Custom Favorite Actions For WP 2.7 (Beta)
The upcoming WordPress 2.7 will include a “favorite actions” feature – a dropdown menu that is supposed to contain quick links for easy access to select dashboard pages. The dropdown starts out with a few preset links, and new links can be added by plugins.
Power To The Users
I think it would make more sense to let the users themselves choose what goes into this quick-access menu (incidentally, Ozh has proposed something similar). It wouldn’t be realistic to devise a “one size fits all” list of defaults, and giving the user more control over his/her site is usually a good thing. There’s also the potential problem of every plugin wanting to push it’s own link into the dropdown…
So I wrote a plugin. Yep, 2.7 isn’t even in public beta yet, and I’ve already got a plugin for it 
This plugin, Custom Favorites, will allow you to easily add and remove dashboard pages from the “favorite actions” list. Here’s how it works : you start out with a blank (almost) list of favorites – default links and those added by other plugins are automatically removed. You can add a link to the menu by navigating to any admin page and selecting “Add this page” from the dropdown. To remove a page, open the page again and choose “Remove this page” from the dropdown.
Obligatory Disclaimers
Needless to say this is not the most stable and bug-free plugin, at least not yet. But if you’re already playing around with WP 2.7 then that warning probably won’t deter you 
And if you want to try it out with WP 2.6.x, you can – the plugin will switch to the “compatibility mode” and use a normal dashboard menu for the favorite links (this is probably only useful together with a dropdown menu plugin like this one).
Notice : I don’t recommend using this plugin if your blog allows user registration. The current version may present a security risk in that situation. You have been warned.
Download
custom-favorites.zip (8 KB)
Requirements :
- WordPress 2.7
- PHP 5 or later
- MySQL 4.1 or later
Damn, and I promised to never write a plugin that could be quickly obsoleted by changes in WP core. Grr.
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Worked like a charm. Great work on this while we wait for WP to implement the same feature.
Hey shadow, I was revisiting my plugins and found this one is loading its admin javascript on regular pages. I know it was a one-off plugin but are you still maintaining it at all?
Have you seen the discussion of how to load plugins properly at http://beerpla.net/2010/01/13/wordpress-plugin-development-how-to-include-css-and-javascript-conditionally-and-only-when-needed-by-the-posts ?
Fixed. This plugin may not be actively maintained, but I usually fix reported bugs even in one-off plugins.
And yes, I’ve read your post (and the follow-up). However, my strong lurker tendencies tend to deter me from participating in such discussions
[...] already discussed favorite actions in another post. To summarize, the user needs to be in control of what goes into that menu. As is, the dropdown [...]