accessibility hint.
• Mega-menu disclosures use native <details> elements.
• Menu management provides keyboard alternatives to drag-and-drop interactions.
• Custom HTML attributes are filtered during rendering to maintain safe output.

Known Limitations

The following limitations are accepted for the 1.0.0 release:

• Menu and item save/delete events are not currently provided. MenuBuilder exposes registration events for custom link types and visibility rules.
• There is no built-in menu import/export format or command.
• Navigation fields resolve their menu for the current request's site.
• Changes driven only by Craft entry postDate or expiryDate do not trigger an immediate menu cache invalidation; cache duration determines the maximum staleness.
• Third-party element types without a built-in MenuBuilder link type are not automatically supported.
• Custom link types registered through the extension API are responsible for invalidating affected menu caches when necessary.
• Orphaned menu items are reported rather than automatically repaired.
• Preview renders saved menu data and does not simulate future time-based changes.
• Some Craft-dependent behavior requires integration testing and manual verification in addition to unit tests.

For detailed architecture, implementation decisions, API documentation, testing procedures, and release guidance, see the documentation in the docs/ directory.