Multiple food categories displayed under one menu

[Joanna Pleta]

Hi Bill,

Hoping you could help me with this. Is there a way to have two food categories presented under one menu page, without having to break them out into submenus?

My site is here: http://congee-wong.com/

For example, if I wanted to have the Rice/Fried Rice, Rice in Hot Pot and Rice Noodle Roll categories all under one menu page called “Rice” (without breaking them out into dropdown submenus), how can I do it so that I can retain the category formatting for each – i.e. still have the headers “Rice/Fried Rice”, “Rice in Hot Pot” and “Rice Noodle Roll” and have the menu items display under each, but have this all presented in one page?

Sorry if this is confusing, but please let me know if you can help.

[Bill Robbins]

Joanna,

Thank you for your business first of all and great question. In the demo, we use what are called “shortcodes” to add in the menu group listings. That way it’s possible to have more than one group listed together.

First you’ll want to create a page for your menu. Then find the spot in the page where you’d like to add the first menu group. To do that, just paste this code:

 [menu group="burgers"] 

where you’d like to have a menu group displayed. Replace burgers with the “slug” of the menu group you’d like to display. You can find the slug by going to the Food section and selecting “Menu Groups.” The slug will be listed next to each group.

You can use this to create pages that have multiple menu groups per page.   In the menu page in the demo, we use the menu group shortcode to list multiple menu groups per page.  We place a title above each group so people know what they’re looking at.  To divide each group, we’ve also placed a divider (a horizontal rule or hr).  To add the divider, find the spot where you’d like to place one.  Then click the “text” tab at the top of your editor.  Then paste this where you’d like to have the line:

You can then switch back to the “visual” editor and continue writing your page.

If you have any questions or trouble adding multiple groups to a page, let me know.

Thanks again,
Bill

[Joanna Pleta]

Hi Bill,

Thanks so much for your quick response, this worked perfectly!

I do have a couple more questions, if that’s okay with you:

1) What is the optimal size for the background photo? I am getting a black bar at the top of my page, which I’d like to get rid of.

2) Do you have any tips on how I can get the page and photos to load faster?

3) Is it possible to have the menu sections not load as a separate page, when it’s clicked? i.e. have the menu bar + background always be present with only the menu ‘window’ changing – similar to how http://www.jean-georges.com/ is built.

4) For the homepage only, is there a way to have the site description be on the left, instead of the right (i.e. on the browser tabs)?

Thank you so much, and looking forward to hearing from you!
Joanna

[Bill Robbins]

Joanna,

Glad that worked out for you. Let’s try to find answers for your other questions.

1. Best Image Sizes: I would generally suggest making your background images about 1400 pixels wide by 900 pixels tall or so. For the “quality” of your JPEG’s I would recommend setting that to 40 if you have that option. The overall dimensions are important, but the filesize (in kb) is what will really determine how long they take to load.

If you’ll update to the newest version of the theme, it has an option to turn off the header bar. You can download the update from our downloads section and then install it like you would a new theme inside your WordPress site. The option to turn off the header bar is at the bottom of the styling tab in the update.

2. You could also use a caching program like WP Super Cache. That will speed up the creation of your pages and can also compress items so they load faster. On my site when the plugin is turned on, it takes about 750 milliseconds for a page to load. When it’s off, it takes about 2.7 seconds. That would be a good place to start.

3. You could probably make the pages change that way, but it would take a good bit of customization to make it happen. If you update to the newest version of the theme, you could use a plugin called Advanced AJAX Page Loader which can load your content without loading a new page. That’s probably the simplest and least expensive option.

4. I would disable the built-in SEO (you can do that on the first tab in the theme options page) and install a very useful plugin called WordPress SEO by Yoast. It’ll give you lots of control over your page titles and descriptions.

If you have any questions, let me know,
Bill

[Joanna Pleta]

Hi Bill,

Thanks so much for the speedy support, as always! Is there a way for me to install the new theme without affecting my content?

Thanks,
Joanna

[Bill Robbins]

Great question there. What I would do is go to the Appearance section and select Options Import/Export and make an export of your theme options just in case. Then install the new theme.

It won’t affect your posts, pages and menu items and shouldn’t affect your theme options too. If you have any trouble, you can always roll back to the version of the theme you’re currently using.

If you run into any issues, let me know.

Happy updating,
Bill

[Joanna Pleta]

Thanks so much, Bill! Everything worked perfectly. I’m still having a bit of trouble with the Advanced AJAX Page Loader, so if you have any more reccos on that front, would appreciate it.

But I really appreciate your support – and this theme is great!

[Bill Robbins]

Joanna,

Glad the other items worked for you. With the AJAX Page Loader and the WP Super Cache plugin, have you cleared out the cache since you activated the plugin? Sometimes with the caching plugin, your changes are not visible at first. You can clear out the cache manually on the first tab in the Super Cache settings page.

Hopefully that’s all it is. Let me know if you still have trouble.

I’m glad you’re enjoying the theme too 🙂

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