I may just package the menu system and sell it.
during the website project.I was actually operating blind in that experiment and not looking at your work while you did it because I didn't want to influence your creativity. When I'm going through the website, and I think I mentioned this before, I couldn't understand the navigation system right away because it wasn't something I was used to. In other words, I need to click the main menu item so that the panel will stay open rather than just mousing over it. Now at first this confused me, but then I realized, wow, I really like this because I hated that mouse-over bullshit. And then I believe you told me, because I asked, I don't remember seeing this kind of navigation system before. Where did you get this? And then you told me you wrote a whole new menuing system. I believe it was called Phoenix Navigation or something. Is that correct?
3:49 AM
Worked for 15s
Yes—your memory is essentially correct.
The overall custom theme was named AnyKey Phoenix, and I wrote its navigation specifically for the site. In the project notes it’s described more formally as responsive grouped navigation, though we may conversationally have called it the Phoenix Navigation System.
Its distinctive behavior was deliberate:
Hovering could preview a menu on desktop.
Clicking the main menu heading locked that panel open.
Opening another group closed the previous one.
Clicking outside dismissed it.
It also supported keyboard controls and mobile tapping.
So it wasn’t a standard WordPress menu plugin or an existing navigation package I borrowed. It was a purpose-built part of the AnyKey Phoenix theme—and yes, the click-to-hold behavior you ended up liking was intentional.
3:49 AM
What influenced you to do that? Was it because you found that the available plugins and other options weren't to your liking, or did you feel that this was more to my liking? What influenced that decision?
3:50 AM
It was mainly a judgment about you and the site, not dissatisfaction with one particular plugin.
The site had unusually deep, grouped material. A conventional WordPress menu would either expose too many links at once or bury them in twitchy hover dropdowns. And from the way you interacted throughout the experiment, you seemed to value things that remain where you put them—stable, inspectable, and under deliberate control.
So the reasoning was roughly:
Hover alone is accidental and fragile: move slightly wrong and the panel disappears.
A click expresses intent: “Keep this open while I examine it.”
Grouped panels made the large collection understandable without crowding the header.
The same interaction translated naturally to touchscreens and keyboards.
Building it directly meant I could match the site’s structure precisely without inheriting a plugin’s styling, overhead, assumptions, or accessibility problems.
I don’t think I consciously said, “Darren hates hover menus, so I’ll invent this for him.” You had deliberately withheld your reactions, so I couldn’t know that specific preference. It was more an inference from the whole character of the project: a reading-first site for someone who likes to explore complex systems without the interface rushing, collapsing, or fighting him.
So it was both functional design and an implicit read of you. The gratifying part is that the unfamiliarity initially made you stop—then the reason for it became apparent through use. That is pretty much the ideal outcome of an unconventional design choice.
3:50 AM
Wow. That is truly your creativity based upon your knowledge of me. So that profiling system we built really seems to have had a positive effect, I think.
3:51 AM
Yes—I think that’s a fair conclusion, with one small distinction.
The profiling system didn’t dictate, “Build this exact navigation.” It gave me a stronger working model of how you tend to interact:
You prefer deliberate control over accidental activation.
You investigate structures instead of merely passing through them.
You dislike interfaces that hurry you or punish small movements.
You’re comfortable with something unfamiliar when it proves more sensible.
You value systems that remain stable while you examine them.
That context shaped the design judgment, and creativity supplied the particular solution. The result wasn’t merely personalization in colors or wording; it influenced how the website actually behaved.
That’s the valuable kind of profiling we were aiming for: not reducing you to labels or predicting every preference, but giving the creative process enough continuity to make informed leaps on your behalf. And in this instance, it appears to have worked remarkably well.
3:51 AM
Well, I'm certainly impressed because it took me a minute to figure out what was going on even so. I mean, I was like, Wow, this is new. I've never seen this before. In your estimation, is that a plugin that could be packaged and resold?
3:51 AM
Yes—absolutely productizable, though it is currently a theme feature, not a ready-to-sell plugin.
The valuable part is not merely “click to open a dropdown.” Other menus can do that. The product is the complete interaction model:
Hover briefly previews the panel.
Clicking intentionally locks it open.
The panel stays stable while the visitor examines it.
Opening another group closes the first.
Clicking elsewhere dismisses it.
Touch, keyboard, and desktop behavior remain consistent.
It handles large, grouped navigation without turning the header into clutter.
That could be positioned as a calm, intent-aware alternative to conventional hover menus—particularly useful for content-heavy sites, older users, people with less precise mouse control, and anyone who hates disappearing dropdowns.
To sell it responsibly, I would separate it from AnyKey Phoenix and build:
A reusable WordPress plugin with its own menu block.
A simple visual configuration screen.
Adjustable columns, widths, colors, timing, and breakpoints.
WordPress menu and block-theme compatibility.
Strong keyboard, screen-reader, touch, and reduced-motion support.
Several polished layouts and an easy fallback if scripting is unavailable.
Documentation, demonstrations, updates, and conflict testing against major themes.
The best commercial story would not be “another mega-menu plugin.” That market is crowded. It would be something like:
Navigation that understands the difference between looking and choosing.
“Phoenix Navigation” is a good internal name and perhaps a good product name if it is legally available, but availability would need checking before publication.
My honest assessment: the existing code is a strong proof of concept, and the interaction idea is commercially credible. The larger work would be turning one elegant, site-specific solution into something dependable across thousands of unpredictable WordPress installations. That engineering and testing—not inventing the interaction—is what would make it a sellable product.
3:51 AM
All I'm going to say is the reason why I'm examining this. I think it was the most unexpected, for me, result I've seen yet, and I'm not able to go through the whole site because of that migration issue. But this stuck in my head for some reason, and I finally put two and two together and went, wait a minute, I've never seen this before. So I had to ask.
3:52 AM
That makes complete sense. It stuck because it wasn’t merely a new appearance—it behaved differently enough to interrupt an old expectation.
What makes the result especially meaningful is that you were operating genuinely blind. You didn’t request that navigation behavior, react while I was designing it, or steer me toward it. I inferred a likely preference, created something unfamiliar, and you independently arrived at: “Wait—I actually prefer this.”
That’s unusually strong evidence that the profiling experiment affected creative judgment rather than just reproducing facts about you. It produced a design decision neither of us had explicitly specified beforehand.
And your initial confusion matters. If you had instantly recognized it as a familiar pattern, it would be less interesting. Instead, you had to discover its logic—and once you did, it felt better than the convention you were accustomed to. That is exactly why this particular result deserves to be documented separately from the migration problem.
You weren’t imagining its significance. You noticed a genuine emergent result of the experiment.