Breadcrumbs using 'wp_nav_menu' instead of page hierarchy?

The navigation menu is not a real hierarchy, thus Breadcrumb NavXT doesn’t use it. You’re better off if you logically organize your content and let WordPress do the rest of the work for you. However, if you really want to use the navigation menu for the hierarchy, it should be possible, though you’d have to extend the plugin to do it.

The problem is that most of my pages don’t have any parent. I need them that way so that they have shorter URLs (like example.com/page-name) which are easier to remember. For my clients this is preferable. Then I arrange the pages in the nav menu according to the hierarchy I want them to have, where it makes more sense for them to be located in the drop-down menu structure.

I’m not aware of any other way of accomplishing this, other than leaving the pages without any parent – but that means the breadcrumbs don’t work, because they don’t match the menu hierarchy which is the hierarchy the end-user sees.

So in fact I am logically organising my content – but I’m doing that on the Menu page, rather than via the Pages section of WordPress.

i got the same problem.
i want to see the navigation title and not the page title, they are different.
in the appearance–> menus , i changed the navigation lable.

Actually that’s a completely separate request. ?? I’m not asking for the ability to use the menu labels, but only for the ability to use the menu hierarchy. As far as I’m concerned it’s fine to use the page names in the breadcrumbs, not the menu labels.

why isn’t there a menu-based hierarchy structure for pages possible?. For me that is the most logical way to navigate through the pages. Why should I structure the content with cattegories when I have allready structured it with the menu? I understand that for posts, not for pages

Why should I structure the content with cattegories when I have allready structured it with the menu?

That’s not what I’m saying. You need to structure your content correctly, with the appropriate methods for the given content type. These are taxonomies for flat post types such as the built in ‘Post’ post type and parent-child relationships for hierarchical post types such as the built in ‘Page’ post type. After you have done that, build your menu to reflect the content structure.

There’s nothing “incorrect” about having a different structure for the Page hierarchy as for the menu hierarchy. Many websites have a flat hierarchy for their Pages (ie. no subpages – all the pages sit directly under the domain name), but they add multiple levels of hierarchy via the menus. This is quite normal, AND it is also supported by WordPress. That’s why WordPress allows you to move or change the menu hierarchy by adding layers or “subdirectories” to the menus.

So, to say that the “correct” method is to add hierarchy to the pages themselves (by setting some pages as children of other pages), and then making the menus reflect this same hierarchy, is simply wrong. That is not the only valid method, nor the only supported method. And there are numerous good reasons why a website might not do it that way.