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Descriptive Menu Plugin

by AcumenConsulting · Admin & Utilities

Free audit wp.org ↗

The Descriptive Menu Widget adds a WordPress menu to a page and includes each menu item's description.

⚠ Stale⚠ Likely abandoned⚠ Few reviews
How scoring works →
47 Health · D
Maintenance 3/100
Rating quality 80/100
Support 70/100

47 health vs 54 average across 3,793 Admin & Utilities plugins

20+

Active installs

≈27 estimated

4.6K

Total downloads

since 2013

4.17★

Rating (adjusted)

5.0★ raw · 4 reviews

+12%

56

Downloads · 30d

category median +24%

High removal-risk signals

63/100

Maintenance and integrity signals that tend to precede a WordPress.org removal. Not an official status, a heads-up to act.

  • Long abandoned. No update in 12+ years — the top precursor to removal once a vulnerability is found.
  • Compatibility drift. Tested only up to WordPress 3.6.1, well behind 6.8.

Directory ranking optimization

How it's scored →

How well this listing is tuned to rank in WordPress.org search, on the factors an owner controls. Not popularity, optimization.

35 / 100

Under-optimized

Biggest win: Update recency

Update recency 0/100
WP compatibility 2/100
Rating quality 55/100
Listing tuning 92/100

To rank higher: Last updated 4662 days ago — ship an update; wp.org decays a listing's search weight after ~180 days.

Get the full rank-higher report →

Daily downloads

Since 2022-10-05 · 1,426 days · wp.org + Plugin Pulse archive

+12% vs prior 30d
1Downloads · Aug 26

30-day downloads

Rolling 30-day volume · peaks are release surges

56

now · peak 159

5630d downloads · Aug 26

Directory rank vs rivals

wp.org popularity rank over time · higher is better · when a rival's line climbs above yours, they've overtaken you

Descriptive Menu Plu · #25343 you RT Mega Menu · #2377 Editor Menu and Widg · #2640 HT Menu · #4102

Update activity

How busy the existing users are, measured as downloads in the last 30 days for every 1,000 active sites. A spike means a new release everyone's pulling; a long, slow decline means an aging user base that updates less.

2.8Kper 1k installs · Aug 26

What its installed base runs

via wordpress.org

Share of active installs on each version of this plugin · 100% run the current release. Green is the current release; a big slice on older versions is a user base that has stopped updating.

v1.1 100%

Estimated active installs

The public count shows “20+”. Our estimate pins where the real number sits.

tracked estimate
20–30 ≈27

Refined from the date this plugin crossed into its current band.

Install history · since 2015-09-29 · 1,386 observations

20Installs · Aug 26

Estimated value

What this plugin might earn a year, and what it might sell for. Modeled from public signals; we don't see anyone's books.

Est. annual revenue

N/A

Est. acquisition value

N/A

No paid tier is visible, so we don't put a figure on revenue or sale value: that would be guessing. The install base is a real asset to an acquirer, just not one public data lets us price. A small install base leaves thin data to model from.

Ratings · 4 reviews

Read on wp.org ↗
5★
4 4★
0 3★
0 2★
0 1★
0

Details

Version
1.1
Last updated
12.8y ago
Added
2013-09-13 · 12 yrs old
Requires WP
3.6
Tested up to
3.6.1
Requires PHP
—
Changelog ↗Support forum ↗Reviews ↗Advanced stats ↗

Recent review vibe

read from the latest 4 reviews to 2013-09-28
Positive Praise

Reviewers are calling it a time saver, praising the menu description and icon support, and saying it's light, well written, and easy to style with CSS.

Recent reviews

All reviews on wp.org ↗
  1. ★★★★★ mikekitc
    12.9y ago

    This plugin can be a real time saver! I’ll definitely be getting some use out of this.

    Read on wp.org ↗
  2. ★★★★★ thelando618
    12.9y ago

    Can’t wait to roll this out into production versions of my sites. Will be using in the future.

    Read on wp.org ↗
  3. ★★★★★ rwagnon
    13.0y ago

    This is so awesome! It save me so much time hand coding icon’ed menus. I can’t believe it didn’t exist before, I’ve been checking the plugins for a long time!

    Read on wp.org ↗
  4. ★★★★★ Stringman
    13.0y ago

    Glad to finally see a menu widget plugin that supports the “description” value of the menu item… and icons! Bonus! The elements are all easy to style with CSS and the plugin is light and well written. Thanks!

    Read on wp.org ↗

Behavioral tests

via WP Hive

Automated install-time checks, tested on PHP 7.2.16 · WP 5.2.4

✓ Low memory footprint
✓ Low page-speed impact
✕ Runs on latest PHP + WP
✕ No PHP errors
✓ No JS errors
✓ Activates cleanly
✓ No resource errors
✓ No external HTTP errors
✓ Optimized database use
✕ Frequently updated

Growth timeline

Install-tier crossings we have observed, and how long each tier took to outgrow

  1. 2026-05-10 30+ → 20+ down after 396 days in tier
  2. 2025-04-09 40+ → 30+ down after 224 days in tier
  3. 2024-08-28 50+ → 40+ down after 55 days in tier
  4. 2024-07-04 60+ → 50+ down after 2 days in tier
  5. 2024-07-02 50+ → 60+ up after 5 days in tier
  6. 2024-06-27 60+ → 50+ down after 5 days in tier
  7. 2024-06-22 50+ → 60+ up after 3 days in tier
  8. 2024-06-19 60+ → 50+ down after 1 days in tier

Competes with

The plugins that solve the same job, ranked by shared tags then reach, closest match first. The letter on the right is each plugin's health grade (A best, F worst).

Compare head to head →

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Preview card ↗

Descriptive Menu Plugin: 20+ active installs, 5.0★ (4 reviews). Plugin Pulse (WP Mayor), as of 2026-08-31. https://plugins.wpmayor.com/plugin/descriptive-menu-widget