Tag: WCEU2023

Ask most users what they hate most about what WordPress plugins do and they’ll say “banner ads”. Drill down further, though, and you’ll find that it’s any kind of advertising within WP Admin.

Used to up-sell an audience to a premium version of the product, it’s understandable. But what if it’s to a different product entirely? What if it’s a free one? Then it REALLY does get annoying, particularly when it’s outside of the individual plugin’s pages and is splashed across the whole of WP Admin.

In this post I’m going to show some examples of behaviours, what the issue is, and suggestion some alternatives for developers as well.

Install enough plugins on a WordPress site and you’ll soon come across some that make various style changes to make themselves stand out in the menu.

In this post I’m going to look at some examples of this, explore the reasoning behind it but also explain what the issues are with doing it.

When developing for WordPress, one of the great thing about adding admin menus is the flexibility that it gives you. But that same flexibility has led to some truly awful user experiences.

Let me show some examples and explore what is wrong with some of the things that developers do and what best path is.

Look, it happens. There are numerous reasons why we may need to walk away from one of our plugins. But just leaving it isn’t cool.

Why shouldn’t you walk away from your plugin? Simply put, your users won’t know and, without realising, the plugin they have installed may become a security risk containing unpatched vulnerabilities. Or it may no longer work as well with newer versions of WordPress, without the person using it realising that’s the cause.

So, In this article I’m going to provide a multi-pronged approach to how you can do it but not leave your users in the lurch – everything from a minimal approach to full, deleting from the WordPress directory and walking away.