So let’s say you open up your blog to guest posters, and you create a user for them, and possibly even a custom role.
You will usually find one or more menu items that you don’t want to show your guest posters. How do you hide them?
Remove Menu Items in Admin
Turns out it’s quite simple, just take a look at the URL of those menu items, and then use that to build up your function like so:
[php]
add_action( 'admin_init', 'my_remove_menu_pages' );
function my_remove_menu_pages() {
global $user_ID;
if ( current_user_can( 'wpmayorauthor' ) ) {
remove_menu_page( 'edit.php?post_type=thirstylink' );
remove_menu_page( 'edit.php?post_type=wprss_feed' );
remove_menu_page( 'authorhreview' );
}
}
[/php]Here are some of the menu page names for the most common menu items that come with WordPress:
[php]
remove_menu_page('edit.php'); // Posts
remove_menu_page('upload.php'); // Media
remove_menu_page('link-manager.php'); // Links
remove_menu_page('edit-comments.php'); // Comments
remove_menu_page('edit.php?post_type=page'); // Pages
remove_menu_page('plugins.php'); // Plugins
remove_menu_page('themes.php'); // Appearance
remove_menu_page('users.php'); // Users
remove_menu_page('tools.php'); // Tools
remove_menu_page('options-general.php'); // Settings
[/php]There are also some plugins that can help you out if you prefer that route over coding yourself:
Remove the Ability To See Certain Posts
Here’s one other bonus tip for you. If you want to remove the ability of a role to see the list of posts by other users, use this code:
[php]
add_action( 'load-edit.php', 'posts_for_current_contributor' );
function posts_for_current_contributor() {
global $user_ID;
if ( current_user_can( 'contributor' ) ) {
if ( ! isset( $_GET['author'] ) ) {
wp_redirect( add_query_arg( 'author', $user_ID ) );
exit;
}
}
}
[/php]And of course, if you haven’t already heard about it, here’s an excellent plugin for managing roles and capabilities in WordPress:
Also, if you’re looking for a managed host with knowledgeable support which you can contact 24/7, have a look at SiteGround. They offer WordPress-specific support and their agents can help you with inquiries regarding plugins, themes, and other application-related issues.
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35 Responses
This works a treat! Thanks 🙂
To do this for a custom role (created in the Members plugin) my code is:
$user = wp_get_current_user();
if ( $user->roles[0] == ‘cattery_admin’ ){
remove_menu_page( ‘edit.php’ );
remove_menu_page( ‘edit-comments.php’ );
remove_menu_page( ‘tools.php’ );
}
You may ask: Why do I need this if I am using the Members plugin?
Well, under Media in Members the only option is to Upload files. To edit image attributes or to delete uploaded images, I enabled the default capability under Posts to Edit and Delete Posts. This then shows the menu items of Posts, Comments, and Tools, that I don’t want for this role… hence the above code.
This is by far the best and easiest solution to implement. No plugins, no configurations, just a few lines of code.
Can this be also targeted to specific usernames or userIDs and not only to a role?
Your code for users to only see their own post might be problematic. The user can simply change the author parameter in the url!
Hi,
I am unable to remove the menu pages created by the acf plugin. I am using the code remove_menu_page( ‘edit.php?post_type=acf’ ).
Can you please help me out.
Try using code remove_menu_page( ‘acf’ )
Hi! can anyone tell me which file should I edit? I can’t try it out since I don’t know which PHP should I mess with. Thanks!
Francisco, usually for this kind of thing, you would do it in the themes’ functions.php file. If your theme doesn’t have that file, simply create it withing the theme folder.
This code didn’t work for me with WP 4.5.4
I have a custom user role that I created earlier so I have…
add_action( ‘admin_init’, ‘remove_menu_pages’ );
function remove_menu_pages() {
global $user_ID;
if( current_user_can(‘client’) ) {
remove_menu_page(‘plugins.php’);
}
}
…but the plugin menu item continues to show. Would really like to figure out what’s wrong here.
Hello jean, How I can remove menu item that have url: wp-admin/admin.php?page=wpfront-user-role-editor.
How would one adapt this for frontend menu items?
Hi Laura, in what way? This is about the WP Admin menu. For the menu on your frontend you can just use the WP Menu settings…
Thanks your code does work! But when I add condition
if ( current_user_can( ‘wpmayorauthor’ ) ) {…}
to my child theme not to the main theme it does not work. I think it does not recognize the current_user_can function. /themename-child/function.php any ideas why? Do I need to somehow do an include so the current_user_can function is recognized?
Thanks
Hello! What a great bit of code, especially useful for us was hiding posts from other authors in the list.
How about multiple authors of a post, all being able to see that post in their respective lists?
add_action( ‘load-edit.php’, ‘posts_for_current_contributor’ );
function posts_for_current_contributor() {
global $user_ID;
if ( current_user_can( ‘contributor’ ) ) {
if ( ! isset( $_GET[‘author’] ) ) {
wp_redirect( add_query_arg( ‘author’, $user_ID ) );
exit;
}
}
}
With the original code, even after adding an author to a post (now post has two authors) the post does not show up in the second, additional authors, post list.
Only the first and original author of a post is able to see the post (which now has multiple authors.)
Using the Co-Authors Plus plugin to add multiple authors to a post.
In this article, it talks about how Co-Authors plugin stores the terms… but I’m not sure how one would extract those terms and use them with the wp_redirect, to list more than one author.
Hope that makes sense : ) thank you for any advice.
Many thanks for sharing this, very useful.
I still have a problem with removing an item from the dashboard top menu line, which seems to fall exactly into the group of pages what I can remove from the sidebar:
…wp-admin/admin.php?page=wpseo_dashboard
I can’t figure out why it refuses to disappear.
I’d appreciate an advice
Nice one man… so helpful.. thanks
I use this plugin that solves exactly this problem, but with a much nicer UI.
the solution is to just put the very last bit of the url so instead of remove_menu_page( ‘edit.php?post_type=thirstylink’ ); you would put remove_menu_page( ‘thirstylink’ ); – hope that helps someone
? does not work
it does work… copying and pasting did not as I missed the top line… it works
very cool…. any idea how to force the particularly stubborn plugins that refuse to vanish to disappear? Maybe some way to “hide” them? That’s what the menu plugins have to do for these particular items. Thanks
Nice one! I’m using easy-admin-menu plugin, Allows you to reorder and hide items in the menu with a very easy interface, just drag and drop. Might be useful
That’s also a interesting plugin although it can not bet set depending on user roles…
Great another thread that not helping, i want to remove tools from admin menu…not using functions but just delete it….
How do you remove plugin links like this:
I have tried “remove_menu_page( ‘admin.php?page=wpfilebase_sets’ );” but that didn’t do anything
I have this same problem.
Hi just put
remove_menu_page( ‘wpfilebase_sets’ );
Its done 🙂
Thanks deb, your comment helped me
didn’t work for me.. remove_menu_page is not working in my case… Will you please help me out..
Thank you, man.
How can I remove menu items which other plugin add?
very useful, thank you!
Any idea how I could hide other users images/media from a user? The code above only seems to work for posts…
Thanks for the article. Here is another plugin:
Thanks Paal, good find.
Hi Jean,
I would like to say the way you illustrated will definetly going to help lots of blogger in terms of how to remove the menu items. Nice Coding.
View my recent post on
Regards
Siddhartha Sinha
Thanks.