Having the ‘Menu’ optoin in your admin area is completely theme-dependent. If your theme has menus set up, it will be there. if it doesn’t it won’t show. I’d hazard a guess that’s what’s happening with your site.
So, changing the theme will reintroduce the tools menu item to the menu on the left? Which theme would you suggest?
It might, but you can also add menus yourself by adding to your theme (using a child theme of course) or by writing a plugin to do it. Check out the register_nav_menu() function for what you’ll need.
It’s not that I’m against changing themes, but most people choose a theme based on how much they like it, so changing it isn’t the best idea in most of the situations that I’ve seen.
I appreciate the info, but I’m a newbie to wordpress and php and don’t know how to create a menu item.
Further, my researches indicate the export function is part of the tools menu, which is supposed to be part of the default wordpress application. If so, the person who designed the system I’m taking over (and who cannot be reached) modified wordpress to not show the tools menu item.
So, my question is, how do I redisplay that option?
And remember, I’m a newbie, so saying I might write my own is not in play here.
Thanks,
Mark
OK, that makes it pretty different.
If your old developer has done that, then it’s goingto be next to impossible for anyone here to say where it’s bene done without having access to the entire theme (and even plugins) that they devleoped for you. It’s probably in there somewhere, but there’s just to many places it coudl be to give you any idea of where it could be. All that I’d say is that you can start poking around some of the files in the theme starting with functions.php and see what you can find.
I’ve explored some and found the followng
The thems is called twenty twelve
there is a plugin called BackupBuddy
My guess, and it’s only a guess, is when the backupbuddy plugin was installed it removed the tools menu with the export capability.
The previous developer, again – not available, had a username and password on it so I can’t manage the licenses.
I have done a complete backup using it and downloaded that zip file, in doing a complete backup which includes settings, database, and files, downloaded successfully.
It seems to include such files as .htaccess, wp-admin.php, and more.
Since I’ve already installed the wordpress version 3.7.1, I don’t want this overwriting my existing installation.
So, should I have just backed up the database and the files, but not the settings?
Mark
The settings are stored in the database, so to not back up the settings you have to not back up the database – obviously not a good idea.
Have you tried the standard starting point for torublehsooting of de-activating eveyr plugin and changing to the default Twenty* theme and see if it is still happening then? That’s definately the first step and will tell you if it’s something that’s done by the theme or a plugin. If you do this and it works, then re-enable the plugins one-by-one and check in between each one by clicking around a few times to see if that’s the one that stops that functionality.
