Admin navigation bar collapse/expand

Try clicking on one of the small >> arrows that act as separators.

No – that works only temporarily. I want them to stay open all the time. I know this sounds really silly and nitpicky but one less click would make me really happy. ??

They should stay open until the arrows are clicked again. Have you tried:

– deactivating all plugins to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s).

– switching to the Twenty Ten theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.

– resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.

Twenty Ten didn’t help, all plugins deactivated (this is a new site so there was only Hello Dolly (deleted) and Akismet (never activated)).

Clicking the arrows works, until you make a menu selection. When it switches to the page you selected, the menu bar collapses again.

I appreciate your time!
Diane

Try:
– re-uploading the wp-admin and wp-includes folders from a fresh download of WordPress.

– using another browser/machine to rule out any browser specific problem/

Sigh… nope. Tried all of the above, to no avail. I click on the little arrows in the admin nav bar on the left, in the dashboard, and the menu expands, like it should. BUT when I make a choice from the menu, like Pages, and it goes to that location, the menu collapses back down.

Will I have to live with that? I might be one of the few people that wants my menus open all the time. Might be time to suck it up and deal, huh? But I don’t have to like it.

Meanwhile – I do appreciate the help and suggestions!!!
Diane

This is not an issue I’ve come across before and it’s certainly one that I can replicate on any of my servers. So I can only guess that it’s either something specific to your site/server or your browser/machine. My gut instinct suggests that it’s the latter.

You know, you are probably right. I went to see another site I admin, and the same problem does not occur there; its nav bar stays expanded. I think that helps me know which direction to head in.

Thanks again and I appreciate the nudge. Have a great day!
d.

I’d like to second this problem – I just did a fresh install of the latest version of WP (3.1.2) using Installatron, on a brand new never used domain/hosting account, and can’t get the left nav menu to stay open. I didn’t make any changes to plugins, pages, or anything – it was the first thing I tried after logging in for the first time.

I can open the menu up by clicking the >> arrows, but then when I click on one of the options, it loads the next page with the menu collapsed. So, it doesn’t “stick”.

I’m running Mac OSX 10.5.8, and I tried it in FF 3.6.17, Chrome 11.0.696.68, and Safari 5.0.4 (5533.20.27).

I teach a lot of computer newbies how to use WP for their businesses, and being able to have that nav menu stay open would be very helpful for them, as they’re already pretty overwhelmed by the whole thing, so having clearly written labels would definitely make it easier…

Can you replicate the problem on more than 1 host? If you can run WordPress locally, is there still a problem? What about in 3.2 beta?

Hmmm… Curious…

I just did a little more testing – first I tried installing 3.1.1, 3.1, and 3.05 in subdirectories in that same hosting account. All had the same menu problem.

That hosting account is actually just a sub-account from a master reseller account I have. I just created that sub account within the last couple weeks. So, I went into one of my other sub-accounts that is several years old and tried installing 3.1.2, and the menu is not collapsed by default the first time I log into it, and furthermore if I switch it to collapsed it stays collapsed, and if I switch it back to expanded, it stays expanded.

These two hosting accounts are on the same server, under the same master reseller account. So, I’m not sure why it seems to be having this problem… I’m going to try deleting the hosting account that is having the problems and recreating it to see if that will fix it.

That’s definitely interesting. My thoughts have tended to be that this was a server config issue, that some of the js was getting scrambled (perhaps because the scripts were concatenated) causing the menus to collapse permanently. But your findings suggest it’s install specific. Maybe a corrupted file somewhere?

Ok, just did a few more tests:

1) Deleted the original problem hosting account, recreated it, installed 3.1.2 again, and same problem still exists.

2) Took another domain that I had pointing to my server, but hadn’t done anything yet for, created an account for that domain, installed 3.1.2, and no problem.

It seems to be something specific about that domain. Any ideas of what else I should check for?

So, any more ideas on stuff I could look for?

I came across this post while searching for a solution to keep the admin menu expanded.

First, there are no problems with the WordPress admin menu. As you know, when you mouse-over a closed menu it displays the little down arrow which you can click to expand that section of the menu. If you log out and log back in, the menu will be expanded or collapsed based on what you did last time you were logged in. That is what it was designed to do so it’s not a problem with WordPress.

I think the question is; is there a way to force all sections of the admin menu to stay expanded all the time?

That is the question I am trying to answer. I have very simple non-tech savvy people adding posts and would like to make it as easy as possible for them to navigate the admin.

I’ve installed a plugin called “Adminimize” which is KILLER for stripping down unnecessary areas of the dashboard and admin menu.

Now I still need to find an answer to my question above…

Is there a way to force all sections of the admin menu to stay expanded all the time? …a plugin, a hack, anything?