Clean Up the WordPress Admin Area With PublishPress Capabilities
One thing we often hear from new WordPress users is that the interface is noisy. Especially once you have a few plugins installed, it's easy for the admin area to become overwhelmed with notifications, messages, links, alerts, and widgets.
We're on a mission to solve that with PublishPress Capabilities. We want to bring simplicity back to the WordPress admin.
PublishPress Capabilities 2.3 is available now, and it has a new screen called “Admin Features” which help you clean up the admin area.
In this first release, “Admin Features” allows you to control access to two key features:
- Admin toolbar
- Dashboard widgets
This image below shows you where those two features are in the WordPress admin area:
This is available in both the Free and Pro versions of PublishPress Capabilities. Inside the plugin, you'll find an “Admin Features” menu link:
On this screen, you'll be able to choose which features to hide for different user roles:
- There is a role selection dropdown in the top-left corner.
- Scroll down the screen, and you can place a red X for every feature you want to hide.
Let's show you some examples of what “Admin Features” can do.
In the screenshot below, I've added a red X to the boxes that include “WordPress Logo” and “Visit Site”.
If these settings are saved, this next screenshot shows what we'll see in the toolbar. Only the “Comments” and “New” links remain.
We can also take a look at another option in “Admin Features” which allows you to hide dashboard widgets. In this screenshot below, all the dashboard widgets have red Xs.
The settings in the screenshot below will produce this on your WordPress dashboard. All your dashboard widgets are hidden.
What comes next?
In the next release of PublishPress Capabilities, this feature will be expanded in at least three ways:
- You will be able can hide any element in the WordPress admin area. If you enter a CSS class or ID, then PublishPress Capabilities will hide it.
- You can block user roles from accessing specific URLs.
- You will be able to hide other items in the admin area such as “Screen Options” or “Thank you for creating with WordPress”.
