wizzud

Assuming Resolved…

.widget_custom_menu_wizard .menu-widget ul {
    background-color: #ffff00; /*yellow!*/
}

You will need to add a CSS rule to your theme’s stylesheet (or your theme may provide some other mechanism for adding/changing styles). Such a rule might look something like…

.widget_custom_menu_wizard .menu-widget {
    background-color: #ffff00; /*yellow!*/
}

…but it will almost not be exactly the same : you’ll have your own colour, and you may be able to (or need to) use a different or more specific selector, depending on the options have you configured into the widget (and what else is on the page, and what your theme’s current rules are, etc, etc).

After a quick look round through WordPress plugins, here are a couple of plugins that might be of interest (there are undoubtedly others as well)…

Widget Shortcode
This provides a shortcode that pulls in any widget instance. The shortcode to use – in place of the CMW shortcode – is given at the bottom of every widget.

Stag Custom Sidebars
This allows you to create custom sidebar(s), into which you can place any widget. Then a shortcode – given at the top of the custom sidebar – will pull that entire sidebar into your content.

Both work (for me, using instances of CMW) on my WP v4.2.2 installation. The Stag one obviously outputs a bit more HTML than the 1st one, because it pulls in the entire sidebar rather than just a widget, so you get an extra layer of wrapping, but either will probably do the job for you. If forced to state a preference I would possibly plump for the sidebar one – it gives me (as admin) a definite place to put my CMW widget, and the fact that it’s in a sidebar of its own acts as reminder of what I’m doing with it. But functionally (for you), the difference between the 2 is negligible.

And as I said, these are just 2 that I happened to find by searching the plugin repository.

Regarding CSS for CMW : I sorry but I don’t provide any styling, and I’ve tried to explain why in other posts : basically everybody would want something slightly different because everyone is using different themes. And even within a theme, people will want separate instances to look slightly different depending on where they’re placed or what they are outputting, etc, etc. It’s an impossible and thankless task to try to provide any sort of styling, so I follow the mantra of “it’s the theme’s job to style, not mine”. I provide enough configuration parameters to enable as much CSS customisation as might be desired, and I will try to help with specific problems if possible, but that’s about as far as I will go.

You’re going to have to change, or add to, your theme’s stylesheet.

You have 2 choices : either switch back to ULs and add CSS that correctly indents ULs within ULs; or, continue using OLs (within a UL?) and add CSS that removes the numbering.

a. example : ul ul {margin-left: 1em;}
b. example : ul ol {list-style: none;}

Please bear in mind that the above are examples only and may not be either accurate or sufficient, depending on your theme’s styling. Also note that the rules above are very general and will probably have an effect elsewhere on your site – you may want to qualify them with a class that limits them to just CMW-produced menus.

NB. CMW does not supply any CSS; all styling is completely down to the theme.

Setting Branch to Current Item, Starting at 2, including Branch Ancestors to level 1 (root), and qualifying with Current Item is in Secondary Filter, ie. a shortcode equivalent of…

[cmwizard menu=NN branch=current start_at="2" ancestors=1 contains_current="secondary"/]

…gives you the level 2 item and its descendants, plus the root item, when any level 2+ item is the current item.
Setting the Qualifier means that when the root item is the current item you get nothing. Since you don’t say what should happen for the Brands page, I’m merely guessing that nothing should show. If the Brands page should show something else – say, just the level 1 & 2 items – then you might need to set an Alternative (eg. “depth=2”, conditional on No Output from Final Output?).

If I have interpreted your problem incorrectly then please provide the shortcode equivalent of your closest configuration, and explain where it falls short. Just stating “its not working” doesn’t give me much information about what you’ve tried.

Maybe…

Set Branch to Current Item, Starting at 1 (root).
Exclude the “link 1” item, and Level 1.
Set Title From Current Item’s Root, and Make it a Link.

I’m struggling to understand the problem here. A shortcode equivalent of your widget setup would help (copy-paste it from the bottom of the widget)?

My best guess(!) is that you have a setup that relies on Current Item being present, such that when no Current Item is available then you get no output?
If that is the case, the try setting an ALTERNATIVE with On condition set to Current Item is NOT in... Menu (using the 2 dropdowns); leave the textarea empty – this will show your entire menu, and you can then refine it as you wish.

If I have misunderstood the problem, please let me know.

My apologies : although my English is excellent, my ability to communicate in any other language is virtually non-existent!