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Widget Menuizer

By cornershop

Site Structure & Navigation / Menu Management & Mega Menus

Reviewed by Omar Dabbas

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

Widget Menuizer Review - In-Depth Analysis

Enhance WordPress menus by adding widgets and sidebar regions to create custom mega menus.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

6.69/10

User Rating

4.3/5 (based on 6+ reviews)

Active Installations

600+

Update Frequency

Below Average It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

1 / 10 (Very Low Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

Anything you can do with a widget can now be done inside your menus!

Widget Menuizer makes WordPress menus even more powerful, allowing for easy creation of custom mega menus and other fanciness without completely overhauling the menu management system into something unrecognizable.

Upon activation, navigate to the menu management screen under Appearance > Menus, and you'll find a new option for Sidebars under the familiar Pages, Posts, Links, Categories and Tags list. Here, you can view all the sidebar regions that exist in your currently-active theme. Simply check a box to add a sidebar into your menu the same way you would for any other menu item.

Once in your menu, you'll see a new option for Container Element, which specifies which HTML tag is wrapped around the sidebars that are output into the menu.

While running Widget Menuizer you also get the ability to define new sidebar regions right from the Appearance > Widgets admin screen, so you can easily create new regions just for including in your menus without having to write any custom code for your theme.

Note for users of WordPress 5.8 and above: This plugin still works for injecting regions into menus, but you need to run the Classic Widgets plugin in order to create new Widget Areas via the admin.

Important: Because it's possible to put menu widgets inside sidebars, you may see a warning notice if the sidebar region you've put in your menu contains a menu widget. This is because you may have inadvertently created a recursion: if the menu contained in your sidebar is the same menu your sidebar is placed in, you'll have an infinite loop that will do bad, bad things. So be careful.

New in 1.0 Widget Menuizer now gives site administrators the ability to control the direction widgets flow within the menu, either horizontally or vertically.

New in 0.6: Widget Menuizer now provides a way for site administrators to create new Sidebars on the fly from the Widget admin! Now you can create new sidebars for use in your menus without having to edit your theme files or use some other plugin to let you register new sidebars.

Comparing to Alternatives

Widget Menuizer offers a unique approach to integrating widgets into menus, with several alternatives available that provide similar functionalities with varying features.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Seamlessly integrates widgets into custom menus.
Simple and straightforward to use without coding.
Bridges the gap between sidebars, widgets, and menus effectively.
Highly rated by most users for functionality.
Compatible with WordPress version 5.3 and above.

Weaknesses

Limited support for themes causing sidebar display issues.
No pro version or advanced premium features.
Some users report inactive menu issues with certain themes.
Support forum lacks resolution for some problems.

User Sentiment Analysis

With a strong majority of 5-star ratings and only one negative review, users generally appreciate the plugin's simplicity and effectiveness, though some face theme compatibility issues.

Positive highlights

'Fantastic!' - lawphoto
'Simple. Perfect. Powerful.' - creativeincomeopportunities
'Instantly bridges the gap between sidebars, widgets and menus.' - creativeincomeopportunities

Common complaints

Sidebar cannot be displayed if not from the currently active theme.
Plugin generated sidebars give the same error as inactive menus.
Lack of support response for reported issues.

Weaknesses

Theme compatibility issues causing menu inactivity.
Limited troubleshooting support.
No advanced features beyond basic widget-menu integration.

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Users looking for a simple, no-frills solution to add widgets into menus without coding, especially if their theme is compatible.

Not ideal for

Users with themes that restrict sidebar display or those needing advanced menu customization and dedicated support.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version provides essential functionality to integrate widgets into menus without limitations on usage.

Final Verdict

Widget Menuizer is a highly rated plugin that effectively fills a niche by allowing widgets to be added to menus, praised for its simplicity and utility. However, it faces challenges with theme compatibility and limited support, which may affect some users' experience.

While there are several alternatives offering more features or better support, Widget Menuizer remains a solid choice for users needing straightforward widget-menu integration without extra cost or complexity.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Widget Menuizer plugin.

menus

sidebars

widgets

Screenshots

FAQ

The menu system in WordPress is a powerful but underutilized feature. “Menus” aren’t limited to just regular navigation menus, for example — they can also be great for things like social media icon links.

But the WordPress menu system is also somewhat limited, in that it generally only offers options for links to individual posts (of all types), categories and tags, in addition to a fairly generic “Link” option. If you wanted to have a nice rich dropdown menu that showed some images, descriptions, or anything beyond just a link, you had to resort to something drastic.

With Widget Menuizer, it’s easy to build “megu menus” that have whatever you want in them, because the Widget system itself is so incredibly flexible. With this plugin, you can put anything you can put into a widget into a menu — which is just about anything at all.