Serendipity Forums

Hi

Some Plugins do use an admin sidebar link to support their own backend work.
These links are placed inside the entries section, like staticpages, downloadmanager, free tags, cache all, etc.
At least for the ones not related near to entries, this is not very clean.
I would like to see most of them placed inside a very own Plugin block section.
Do we have already have something like this or have we ever thought about going this way?

Timbalu wrote:I would like to see most of them placed inside a very own Plugin block section.

Agreed on not dumping all of them into entries, veto on a seperate plugin section. We should try to find a more sensible way of organizing menu items in the backend, but plain "Plugins" is not exactly a masterpiece of usability, especially since we do already have "Manage plugins".

YL

Well yes and no. It was meant to be some food for thought.

'Manage Plugins' is a link to the content plugin manager and sits in 'Appearance', which isnt a good place for the sidebar plugin backend links either. Mooving them into the content plugin manager page is ill-advised too, since they are not seen and addressed directly.

So we have two options having some sort of plugin sidebar block as mentioned and keep everything as is, or create a template block for the MANAGE_STYLES link and use a MANAGE_PLUGINS block for plugin maintenance.

And yes, thinking of doing this the sensible way suits me fine, as long as it goes with: make it simple, and: dont change everything just because of this. Stay BC!

Hi!

I think there's a plugin hook for each of the main menu sections, so basically a plugin shoud be able to put its link into any section, not just entries.

Regards,
Garvin

I could use 'backend_sidebar_admin_appearance' instead 'backend_sidebar_entries' and so on for existing category blocks. But this is not getting better, since we have to make some thoughts about restructering the backend sidebar first.

Timbalu wrote:I could use 'backend_sidebar_admin_appearance' instead 'backend_sidebar_entries' and so on for existing category blocks. But this is not getting better, since we have to make some thoughts about restructering the backend sidebar first.

Yes, I think there was a discussion here about that, something that yellowled cooked up a couple of months ago, with a new interface et al... I'm not sure where the discussion came to a halt, but I bet it was because of missing feedback or missing time/volunteers

Technically, it's really easy to implement....

Regards,
Garvin

As far as remember YL found somebody willing and able to work on this, so we have to wait for some first results.
Myself I stopped an early private fun project smartifying the dashboard to get this be some sort of main entrance, because of that.

But maybe this shouldn't stop us thinking to restructure the admin sidebar blocks

Garvin could we get/have a list of all core and additional plugins using their own backend administration page?

Timbalu wrote:Garvin could we get/have a list of all core and additional plugins using their own backend administration page?

I think grep'ing through the files for "backend_sidebar_" should yield all such plugins!

Regards,
Garvin

I imagine I could do this when having downloaded all the (core and) additional plugins to here locally, but, oh surprise, I have not.
I really dont know how I could do this with SF and/or google getting exact results.
I thought you have them available at home all together. Thats why I dared to ask.

Hi!

You can simply CVS-checkout the whole additional_plugins module, that's really easy... also there's a ZIP file with all plugins on spartacus: http://netmirror.org/serendipity/additional_plugins.tgz

Regards,
Garvin

Oh fine Here we are

Search additional_plugins "backend_sidebar_" (32 files)

Backend sidebar hook 'backend_sidebar_entries' related files:

• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_adminnotes/serendipity_event_adminnotes.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_aggregator/serendipity_event_aggregator.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_assigncategories/serendipity_event_assigncategories.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_backup/serendipity_event_backup.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_cal/serendipity_event_cal.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_dbclean/serendipity_event_dbclean.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_downloadmanager/serendipity_event_downloadmanager.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_todolist/serendipity_event_todolist.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_faq/serendipity_event_faq.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_forum/serendipity_event_forum.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_freetag/serendipity_event_freetag.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_guestbook/serendipity_event_guestbook.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_includeentry/serendipity_event_includeentry.php (4 hits)
  ??? Line 51: 'backend_sidebar_entries_event_display_staticblocks' => true, belongs to includeentry - why not *_display_includeentry ?
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_linklist/serendipity_event_linklist.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_motm/serendipity_event_motm.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_multilingual/serendipity_event_multilingual.php (1 hits) ??? no output to backends content, no case 'backend_sidebar_entries': ???
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_mycalendar/serendipity_event_mycalendar.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_mymood/serendipity_event_mymood.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_phoneblogz/serendipity_event_phoneblogz.php (8 hits) (in both backend_sidebar_entries && backend_sidebar_admin)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_popfetcher/serendipity_event_popfetcher.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_sidebarhider/serendipity_event_sidebarhider.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_spamblock_bayes/serendipity_event_spamblock_bayes.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_staticpage/serendipity_event_staticpage.php (4 hits)
• -
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_plugin_pollbox/serendipity_event_pollbox.php (4 hits)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_plugin_twitter/serendipity_event_twitter.php (4 hits)

Backend sidebar hook 'backend_sidebar_entries_images' related files:

• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_flickr/serendipity_event_flickr.php (4 hits)

Backend sidebar hook 'backend_sidebar_admin' related files:

• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_phoneblogz/serendipity_event_phoneblogz.php (8 hits) (in both backend_sidebar_entries && backend_sidebar_admin)
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_userprofiles/serendipity_event_userprofiles.php (4 hits)

Possible plugins, which have some output to backends content page, no hook to sidebar

• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_autoupdate/serendipity_event_autoupdate.php (2 hits) | dependency to dashboard & outputs to backend content
  Line 31: 'backend_sidebar_entries_event_display_update' => true));
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_openid/serendipity_event_openid.php (2 hits) | outputs to backend content
  Line 26: 'backend_sidebar_entries_event_display_profiles' => true,
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_template_editor/serendipity_event_template_editor.php (2 hits) | outputs to backend content
  Line 35: 'backend_sidebar_entries_event_display_template_editor' => true));
• /additional_plugins/serendipity_event_categorytemplates/serendipity_event_categorytemplates.php (2 hits) | outputs to backend content
  Line 46: 'backend_sidebar_entries_event_display_cattemplate' => true,

Hmmm ~27 is a lot, isn't it?
I still think it is worth having some sort of sidebar pluginsection. See next:

Available sidebar hooks by now:
{serendipity_hookPlugin hook="backend_sidebar_entries" hookAll="true"}
{serendipity_hookPlugin hook="backend_sidebar_entries_images" hookAll="true"}
{serendipity_hookPlugin hook="backend_sidebar_admin_appearance" hookAll="true"}
{serendipity_hookPlugin hook="backend_sidebar_admin" hookAll="true"}

As you can see, most of them use the entries section, and I bet, just by using the same old config as nearly everyone.

The dashboard could be in MAIN LINKS START like the CONST.ADMIN_FRONTPAGE link to configure as the default main entrance and configurable starter plugin (simple -> extended).

The sidebar or Main menu blocks:

• backend_sidebar_entries - Called when building the menu list for the admin suite, section "Entries". ?? Input data: Configuration directives. ?? (leave as is, without additional plugins)
• backend_sidebar_entries_images - Called when building the menu list for the admin suite, section "Media".(leave as is, without additional plugins)
• backend_sidebar_admin_appearance - Called when building the menu list for the admin suite, section "Appearance". | better called "Configuration", as used for plugin and template configurations (leave as is, without additional plugins)
• backend_sidebar_backend_apps - called when building the menu lists for the admin suite, section "Plugin Apps". | please feel free to add the additional plugins from prev post here
  • - entry related ( freetags, cache all, phoneblogz, ***)
  • - site related ( staticpages, downloadmanager, guestbook, eventcal, *** )
  • - media related ( flickr, *** )
  • - internal ( [dashboard?], statistics, spam bayes, verify, phoneblogz, userprofiles, ***)
  • - ?? ( *** )
  • - As of the very nature of plugins this 'Plugin Apps' section could really hold all plugins with backend features
• backend_sidebar_admin - Called when building the menu list for the admin suite, section "Administration". (leave as is, without additional plugins)

Plugins like Spamblock should get a sidebar link too, what about others, which haven't?

Anybody? (Just a personal reminder to not forget about this )

Timbalu wrote:Plugins like Spamblock should get a sidebar link too, what about others, which haven't?

Why? There are differences between one time only or never touched plugin configs and others which change internal or output behaviour, like spamblock and nl2br for example. But perhaps its cleaner and simpler to keep them as they are now.

Well, which one of the plugins could belong in a different section? I think dbclean and backup should go to configuration, sidebarhider to appearance.