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1. Arnan de Gans
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I'm wondering about something:

   CUrrently i'm testing and preparing for wp2.7 and it struck me that there is no Manage menu anymore. Several of my plugins have stuff that need managing and i'm wondering where to stick those pages now. Creating a new toplevel menu obiously is not a good option since it will make a lengthy sidebar/navigation and it's just annoying.

   I've been working on a sort of umbrella plugin to have all the menus gathered in one toplevel menu but that doesn't seem to work out as planned either. It's a but userunfriendly to require people to install a 2nd plugin in order for them to use the one they use.

   So how is this handled? It seems a bit plugin unfriendly if it would just dissapear :(.

   Any help/tips would be greatly appreciated.

2. MichaelH
   Volunteer
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I don't know that there's a clear answer to that. Putting the plugin settings under Settings and the plugin management under Tools seems kind of logical to me.

   But, some food for thought:
   http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2008-October/022004.html
   http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2008-October/022272.html

   And an older discussion to confuse things:
   http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2006-March/005247.html

3. Arnan de Gans
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   While i partly agree with the last url you posted i do not htink Tools is the right place for plugin manage pages.

   Atleast not my plugins. I have created several plugins that need regular access depending on ones need. Similar to the edit posts dashboard. Cramming that in Tools next to the import/export tools is just silly. Tools is not a menu i would ever use.

   Maybe if we could set the sortorder in the menu's it would be usable, but otherwise no...

   I guess i'll just have to put through on my own menu structure though. I've already put in a plugin request for that. But it's another loss on WP's end that the manage section is gone.

4. Jane Wells
   Key Master
   Posted 3 years ago #

   The idea is:

   If your plugin contains daily-use functionality, place it within the top-level section that makes sense (there are hooks for this). So if you have a photo album plugin, put it in Media. If you have a tag manager, put it in Posts. Screens that are purely for adjusting the configuration of your plugin should go in Settings or in Plugins. If your plugin creates a whole different category of objects, such an ecommerce plugin that creates Products, then it would make sense to make a top-level item called Products for managing products (hooks for this, too).

5. Arnan de Gans
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I get that idea. But see it this way.

   In wp 2.6 and older with the manage panel you could put nearly everything that needs to be managed there. For example my Events and AdRotate plugin would go there. Just because they both create a list of items which are managed on a regular basis. New events. New banners. Edit them, remove them etc.

   Now with the manage tab gone. I would have to create top level menus for every plugin that requires such a page. Which will be fine if it's one or maybe 2 plugins. But i have at least 5. Creating top level menu's for each of them is crazy and makes the navigation bar inefficient to use. So for me the new dashboard is flawed at best.

   However, i'm working on another idea. A new plugin creating one top-level menu in which every plugin can put it's manage menu's.

6. John James Jacoby
   BuddyPress/bbPress Dev
   Posted 3 years ago #

   The problem is exactly what you said...

   Even settings need to be managed, but they shouldn't be under manage, they should be under settings...

   I think your solution is probably best for your needs, to create a custom top level menu that your plug-ins can use...

7. Arnan de Gans
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I think so yea.

   THey're not really settings though. Think of it as a list of posts. Posts aren't in settings.

   Try my plugins out for kicks and see what i mean.

   Anyway, thanks all for your input!

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