One of the first things I wanted to improve in the admin area of my WordPress blog, back in the 1.5 days, was the header menu. I wanted to be able to reach any admin page in one click, instead of first clicking on the first level link (”Manage” for example) and then only on a submenu link (”Comments“) So came a very neat plugin : the WordPress Admin Drop Down Menu
When WordPress 2.7 and its new and optimized user interface came, I thought there was still room for improvements: a horizontal menu gave the admin area more of a “desktop application” feel, and I think it’s superior to a vertical menu. So I updated the WordPress Admin Drop Down Menu.

Download
Get the plugin :
ozh-admin-drop-down-menu.zip
Extract and upload to your blog, preserving directory structure.
Note: download counter here and stats on wordpress.org may differ and reflect the number of downloads before this plugin was hosted on the plugin directory
Activate and enjoy. Another friendly install & forget piece of PHP.
Features
- Customizable color scheme with a neat color picker
- Normal mode for regular users, compact mode for real estate maniacs, minimal mode for those who never have enough
- Optional cute icons from FamFamFam
- Enhanced compatibility with handheld devices
- Joy and happiness for every day
Javascript is involved for advanced features and to make stuff compatible with MSIE6, but on any decent browser everything works even with Javascript disabled.
Super neat color picking.
Any color you’ll love.
Normal or compact display.

Browser compatibility
The plugin has been developed on Firefox 3, Chrome and MSIE7. It should do fine with MSIE6 and Safari too.
There are glitches with Firefox 2 and Camino which both use a deprecated rendering engine. There are also glitches with Opera. I won’t fix these, but if anyone wants to submit a CSS patch to resolve one of these issue, you’re welcome :)
Developer friendly
The plugin comes with a wickedly cool API that will allow other plugin developers to interact with it, like adding your own custom icon for your plugin. Read the API for Coders page for examples and documentation. Also, all elements the plugin produces get custom CSS classes and id’s to allow easy styling or selecting.
Translations
The plugin is ready for interglobanalization and there is a .pot template file included so polyglots can even make their own translation and sent the .mo and .po files to me that I’ll include in the package.
The plugin comes with the following translations, in no particular order:
- Turkish, thanks to Baris Ünver
- Korean, thanks to Jong-In Kim
- Spanish, thanks to Karin Sequen
- Italian, thanks to Gianni Diurno
- Deutsch, thanks to Frasier Crane
- Russian, thanks to Fat Cow
- Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Renato Tavares
- Greek, thanks to Friedlich
- Belorussian, thanks to ilyuha
- Hebrew, thanks to Amiad Bareli
- Romanian, thanks to Octav
- Ukrainian , thanks to wpp.pp.ua and Jurko Chervony
- Traditional Chinese, thanks to Paogray
And maybe more since I might totally forget to update this list :)
Older Versions
Version 2.3.4.1 for WordPress 2.5 to 2.6.5 is available and unsupported:
ozh-admin-drop-down-menu.2.3.4.1.zip
Extract and upload to your blog, preserving directory structure.
Demo: what it used to be in WordPress 2.5 to 2.6.5
Version 1.3.1 for WordPress 1.5 to 2.3.3 is still available too, after all these years:
- wp_ozh_adminmenu.txt (download and save as .php)
- wp_ozh_adminmenu.php (highlighted code, copy and paste in a blank file, but do not download as is)
Feedback, Bug report, Feature request
Sure. Feed me back. Like it? Blog about it. Love it? Click on the download link, see the Paypal button appear, and give it some clicks!
If you’re reporting bugs, you’re welcome, but please provide a screenshot and informations about your browser & your OS. I’m not supporting deprecated blogs or plugins or browsers, and I can’t respond to incomplete bug reports.
If you’re suggesting a feature, you’re welcome too, but I won’t add an admin menu on the public side of the blog, on top of pages. There are other plugins for this, I totally endorse, recommend and suggest Viper’s Admin Bar.
Related posts
Shorter URL
Want to share or tweet this page? Please use this short URL: http://ozh.in/kl
Metastuff
1,277 Blablas
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Pages: [128] 127 126 125 124 123 122 121 120 119 118 … 1 » Show All
replied, on 12/Mar/10 at 11:00 am # :
Love this plugin, this has been a joy to use for many clients of mine. Look forward to your other releases….
thought, on 12/Mar/10 at 4:33 am # :
WOW this is awesome, reminds me of the old version of wordpress.
Thanks a lot this is a great plugin
commented, on 12/Mar/10 at 2:10 am # :
I read on here a few days ago about MapPress conflicting. I hadn’t heard of it, but checked it out, but both plugins work fine.
replied, on 12/Mar/10 at 1:58 am # :
Wow… I love this plugin! What a relief! I didn’t realize just how stressful it was to have to continually scroll down the left hand side of a page looking for what I wanted. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you… I am passing the good news along to friends with wp sites. YOU are the best!
wrote, on 12/Mar/10 at 12:27 am # :
Hi Ozh, thanks for your quick reply.
I see your point, but if it was/is easy to be implemented your plug-in would have it in its settings page, so the user would opt through a checkbox where Admin Drop Down Menu would take control over all menus and order them alphabetically or not (optional).
Well, just a suggestion. ;0)
Have a nice day.
said, on 12/Mar/10 at 12:01 am # :
Lucato » actually each plugin can define its order, for good or bad reasons, but I want my plugin to be unobtrusive and don’t change this :)
replied, on 11/Mar/10 at 11:58 pm # :
Ohz, amazing plug-in! Congratulations!
I’d like to suggest an option to add in to the Admin Drop Down Menu setting. It would allow us to see all menus ordered alphabetically. I have some plug-ins menus that aren’t ordered this way. So, I don’t know if its menu order is controlled from each plug-in installed or if your plug-in can set all menus to be ordered alphabetically. Well, something like that. I’m just an user not a developer. :0)