Increase Number of Columns on Edit Post screen

Hi Larry,

Although i spend most of my time on a laptop i can appreciate what you’re saying, when i’m at another PC with a larger screen it makes more sense to utilise the extra width, i wouldn’t mind an option for more columns when the screen can utilise it.

I took at look at some of the underlying code and it appears the postbox javascript at least supports upto 4 columns(per the dashboard), the only area lacking support is the post editor screen, specifically edit-form-advanced.php.

I’d suggest posting an idea on the ideas section.
http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/

Or if you’re code literate a feature request on Trac with a patch.
http://core.trac.wordpress.org/

This is only intended as a proof of concept to show how it would work(the code below is a quick hack), and does require a core file modification..

First open, wp-admin/edit-form-advanced.php, find this line…

$side_meta_boxes = do_meta_boxes($post_type, 'side', $post);

And add the following code before it..

if( 'post' == $post_type )
    $side_meta_boxes2 = do_meta_boxes( 'post', 'column3', $post );

Then add the following to your theme’s functions.php file.

add_action( 'admin_head-post.php', 'testing_extra_column' );
function testing_extra_column() {
	global $post_type;
	if( $post_type != 'post' )
		return;
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready(function($){
	$('#side-info-column').css('width','601px');
	$('#post-body').css('margin-right','-640px');
	$('#post-body-content').css('margin-right','620px');
	$('#column3-sortables').prepend('Column 3 is here').css({'width':'300px','float':'right'});
});
</script>
<?php
}

You’ll at least get to see what it would look like it WordPress supported an extra column… bearing in mind that’s what i’ve thrown together over the course of 10 minutes.

I’d love to see this too. When using WordPress as a general purpose CMS, rather than a mere blogs, the amount of metadata, taxonomies and custom fields inevitably increase. The option of a third column to organise them in would be helpful.

What would be extra neat would be the capacity to arrange two columns underneath the content box, like so:

|------------------|-----|
|   main content   | rhs |
|------------------|     |
|  col 1  |  col2  |     |
|---------|--------|-----|

Perhaps someone could start by adding the request on the ideas section.
http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/

Your login there is the same as in the forum.

🙂

You have my vote! And i’d encourage anyone who supports this idea to cast their votes over on the ideas section to… 🙂

Hi Marcus,

The zip is empty

Works great, thanks!

I could add a settings page for it, or you could edit the plugin code yourself – it’s pretty simple.

There is already a setting in the header for the number of columns, I wonder how it might hook into that?

Thanks Mark,

However, it still loads the css (obviously) even on the types that are not specified.