MCP for Maximenu CK Pro is a Pro add-on for MCP for J that writes Maximenu CK's per-item mega-menu settings. That means which items start a column, how wide each column is, new rows, submenu sizes, icons, modules inside a dropdown and the rest of the Maximenu tab on a menu item, including a whole dropdown's column layout in one call. It needs Maximenu CK Pro on your site, which is a separate purchase from Cรฉdric Keiflin at joomlack.fr. On the free Light edition every tool except the status report refuses, because Light's own menu manager won't save these settings either. The free MCP for Maximenu CK add-on covers styles, custom CSS, the compiled-CSS cache and the layout checks on both editions.
Why this exists
Laying out a mega menu by hand means opening the right menu items one at a time, marking which ones start a column, setting each width, and then checking the result in a browser. That's usually when you find out the first column was never marked, so it has no width and the last column has dropped underneath the others. set_maximenuck_columns lays out a whole dropdown in one call, marks the first child for you, and tells you how wide the panel will be before you go and look. The MCP for J mega menu at the top of this site is laid out with it.
Two gates, and the second one is the point
Two separate things stand between you and these tools, and they're worth keeping apart.
The first one is ours. This package needs a Cybersalt Pro membership to download, and the catalog enforces that.
The second one is Maximenu's. Light and Pro are separate builds of the same component, and the installed component's manifest says which one you have. That's the test Maximenu's own installer uses, and it's the one these tools use too. In Light's menu manager, every per-item mega-menu control answers with a "Pro only" notice instead of saving. But the code that saves those settings, and the code that renders them, is the same in both builds. Writing the settings straight into the database would work perfectly well on a Light site.
These tools don't do that. Each one checks the edition first and refuses with an explanation when it finds Light. Paying us for a membership doesn't entitle anyone to someone else's paid features, and a paywall being easy to step over isn't permission to step over it. If you're on Light, a Cybersalt membership alone won't make these tools run. You also need Maximenu CK Pro from joomlack.fr.
One tool is deliberately not gated. get_maximenuck_pro_status exists to tell you why the others are refusing, so gating it would be a trap. It reports the Maximenu version and edition, whether the Pro system plugin is on disk, registered and enabled, the Pro source plugins, whether the item-settings form is installed and how many settings it declares, and which tools are available on your site.
What Claude can do
There are four tools. The free add-on carries the other eleven.
| Area | Tools | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Menu items | 3 | Lay out a whole dropdown's columns in one call, change the Maximenu settings on a single menu item, and list every setting your installed version of Maximenu CK Pro accepts. |
| Status | 1 | What this add-on can and can't do on this particular site, and why. Ungated on purpose. |
Installing it
You'll need Joomla 5 or 6, PHP 8.1 or later, MCP for J, and Maximenu CK Pro from joomlack.fr. On Light, every tool except the status report refuses by design. The free MCP for Maximenu CK add-on isn't required, because this one carries its own copy of what it needs, but you'll want it for styles and custom CSS.
- Subscribe on the sign-up page, or get this and every other Pro add-on with MCP for J Pro โ All Access.
- Download the ZIP and install it through System โ Install โ Extensions, or paste your download URL into Install from URL.
- That's the whole install. The plugin enables itself and tells you which edition of Maximenu CK it found. The tools show up in your connected AI client the next time it lists them.
There's no admin screen for this plugin, by design. If the tools come back refusing, ask for the status report first. It'll tell you which of the two gates you're standing behind.
Using it
Ask for what you want in plain language. "Split the Services dropdown into three columns of 200 pixels, with four, three and two items" lays it out, marks the first child as a column start, and shows you the panel before and after. "Give the Contact item an icon and hide it on mobile" changes that one item. Anything else on the Maximenu tab can be set too, and it's checked against the settings form your installed version of Maximenu CK Pro actually has.
Some changes are refused rather than written. A column on a top-level item is refused, because Maximenu's own editor warns that it will break your layout. So are settings your version of Maximenu doesn't have, widths that don't make sense, modules that don't exist, and layouts on items whose titles still carry Maximenu's old [col=N] markers, which would override whatever the tool wrote.
Writes only touch the settings column of each menu item. Each one is checked against what was there a moment before, and then read back to prove that only the settings you asked for changed. A whole-dropdown layout is written in one database transaction, so it can't half-apply, and afterwards it deletes any stale compiled CSS for the menus showing that dropdown and clears the menu caches.
One thing to know if your site is behind a CDN. Column and width settings go out in the page's HTML, so you see them straight away. Per-item colours and fonts go out in Maximenu's compiled stylesheet, which a CDN can keep serving stale, so those writes come back with the exact URL to purge. The free add-on's page explains why that happens.
This is version 1.0.0, tested on a Joomla 6.2 test site against Maximenu CK Pro 10.2.0. A dropdown laid out as four, three and two items at 200 pixels measured 600 pixels wide in the browser, with the three columns side by side. With the add-on installed on Light, every gated tool refused and the menu items were left untouched.
Open source
GPL-2.0-or-later, the same license as Joomla itself. The full source is in the ZIP you download.
Add comment