Have you ever worked with a client who has a hard time understanding technology? Well, as a consultant, designer, or developer, it is your job to make things easier for them. WordPress admin panel comes with a lot of options in the menu, but you can get rid of them fairly easily if necessary. With one of our clients, we needed to get rid of few menu items, so it is easier for her to understand things. In this article, we will show you how easy it is to remove a menu item in the WordPress Admin Panel.
For WordPress 3.1 or above, just paste the following code in your theme’s functions.php file:
add_action( 'admin_menu', 'my_remove_menu_pages' );
function my_remove_menu_pages() {
remove_menu_page('link-manager.php');
}
In version prior to WordPress 3.1, you would need to paste the following code in your theme’s functions.php file:
function remove_menus () {
global $menu;
$restricted = array(__('Links'));
end ($menu);
while (prev($menu)){
$value = explode(' ',$menu[key($menu)][0]);
if(in_array($value[0] != NULL?$value[0]:"" , $restricted)){unset($menu[key($menu)]);}
}
}
add_action('admin_menu', 'remove_menus');
The code above will get rid of the Links option for all users (including administrators). Only two user roles are allowed to see the Link tab (Administrators and Editors). Now if this is for a multi-author site (where there are many editors), and you as an administrator still want access to the Links menu, then you can add parameters to do so.
You would need to utilize the function current_user_can(), and with a simple if statement, you can get rid of the link menu or other items for specific user role.
This is a very handy trick for consultants and developers who work on larger sites.
Additional Sources
Remove Menu Page
Current User Can Function Reference
User Roles and Capabilities Chart
ideadeia says
But how about some menu items created by a plugin, with pages like “admin.php?page=wpcf-cf” it’s working fine for wp menu items but I cant get it to work with parametized urls,
Any clue?
ThatK1dB says
Very useful! thanks
Will says
The unset global option still works for newer versions of WordPress if you still want to allow direct access; to properly block the page you do need to use remove_menu_page.
Jay says
Just a note to update this code, admin_init needs to be changed to admin_menu
Veerle says
+1, please correct this in the article!
still a popular one
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/warning-invalid-argument-supplied-for-foreach-in-homesitepublic_htmlxxwp
Editorial Staff says
Updated the article.
Admin
gleenk says
Thank you, but… how can I add link? and metabox (for example only to insert a custom field somewhere, maybe in footer?)
jose says
How can remove Item, that are installed by plugin like, Contact 7, Poll Daddy or others ? Which are their names on the menu ??
Thx
Editorial Staff says
You would have to look at each plugin’s codes individually.
Admin
kreegahdesign says
To find what to add where? I would also like to hide the Contact form 7 and SEO admin pages.
Maggan says
What line of code would I put in there then? If I wanted to remove Contact form 7 for instance
wpbeginner says
@Maggan You would have to examine each plugin individually to see what is their menu code.
Eric Downs says
Did you happen to figure out where to look for this?
Vali says
in wp-config.php put this code:
define( ‘WPCF7_ADMIN_READ_CAPABILITY’, ‘manage_options’ );
define( ‘WPCF7_ADMIN_READ_WRITE_CAPABILITY’, ‘manage_options’ );
Alan says
You wouldn’t happen to know how to create username specific “if” conditions for the menus do you?
Alan says
I was just looking up how to do this the other day and came across a nice bit of code that will leave the links for admins but remove them for everybody else.
function remove_menus () {
global $menu;
if( (current_user_can(‘install_themes’)) ) { $restricted = array(__()); }
else { $restricted = array( __(‘Posts’),__(‘Links’), __(‘Pages’), __(‘Tools’), __(‘Users’), __(‘Settings’), __(‘Profile’)); } // hide these for other roles
end ($menu);
while (prev($menu)){
$value = explode(‘ ‘,$menu[key($menu)][0]);
if(in_array($value[0] != NULL?$value[0]:”” , $restricted)){unset($menu[key($menu)]);}
}
}
add_action(‘admin_menu’, ‘remove_menus’);