W-Shadow.com

Here is my latest and hack-iest plugin yet – Admin Menu Editor. It’s a WordPress plugin that will let you manually edit the Dashboard menu. You can reorder the menus, show/hide specific items, change access rights, and more. The plugin is still a bit rough around the edges, so a good understading of WP internals is recommended (but not required).

Features

• Sort menu items any way you want by simple drag & drop.
• Move a menu item to a different submenu via cut & paste. Note that if you move an item that belongs to a plugin, you will need to modify the “File” attribute to point to the right parent file (e.g. instead of “akismet-key-config” use “options-general.php?page=akismet-key-config”).
• Edit any existing menu – change the title, access rights, menu icon and so on. Note that you can’t lower the required access rights, but you can change them to be more restrictive.
• Hide/show any menu or menu item. A hidden menu is invisible to all users, including administrators.
• Create custom menus that point to any part of the Dashboard. For example, you could create a new menu leading directly to the “Pending comments” page.

Here’s a screenshot :

Download

admin-menu-editor.zip (33 KB)

Requirements :

• WordPress 2.7 or later
• PHP 5 or later

Known Issues

The basic idea for the plugin was suggested by several commenters way back in October. However, the internal menu system that WordPress uses is obscure and unsuitable for direct manipulation, so I spent quite a while inventing workarounds. And even after a few weeks of pondering, there are some things I haven’t quite fixed.

• If you delete any of the default menus they will reappear after saving. This is not a bug, it’s a feature
• As I mentioned before, the access rights required for using a particular menu item can’t be lowered, but can be made more strict. I think.
• Also, a plugin’s menu that is moved to a different submenu will not work unless you also include the parent file in the “File” field. This is because WP “ties” the menu item to it’s parent menu and won’t recognize it in a different submenu.
• If you create a custom menu (or change the “File” setting of an existing menu), be sure to tick the “Custom” checkbox. Otherwise that item will not show up in the final Dashboard menu.

Merry Christmas, by the way