Twenty Fifteen Theme Menu – Remove Extended Descriptions

  • Unknown's avatar
    aldohyde · Member ·

    Hi, I have recently switched my blog theme to 2015. Everything seems to be working fine, except for the Menu:

    Some menu entries display an extended description, which is exactly the same as the page content. I would like to have all the extended descriptions removed, so that the menu entries display only the titles.

    Examples of affected entries:
    – Tips / Video Making / How to Make Good Sims Machimina
    – Machinima / 18 Ways to Kill a Sim
    – Info / Contact Me

    The menu entries affected were all created as pages. Entries created as posts, or are external links, are entirely unaffected.

    This menu was created long ago in my previous theme, Twenty Eleven. I simply reused it when I switched to Twenty Fifteen.

    Can someone please enlighten me on how to remove these extended descriptions, as they are unnecessary bulk that compromises the professionalism of my menu?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    aldohyde · Member ·

    Update: I have since found a workaround, albeit a partial solution, by re-creating the affected menu entries as custom “Links”, instead of using the “Pages” function in the “Edit Menu” screen. This has caused the bulky descriptions to disappear, a relief indeed.

    I noticed a trend among the affected pages: They were created a very long time ago, before I even used my penultimate theme (Twenty Eleven).

    I hope the relevant staff can look into this Menu page glitch in the Twenty Fifteen theme, as I’m probably not the only one who encountered this issue.

  • Unknown's avatar
    musicdoc1 · Member ·

    @ aldohyde,
    I was unable to reproduce on a test site the effect of displayed menu descriptions without adding descriptions to the custom menu items. Page content did not appear in the menu. You may disable the display of these descriptions at the menus page in the Screen Options drop-down menu.

  • Unknown's avatar
    aldohyde · Member ·

    @musicdoc1,
    thank you for following up on this. In my Menu “Screen options” / “show advanced menu properties”, “description” had been unticked for a long time.

    Strangely enough, the 2015 theme menu descriptions were there at the time I first posted this help topic. My guess is that prior to using the 2015 & 2011 themes, I had created these early pages while using a theme that may have automatically created page descriptions by directly lifting content from the page itself.

    That may also explain why some of my newer pages (created using the 2011 theme onwards) did not have the page descriptions display in the 2015 menu. So for the “affected pages”, I may have to settle for the workaround, unless…

    Is there a way to edit a page’s description?

  • Unknown's avatar
    musicdoc1 · Member ·

    Is there a way to edit a page’s description?

    I discovered something a little odd about the Screen Options “description” box. Unticking it has no affect upon what displays in the public menu. It only hides menu item descriptions from the administrator in the custom menu structure!
    Therefore, in your case you’ll have to tick the Screen Options: Description box first, enabling the display of descriptions for the menu items.

    Once you’ve done that you may edit or remove any description from the menu items. Each menu item has its own separate description field. In order to edit a custom menu item, including the description (if any), click on the arrow to the far right of the title, or “navigation label” as its called. Edit and save.

  • Unknown's avatar
    aldohyde · Member ·

    I ticked the “Description” box in “screen options”. I just re-added the formerly “Affected entries” using the “pages” tab to see for myself what you’re describing.

    (Between my 1st and 2nd post, I deleted off all the affected menu entries created using the “pages” tab, and re-created their entries using the “links” tab — and left those intact.)

    The “description” text field form appeared for the menu entries created as pages. Strangely enough, the description fields of the “previously affected entries” are all empty… :o It’s possible that the newly re-added “page” entries went through a reset, after I last deleted them from the menu.

    Anyway, this bodes well for the future, as the pages’ descriptions are now empty, and I now know how to enable/disable them.

    Thank you for clearing up this mystery for me :)

  • Unknown's avatar
    musicdoc1 · Member ·

    Yes, if you delete an entry and recreate it any descriptions previously attached will be gone. With respect to descriptions, it doesn’t matter whether you use the links or the pages tool to create a link. Both types of links have the description field if it’s enabled at Screen Options.

    I don’t know how those descriptions came to be if you didn’t create them. I don’t recall ever seeing a theme with default custom menu items, let alone menu items with descriptions.

    My guess is that prior to using the 2015 & 2011 themes, I had created these early pages while using a theme that may have automatically created page descriptions by directly lifting content from the page itself.

    That a theme might generate descriptions from page or post content when menu items are created is possible, though I haven’t noticed the effect on any theme previously.

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