Description
WPG Dashboard Menu Manager is a visual admin menu editor for WordPress. It gives you full control of your admin sidebar without touching a line of code: your current menu loads into a drag-and-drop editor where you can reorder items, rename titles, hide anything you do not want, and add your own custom links with icons.
Every admin menu item can be allowed or denied per role and per individual user, so you can hand editors a shorter menu, keep a plugin’s settings page away from subscribers, or hide a single item from one specific user.
Reorder, rename and hide admin menu items
Drag any row to change the order of your admin menu, rename its title, swap its icon, or hide it from the sidebar. Hidden items keep working at their direct URL, so existing bookmarks and direct links do not break.
Menu permissions per role and per user
Every item carries its own Allow / Deny / Inherit rule. Inherit follows WordPress, Allow forces the item to stay visible, and Deny hides the item and blocks its direct URL for that role or user.
Features
- Visual drag & drop editor for the entire admin menu and submenus
- Rename menu items, change icons, and reorder everything
- Hide any item from the sidebar (direct URLs stay accessible)
- Add custom menu links with your own title, URL, and icon
- Open items in a new window or in an iframe
- Per-role and per-user access rules for every item (Allow / Deny / Inherit)
- Require a custom capability for any menu item
- Menu separators and section headings
- Use shortcodes in menu titles and URLs
- Reset to the default menu any time
- Roles tab: review and edit what each role can see
- Tweaks: hide the admin bar per role, custom footer text, hide dashboard widgets per role
- Works on WordPress multisite (network admin menu editing is not included in v1)
Pro add-on
WPG Dashboard Menu Manager Pro (separate plugin) adds configuration import & export, login redirects per role, plugin visibility per role, custom admin CSS, content permissions per role, and a menu styler. Learn more at https://wpguru.in/plugin-wpg-dashboard-menu-manager.html
How it works
Open the WPG Menu Manager page in your admin sidebar. The editor loads your current admin menu as a tree. Click any item to edit its properties on the right: title, icon, URL, target, visibility, and permissions. Drag rows to reorder them. Use the actor dropdown to preview exactly what a specific role or user will see.
Hide is visual: hidden items disappear from the sidebar but their direct URLs stay accessible. Use Deny in the permissions to actually block access.
External Services
This plugin connects to a third-party service only after you explicitly opt in.
Freemius
- Used by: the plugin’s account, licensing, and Pro add-on update system.
- What is sent: the first time you open the plugin’s page, the bundled Freemius SDK asks whether you want to connect your site. If you opt in, it sends your site URL, your WordPress and PHP versions, and your admin email address. No menu configuration, post content, or user data is ever sent.
- When: only after you click to opt in. Choosing “Skip” leaves the plugin fully functional and sends nothing.
- Terms: https://freemius.com/terms/
- Privacy: https://freemius.com/privacy/
Screenshots
Installation
- Upload the
wpg-dashboard-menu-managerfolder to/wp-content/plugins/. - Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen in WordPress.
- Open the WPG Menu Manager page in your admin sidebar and start customizing.
FAQ
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Yes. Drag any row in the editor to reorder top-level items and their submenus. The order you save is the order your users see.
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Yes. Set the item to Deny for that role, or open the Roles tab to review and edit everything a role can see in one place.
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Yes. Use the Reset button in the Settings tab (or the editor toolbar reset form when the Pro add-on is active). Your configuration is removed and the default WordPress menu is restored.
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Yes, by design. “Hide” removes an item from the sidebar only; the page remains accessible at its direct URL. To block access completely, set the item to Deny for the roles or users you want to restrict.
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Yes. Every item has per-role and per-user rules. Use the actor dropdown in the editor to preview each role’s view, or the Roles tab to edit what a role sees.
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Does it work with multisite?
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The plugin works on multisite installs for the main site and sub-sites. Editing the network admin menu is not included in version 1.
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Yes. Your menu configuration is stored in a single WordPress option (
wpgdmm_config) in your own database and is never uploaded anywhere. JSON export/import is available in the Pro add-on. -
Does this plugin send any data to an external server?
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Not for the menu editor itself — it works entirely on your site. The bundled Freemius SDK asks your permission the first time you open the plugin page. If you opt in, it sends your site URL, WordPress and PHP versions, and your admin email so you can receive the Pro add-on’s updates and support. If you choose “Skip”, nothing is sent. See the External Services section below for details.
Reviews
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Contributors & Developers
“WPG Dashboard Menu Manager” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
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Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.1.1
- Renamed to WPG Dashboard Menu Manager (
wpg-dashboard-menu-manager) to avoid confusion with the existing “Admin Menu Editor” plugin. - Fix: Roles tab styles moved out of an inline
<style>block and into the enqueued admin stylesheet. - Fix: Heading and hidden-item rules are now added with
wp_add_inline_style()instead of a hand-printed<style>tag. - Fix: The save-configuration nonce is sanitized before
wp_verify_nonce(), since that function is pluggable. - Fix: Submitted configuration JSON is decoded with a depth limit and an explicit
json_last_error()check, then sanitized field-by-field. - Fix: Editor toolbar HTML from the
wpgdmm_editor_toolbar_buttonsfilter is escaped withwp_kses()against an allowlist instead of being echoed as raw HTML. - Fix: Hiding a menu item now collapses it completely in the sidebar. The hiding class was written to the menu item’s page-title slot instead of its CSS-class slot, so WordPress never applied it and the item left a blank gap behind.
1.1.0
- New: plugin split into a free core and a Pro add-on. The free plugin now focuses on the visual menu editor, roles, and tweaks; the Pro add-on (separate plugin) adds import/export, login redirects, plugin visibility, admin CSS, content permissions, and the menu styler.
- New: editor toolbar buttons and export/import forms are provided by the Pro add-on via the
wpgdmm_editor_toolbar_buttonsfilter. - Dev: reset moved to its own handler so the free plugin’s Settings tab works standalone.
1.0.2
- Fix: Redirects tab spacing — rules table now full-width with Add rule and Save on one row; no layout gap.
- Sync: Stable tag and Requires at least now match the plugin header (6.0 / 1.0.2); readme Screenshots and changelog brought up to date.
1.0.1
- Fix: default icons for Add Menu (
dashicons-admin-generic) and Add Heading (dashicons-heading); heading icon preview no longer blank in the sidebar.
1.0.0
- Initial release: visual admin menu editor with per-role/per-user permissions, custom menu items, import/export, and the full module set (Redirector, Plugin Visibility, Admin CSS, Content Permissions, Menu Styler, Tweaks).