WordPress has a very clean admin interface. There is a neat sidebar with menu item for each section of your site, e.g. posts, pages, comments, media, etc. However, you might want to try some shortcuts to do things more quickly. We discussed keybord shortcuts in WordPress a long time ago, unfortunately these keyboard shortcuts don’t work in all browsers. How nice would it be if you could just instruct WordPress like iPhone’s Siri? Actually you can do something very similar. In this article we will show you how to get a Siri like Butler in your WordPress Dashboard.
First, install and activate the WP Butler plugin. Once you have activated the plugin, press ALT + Shift + B on your keyboard and a nice little text box would appear asking What would you like to do?
Now if you want to write a post, type post in the text box. You will notice that as soon as you start typing the Butler starts looking for results. As soon as it finds a match, the butler will show you a drop down list of actions like this:
Select the action and press Enter. The Butler will take you to the page you have selected. Try typing some other actions, like comments, themes, install:
You can also use butler to quickly search posts on your site. Type search keyword in the text box and it will show you a list of posts matching your keyword.
We hope that this Siri like Butler for WordPress will help you save time while working on your site. Let us know what other shortcuts you use to work more efficiently on your WordPress sites?
Hi Syed, I just found this post! Thanks so much for the write-up
Anytime man.
This approach likes good to me. For instance it is implemented on desktop, like in Ubuntu and Macs, and I use it all the time. I hope it works with custom stuff, guess I have to try this plug-in in the near future.
Hi Zseller, yes it does work with custom stuff. Hope you like it
It seems like a long way around. I can simply throw my mouse to the left to access posts, then click. 1 move, 1 click. If I had to type it in, it would be 5 key depressions for “posts” and then 1 click to select it.
I am not sure how this is quicker, but I can see that many people would use it if they do not know where the options are within wordpress. I am sure you are like us and can navigate the menu in our sleep.
It’s a personal preference. Before Siri, you knew how to touch the phone icon, and dial for someone. But now people ask Siri to do that. I know I do. -Syed
Thanks for the feedback, David. Most things you can do with keyboard shortcuts can be done with a mouse. It’s a lot easier to make a shortcut on your desktop for an application than typing it out into Launchy or Alfred, but some people like to keep their hands on the keys, not swap to and from the mouse
Nice idea, reminds me of launchy for Windows, but that is one ugly keystroke combination. Is the ALT + Shift + B customizable to something a more comfortable or preferred combo?
Make a suggestion to the developer. It would be neat if they can make it customizable.
Hi Yosef! Thanks for the suggestion. I’m in two minds about this. I like the idea of the keyboard shortcut being ubiquitous… but then, some people might prefer to customise it.
You’re the second person to ask for this feature, so I might create a hook that lets you change it programmatically in the next version, so those who really want to can do so.