Admin Menu Editor For WordPress
Admin Menu Editor is 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.
Features
- Sort menu items any way you want by simple drag & drop.
- Move a menu item to a different submenu via cut & paste.
- Edit any existing menu – change the title, access rights, menu icon and so on. Note that in the free version you can’t relax menu permissions – i.e. give access rights to a role that originally didn’t have them – 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 :
This plugin also has a Pro version that offers a bunch of extra features.
Download
The latest version of the plugin is always available on WordPress.org.
Requirements :
- WordPress 4.1 or later
- PHP 5.2 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. This has been fixed in the Pro version.
- Plugin menus that are moved to a different submenu will not work unless you put the full page URL in the “URL” field. This is because WP “ties” the menu item to it’s parent menu and won’t recognize it in a different submenu.
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I am having some trouble with the user permissions. The plugin is letting me block access for certain parts of the admin but not others.
I am simply adding edit_plugins to the access field of any area that I dont want the user to be able to access. For some reason it is not working for tools and users and possibly others.
NVM, I just realized I need to block the sub menus also.
Now I just have to figure out how to have only EITHER the “users” or the “profile” menu visible. I dont want both to be visible to the user. The problem is the “profile” menu is not in the list of main menu items.
Thanks for the help and a great plugin. I hope to use it to make a custom admin page eventually.
alright I think I have the fix to removing the users menu without interrupting the profile menu. I just removed the profile.php from the profile submenu, and created a new custom main menu and added the profile.php file to that.
For some reason the profile.php file returned to the original profile menu and the access feild went back to read, but it does appear to be working.
Thanks again for a great plugin, this looks like it could take the place of the roles plugin when that becomes obsolete.
I’m glad to hear you got it working.
Regarding the “Users” and “Profile” menus, WordPress automatically adds or reconfigures them depending on the logged-in user. This is a special case that isn’t handled by the plugin, so you could end up with both menus at the same time when using it.
I could probably fix it with some inelegant hack, but I’m lazy 🙂
Ya it is a bit hacky as your description says. You can get the users menu to disappear if you change the file and access for my profile under the users menu.
The hacky part is that when you make another change the change you made to the my profile goes back to normal. So whenever you make a change you have to remember to go back and change the my profile.
I am also having a similar issue with an email plugin that I want to restrict certain areas. All in all I cant complain tho. As long as it gets the job done that is all that counts.
With this plugin I was able to hide a few menus and make my admin much less intimidating to users.
Now I just have to figure out how to make a solid custom menu, which hopefully wont give me any trouble.
Hi, i get this error when trying to activate your plugin.
Fatal error: Class ‘ReflectionClass’ not found in /home/wp/public_html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/menu-editor/shadow_plugin_framework.php on line 101
Im using WP 2.7.1 and I have PHP 5.2+, i have tried deactivating all my other plugins.
Any idea what could be wrong?
The PHP documentation claims that the reflection API is included in PHP 5 by default, so either it’s been somehow turned off in your PHP configuration (I don’t know if that’s even possible), or you’re not really using PHP 5. Those arep retty much the only causes I can think of.
Would you be willing to write up a quick tutorial on how to use your plugin to create a top level menu page?
I gave it a shot but couldn’t make it happen.
thanks, MIke
What exactly is the problem? I just use the “New” button to add a custom top menu, save, add a few menu items to the new menu, and it seems to work.
I am looking to add a new php file to the menu. It just needs to have a link with a popout so the php file will be pretty simple. I just cant figure out what exactly needs to be in the php file.
I have been trying to get my head around this http://codex.wordpress.org/Adding_Administration_Menus
I have tried a few things but cant seem to get it to work.
Maybe your plugin is not intended to work in this way…
I’m still not quite sure what you’re trying to accomplish. Do you want the menu/submenu to point to an URL outside the Dashboard? That would be impossible without writing some kind of custom redirector script or hacking the WP core, as the script that outputs menus would always mangle the external link otherwise. However, a relative URL like “/stuff/foo/bar.php” might work.
Or maybe I’ve misunderstood your comment and what you actually want is to write a new plugin.
I am just trying to add a basic menu, when the user clicks on the menu item, it will bring them to the menu page that I have created. Inside that menu page will be a link, maybe that is where you were confused. I am not trying to redirect the menu to an outside page.
I tried writing a basic plugin to handle this, but was unsuccessful. I guess I am not sure what needs to be included, the only part I do know is what will be echoed onto the page(some text with a simple popout link)
Allright, how about this super-simple plugin :
It adds a top-level menu and then adds a submenu entry to that new menu. Requires PHP 5 (because I’m lazy) and should work in at least WP 2.5 and up.
Best plugin ever! Thanks for your hard work.
Hey, thanks for doing that for me.
Like Bryan says, this plugin is great.
One of the biggest grey areas for wordpress modification is modifying the dashboard.
Thanks again.
HI about the Reflection error, I got some sort of wierd PHP version called 5.2.6RC4-pl0-gentoo. Maybe the reflection class isnt included in that version. Im trying to get the admin to update PHP but if he wont, is there any possibility to work around this problem??
In principle, it is possible to rewrite the plugin so that it doesn’t require the reflection API, but that would take some careful editing. I’d prefer to explore other possibilities first.
Hey its me again, back to bother you some more.
I finally finished up on the site that I want to link to from the admin, however when I went to change the permissions for your plugin above it gave me an error.
The page displays for the admin but not for other users. I am wondering if it has to do with the array in there, which makes it not act like http://codex.wordpress.org/Adding_Administration_Menus.
Hopefully its a simple change and not a trip back to the drawing board.
THANKS.
Yes, the example plugin above is set to display the menus only for admin users (and it has nothing to do with the arrays; the arrays are how you pass an object’s method as a user-defined callback… if that makes sense).
To allow other users to see them, you’ll need to change the capability parameter (currently set to “manage_options”) in the lines that call add_menu_page() and add_submenu_page(). See Roles and Capabilities for a list of capabilities.
For example, if you replace ‘manage_options’ with ‘read’ then any logged-in user will see the menu.
I should have known that. I tried using the capability instead of the role number, but for some reason I dident remove the manage_options.
Thanks for helping with this, I hope this helps others with adding a custom menu.