WP menu current-menu-item class and BP components

[henrywright]

I recently noticed something strange with reference WP menus and BuddyPress components.

I use a WP menu in my site footer to output an unordered list of links (e.g. Members, Help, Privacy, Sitemap and so on).

A current-menu-item class is automatically added to a <li> element when appropriate - this is default WP menu behaviour.

The problem is, a current-menu-item class gets added to my 'Members' list item when I am viewing any page which is part of a BP component e.g when I visit

members/username/settings/notifications/
members/username/messages/sentbox
members/username/messages/compose
members/username/following/

all result in the 'Members' list item looking like this

<li class="current-menu-item"><a href="/members/">Members</a></li>

[boonebgorges]

WordPress adds the 'current-menu-item' class in wp-includes/nav-menu-template.php, starting around line 350. The logic is something like this: if the queried object is the 'Members' page, then the 'Members' nav item should get the 'current-menu-item' class. The way BP's template loader works, all pages underneath /members/ correspond to the 'Members' WP page. So, what you're seeing here is expected behavior.

I can see why it might not be what you want, but it's not obvious to me what the ideal behavior *should* be. Can you give details about what you'd expect to see?

[henrywright]

Hi Boone,

Thanks for explaining the reason why it works how it does. I suppose I look at the members page as a discrete area of BuddyPress. The directory if you like, an area separate to the component pages (activity, profile and so on). I expected WP to treat it as such. That said, I can also see why it is treated as a mother page and as you say, the ideal behaviour is a bit of a grey area.

[DJPaul]

We should loop back to this in the future, as I agree it's a bit strange and I agree with henrywright's interpretation of how it should work -- but we need more feedback, and a better way to handle this inside BP. Perhaps the switch to rewrite rules would be a good time to revisit this if it's decided we want to change this.