Breadcrumb NavXT 7.3.1

This is the first, and hopefully only, bug fix release of the 7.2 branch of Breadcrumb NavXT. This release features three bug fixes. Two bugs involving the new behavior of $force when used on breadcrumb trails called within the loop were fixed. The first caused the incorrect template to be used when $force was set to false. The second bug was the $force parameter was not always passed into the bcn_breadcrumb_trail::fill() function. Lastly, an incorrect translation textdomain within adminKit was fixed.

-John Havlik

Breadcrumb NavXT 7.3.0

Holy revamped block Batman! Introduced originally in 6.3.0, the Breadcrumb Trail block has been rewritten in 7.3.0 to have feature parity with the Breadcrumb NavXT widget. This includes the ability to set the breadcrumb output order, output format, and whether or not the breadcrumbs are linked. Additionally, basic styling support via the editor was added.

On the bugfix front, the settings export/import function was updated to fix issues with handling boolean settings. Previously, if a boolean had a default value of ‘true’ it’s value would get lost in the export/import process. The recently introduced $outer_template parameter for the bcn_display() functions now actually works (it accidentally was dropped). display_json_ld() now produces unescaped Unicode JSON, which is easier to read (and given JSON is supposed to be Unicode text, escaping Unicode didn’t make sense). Lastly, a couple of data sanity checks are performed to reduce PHP warnings and errors when 3rd party code breaks the WordPress API.

-John Havlik

Customizing the Separator Based on Position Within Breadcrumb Trail

With Breadcrumb NavXT 7.0, updates to the internals of the plugin added support for more than a single dimension for the breadcrumb trail, allowing portions of the plugin to be cleaned up. As a consequence, non-hierarchical terms now are separated by an actual separator that is controllable. While this separator was not exposed in the settings page, Breadcrumb NavXT 7.2 introduced the bcn_display_separator filter which allows us to control the breadcrumb separator.

The combination of these two features allows new breadcrumb trails that were only possible with lists and CSS in the past. Which, while a valid method, can be a little clunky.

An Example

Suppose the site design requires changing the last separator for non-hierarchical terms (e.g. tags) from the default , to & resulting in a breadcrumb trail for an example post to look like:

Home > Blog > Tag 1, Tag 2 & Tag 3 > Awesome Post

To accomplish this, the bcn_display_separator filter can be used to dynamically replace the separator. Below is an example implementation that does just that:

add_filter('bcn_display_separator', my_bcn_separator, 10, 4);
function my_bcn_separator($separator, $position, $last_position, $depth)
{
    //On the 2nd level and lower, change the last separator to an ampersand
    if($depth > 1 && $position == $last_position - 1)
    {
        return ' & ';
    }
    return $separator;
}

This code will, for any breadcrumb that is beyond the first dimension/level (indicated by $depth) set the separator to & before the final breadcrumb in that dimension/level. Using this code is straightforward, just place it in a site specific plugin (and activate the site specific plugin if it isn’t already active). Naturally, the example code can be modified to use a different separator and to target different positions within the breadcrumb trail, should that be required.

-John Havlik

Breadcrumb NavXT Menu Magic 2.3

Introducing Breadcrumb NavXT Menu Magic 2.3. This release changes the way the menu used for the breadcrumb trail is selected. Since this plugin’s inception, there has been a “Use Menu” setting under the Menu Magic section of the Breadcrumb NavXT settings page. Starting with version 2.3, this setting has been deprecated. In its place, a new menu location is now registered by Menu Magic, the Breadcrumb NavXT Menu Magic Menu location.

Now, to select the menu for Breadcrumb NavXT to use for generating the breadcrumb trail, visit the WordPress Menu editor. Select the menu you wish to use, and near the bottom of the page in the Menu Settings, make sure for the Display location “Breadcrumb NavXT Menu Magic Menu” is checked.

Lastly, some changes were made to the admin licensing manger. Several of the response messages were previously incorrect and have been fixed. Additionally, a “force key deactivation” method for situations where the site has been migrated to a new URL and key deactivation fails was added.

Users with valid and activated license keys should receive an update notification within the WordPress dashboard and be able to use the update mechanism to update (just like with any plugin in the WordPress.org repository). If you run into any issues, please open a support ticket.

-John Havlik

Breadcrumb NavXT 7.2.0

Holy network setting page updates Batman! This version features several improvements to the Breadcrumb NavXT settings page for multisite/network mode WordPress installs. Settings that may be overridden by network wide settings are now individually identified. On the fixes front, the help menu works again in the network settings page, as does the settings import/export/reset form.

Beyond the network settings page, PHP8.1 support has been improved. Additionally, the source of PHP errors caused by unexpected members of the WP_Post_Types array has been fixed. On the new feature front, a new filter, bcn_display_separator was introduced.

Lastly, the behavior of the settings reset form has changed, it now clears the database option rather than storing the defaults. This is now consistent with the behavior introduced in 7.0 where only non-default settings values are saved.

-John Havlik