WordPress is the most popular blogging software right now. Credit must go to the open-source community for creating wonderful themes, plugins, hacks and support. The mass exodus of users from Movable Type began when MT’s makers decided to make it paid and restrictive in nature. Since then, WordPress users have not had to look back.
Open-source software has its share of quirks, though. User Interface is one such aspect (read more of my analysis of WP dashboard design), and it is common.
Thinking of the WordPress dashboard navigation gives me nightmares. It takes two, count it, two clicks to reach any of the submenus, and there is no AJAX functionality to save a pageload.
And as always, the plugin developers have come around to rescue.
WordPress Admin Drop-Down Menu
Ozh has developed a wonderful plugin, which does just one simple job – add a second row of menu links to the WordPress dashboard navigation. This is AJAX powered, and hence does not need page reload to display.
Once you upload and activate the plugin, you will get a menu system as shown in the screenshot below. When you hover over a link in the main tabs (Write, Manage etc.), the secondary level of links appear, and you can click them to access the pages directly. Viola! One click saved. And when you add up the number of clicks saved per month, it will come up to be an astounding figure – time that could have been used for writing a post, for example.
Boost your productivity with this time-saving plugin
Download WP Admin Drop-down menu | Author Homepage
Related reading
- Plugin Week promises a daily WordPress plugin for a week
- Analyzing WordPress admin dashboard UI design
- How to fix WordPress wp-admin “page not found” error
- First impressions: Defensio anti-spam WordPress plugin
I’ve been using this plugin on my personal blog and it has really saved me a lot of time and frustration.
I’d love to see this feature implemented in original WordPress, so that I can have drop down menus by default, without using a plugin to do it.
@Shankar: As ReviewSaurus noted in the comment above, WP 2.5 will include a admin panel redesign by Happy Cog.
One of my ‘default’ plugins – whenever I do an WordPress installs, this is one of the plugin I install first.
@BinnyVA: It is a default plugin for me too – I can’t imagine two clicks to a page now that I have gotten used to the Admin Drop-down plugin.