For those of you who have been looking for a way to hide the dashboard in WordPress from ordinary users, I’ve just put up a plugin that does exactly that and is used right here at DeepWave. Enjoy!
Posts Tagged ‘WordPress’
In the course of setting up WordPress on DeepWave, I wanted a way where subscribers and editors/writers would not need to see the Dashboard in the Admin Control Panel. I noticed a number of people had suggested various hacks and changes in WordPress code to make this happen. But as we all know, we shouldn’t hack code because it would be a pain to upgrade. So I decided to take the various methods outlined on the net and make a small WordPress plugin that would do the trick. I therefore present the Hide Dashboard plugin!
Please bear with me as PHP is not one of my regular programming languages, and this is my first WordPress plugin after all, so if there are any bugs or problems, do let me know. Aside from that, enjoy!
To see this plugin in action, just register and login to this site. Alternatively, here are some screenshots:
These are images showing the effect of the Hide Dashboard plugin for ordinary Subscribers. On the left, Hide Dashboard is deactivated, while on the right, it is activated. Below is the same for an Editor:
Latest News (2007-11-10): I’ve just updated Hide Dashboard to version 1.1. The big change here is that I’ve added a widget for widget-enabled sidebars to use Hide Dashboard’s Meta instead of the WordPress default Meta section. This is done because the default WordPress Meta Login will direct subscribers and admins to the Dashboard page - which we’re trying to avoid (for subscribers anyway) in the first place. So now, when people login using Hide Dashboard’s Meta widget, it will take them back to the web page, and they can click on “My Profile” to see their own profile. I think this makes more sense for the default case. To see this sort of thing in action, try DeepWave.Net’s register and login functions above. Alternatively, if you do not have a widget enabled theme, then try using a WordPress theme like Serene which has Hide Dashboard’s login functions built right in. Additionally, this has been tested and is working fine on WP 2.3.1..
Edit (2008-07-28): This plugin works just fine with WordPress 2.6. But most users keep forgetting that they must use the special Hide Dashboard Meta Widget for logins. Just make sure you use a widget capable theme and use Hide Dashboard’s own Meta widget instead of the default one.
Update (2008-08-23): Two new options have been added to Hide Dashboard. The first, is the option to block access to the Dashboard via the URL Location bar (needs PHP Output Buffering to be enabled), and the second is the option to allow authors and editors (user level 2 and above) to view the Dashboard and other admin section pages. To enable output buffering, you can edit your php.ini file and set “output_buffering = On”, or edit .htaccess and add the line “php_flag output_buffering On”
Update (2008-09-15): Well, there has been a number of changes in the code inside the plugin in order to properly handle the situations with the two options introduced in version 1.2. If things did not seem right for you, just upload version 1.3 and give it a try. I think this time the logic should be correct, and you should see the correct results when you set the options for Hide Dashboard. Also, by popular request, the Hide Dashboard Meta Widget is now more editor/author friendly, sending you to the “Manage Posts” page instead of your profile. Administrators go to the Dashboard, and everyone else goes to their Profile page (which was the default previously).
I’ve just activated the WordPress Notify Members Plugin.. It gives users an option in their profile page to receive an email notification whenever a post or comment is added to the page.
To use it, just register on this site, and select a notification level in your profile. Let me know if it does or doesn’t work 
Well, in three days I have setup a blogging / CMS system on a new web host and moved over 120 pages of static content and almost 400 images, files and data. All I can say is, PHEW!
Certainly, this is not the end of the site activity. I still have various things I want to do, like changing the header graphic for the Connections theme, create a Links page of sorts, note down the various changes, hacks and modifications I had to do to get the site running and, of course, start adding more content.. I will also be trying to see if I can migrate Eileen’s Friendster blog to this one, so that will be a technical challenge as well.
And of course, hopefully I will be adding more and more content to DeepWave. It’s not about the technology, it’s about the content, right? Always has been..
OK, so, now I’ve finished moving probably everything except the Gallery.
- the Credits section in the About,
all of the Articles and References,more Light Reading- the entire Gallery
the Contact page- check out conversion to PHP5 (tried it, but will try again after DNS move is complete)
- move the domain
- search and replace the entire WordPress DB to make sure the URLs are properly updated after the domain move
- re-setup the Frees mailing list
- and make sure Eileen’s Blog is working fine. Oh yeah, and teach her HOW to blog using WordPress…
So, I am now going to move the DNS, and hopefully everything will work out fine..
Well, it is really late now, I’m tired, having been setting up, and moving pages from the old server to this new WordPress / MySQL CMS / Blogging system. So far, I’ve completed moving the About, Press and Events and some of the Light Reading. So, what’s next on the to-do list:
- the Credits section in the About,
- all of the Articles and References,
- more Light Reading
- the entire Gallery
- the Contact page
- check out conversion to PHP5
- move the domain
- search and replace the entire WordPress DB to make sure the URLs are properly updated after the domain move
- re-setup the Frees mailing list
- and make sure Eileen’s Blog is working fine. Oh yeah, and teach her HOW to blog using WordPress…
Phew!
Do also check out Some Light Reading for fiction work, or the Press and Events section for publications, press, seminars and events.
- Game Hints
- Back Orifice Check
- Novell CNE/CNA Information
- Animator’s Toolkit
- PalmOS Information and Reviews
- WordPress Hide Dashboard Plugin
- WordPress Serene Theme
- MyGallery to WordPress Converter Plugin
Old, Outdated or just Archived documents:
ASCII Art Pack!
___ ____ ___
____( \ .-’ `-. / )____
(____ \_____ / (O O) \ _____/ ____)
(____ `—–( ) )—–’ ____)
(____ _____________\ \____/ /_____________ ____)
(______/ `-.____.-’ \______)
BIG HUG
Net Information - contains the following references:
- Internet Access Information (Internet Service Providers) - CICNet, FreeNets, Merit - MichNet, MSEN, Public Dial-up Internet Access List
- Mailing Lists - Anonymous Mail Server, ASPIRE, Berita-L (SEA News), Gateway 2000 Computers, Novell Netware, SLink (Singapore/ASPIRE), Windows For Workgroups, WinNews Newsletter
- Other Information - SANS’s Heuristic Analysis system for Defensive Online Warfare, Computer Abbreviations, Escape Codes, Graduate School Email Addresses, Computer Companies’ Phone Support
DeepWave.Net started out as a personal web page way back in 1993. It was hosted on my university’s Sun and NeXT servers. During those days, NCSA’s Mosaic was the sole premier web browser. It was plain as web pages go, but later, there was an experiment called WIF - WebInterFace. WIF was designed to build an application entirely based on a web page and using Javascript to provide the necessary user interaction. Unfortunately, WIF had some serious bugs in it with Javascript on Netscape 2.x and Macintosh Netscape.
In 1997, the entire site was re-released as the Andromeda Express and was well supported in Netscape 4.x. In July 1998, the Andromeda express was re-released as version 2.1 at its new home at DeepWave.Net.
Eventually, with a Perl-based site management tool called the Web Pre-Processor, DeepWave.Net was re-released yet again as version 3.0 in December 1999, with some significant changes in the design of its user interface.
At the end of 2006, a long overdue makeover for DeepWave.Net was finally implemented. This involved a complete switch to using an excellent Blogging/CMS tool called WordPress.
Welcome to Version 4.1 of DeepWave.Net!
One must always give credit where credit is due, and so, after maintaining raw HTML pages with text editors, and later with Perl, DeepWave.Net now uses a whole bunch of software and tools created by other people. So, here’s the list of major items used at DeepWave.Net:
WordPress
This is the core CMS / Blogging system I use. It is easy to setup and maintain
and it looks pretty good too.
Serene Theme
I use my own Serene Theme for the site.
Cleaner Gallery and Lightbox 2
Of course we want our pictures to look great right?
Email Obfuscator
See also news://alt.spammer.die.die.die
Feeds Widget
Easy to use RSS Feeds Widget.
NRS Folding Pages Widget
Shouldn’t this be included by default?
Google Analyticator and Google XML Sitemaps Generator
I am Google-d, Therefore I am…
Hide Dashboard
A small plugin I wrote to simply Hide the Dashboard from the Admin Menu
for anyone logging in who is not an Admin.
Search Everything
Why this is not the default in WordPress, I have no idea.
Simple Tags
Great add-on, for a great feature.
Underscore Permalinks
Because underscores are cooler than dashes?
UrlEncoded Permalinks
Just in case…
WP Spam-Free
More Anti-Spam, one can never have enough of this stuff.
WP AJAX Edit Comments
For the really nice comment F/X
WP Contact Form III
Short, sweet, to-the-point contact form - what we all need
And of course, the default Akismet plugin that comes with WordPress.
DeepWave.Net is hosted at:
