A Proposed Enhancement That Saves A Mouse Click When Upgrading WordPress Plugins

Four months ago, WordPress user Fredelig created a new ticket on WordPress trac suggesting the plugin update notification bubble load the page listing all of the plugins with pending upgrades.

In WordPress 3.9, clicking the notification loads Plugins.php which lists all of the activated plugins, including the ones with upgrades. This requires a second mouse click to show only the plugins that have an update available. Although it was too late to include in WordPress 3.9, it’s also missed the boat for 4.0.

Better Plugin Upgrade Notification Bubbles

On a related note, I’d like to propose an enhancement to the comment notification bubble. Clicking on the notification currently loads edit-comments.php which displays both approved and moderated comments. Ninety-nine percent of the time when I click on the notification link, it’s because I want to approve a comment pending moderation.

Although the task can be accomplished with the way it works now, sometimes the comment I need to approve is not on the first page and I have to click the Pending comments link. Having the notifications bubble load the pending comments first would save me a mouse click.

Do you have any pros or cons regarding the suggested enhancements?

Category: WordPress

Tags: comments, enhancements, notifications, upgrades

14 responses to “A Proposed Enhancement That Saves A Mouse Click When Upgrading WordPress Plugins”

Damien Carbery says:

July 12, 2014 at 4:12 AM

In the meantime, could the necessary html changes be implemented via add_filter?

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- Damien Carbery says:
  
  July 14, 2014 at 3:52 PM
  
  I could not find any useful filter but you could hack one into the ‘add_menu_classes’ filter in wp-admin/includes/menu.php.
  
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  - Damien Carbery says:
    
    July 18, 2014 at 3:13 AM
    
    I was able to hack $menu via the ‘add_menu_classes’ filter to change the Comments number link. Unfortunately menu links have a ‘display: block’ style so the number is pushed onto a new line. You could add a style: ‘#wp-admin-bar-new-content a { display:inline;}’.
    Code: http://pastebin.com/WsGbkrvk
    Screenshot: http://imgur.com/mWtYECW
    
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Viktoria Michaelis says:

July 12, 2014 at 4:27 AM

Yes, but. I can see your point here, although you don’t need to load all the comments which have already been approved if your comments awaiting approval are shown in the top menu bar. One advantage of going to the comments page to approve moderated comments – with everything listed – is that you can then write a reply to the newly approved comment without having to move to a new page, thus saving mouse clicks.

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- Jeff Chandler says:
  
  July 12, 2014 at 4:34 AM
  
  I see what you mean although I usually try and leave replies to comments using the frontend of the site so that I go through the same experience as a visitor leaving a comment. This way, I can see how (good or bad) it is.
  
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  - Viktoria Michaelis says:
    
    July 12, 2014 at 7:32 AM
    
    I think that would work for a blog with few comments, but there are far, far more clicks involved when the post is an older one… With mine, commenting directly on the backend means my spelling mistakes are highlighted… something I tend to make good use of!
    
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    - Jeff Chandler says:
      
      July 21, 2014 at 10:30 AM
      
      You also can’t see the threaded relationship of comments in the backend of WordPress. It will tell who who they are responding to, but you have to take a wild guess or end up looking at the front end of the site to figure out which comment it is.
      
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Noumaan says:

July 12, 2014 at 1:04 PM

These are really useful enhancements. Particularly for people who spend a lot of time managing sites.

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dlouwe says:

July 14, 2014 at 2:19 PM

Seems like a solid enhancement. Though, unless something is done to make the clickable notification bubble visually distinct from other notification bubbles to provide some sort of positive indication that it is clickable, likely to be an enhancement only known to those who already know about it (and anyone who finds it by accident). Given the minimal style of the admin menu, this could be potentially difficult to do without making things look cluttered.

A more immediately usable option could be to add an “Upgrades” link to the Plugins submenu when there are upgrades available (And “Pending” to Comments, etc). This still saves the extra click, plus it doesn’t require an UI retooling.

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- Damien Carbery says:
  
  July 14, 2014 at 3:57 PM
  
  You could write a bit of code to call wp_get_update_data() to find out if any plugins need to be updated (see: http://wpseek.com/wp_get_update_data/) and then add a new menu item (http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_submenu_page).
  
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  - Damien Carbery says:
    
    July 15, 2014 at 3:52 AM
    
    This adds an ‘Updates’ menu when plugin updates are available: http://pastebin.com/uwya3kvr
    
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    - Damien Carbery says:
      
      July 17, 2014 at 3:20 AM
      
      I updated the code to add a ‘Pending’ menu item when unmoderated comments available.
      
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    - Jeff Chandler says:
      
      July 21, 2014 at 10:40 AM
      
      How are you adding the menu to WordPress? Editing the core code, functions.php or through a plugin?
      
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      - Damien Carbery says:
        
        July 21, 2014 at 11:28 AM
        
        I never edit core. I use site plugins, generally in the wp-content/mu-plugins directory, so that they cannot be deactivated (and I don’t even have to activate them – I’m lazy like that). They are independent of the theme. You can add some comments at the top of the file to describe the code: http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/what-why-and-how-tos-of-creating-a-site-specific-wordpress-plugin/
        
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