Another idea :)
While working on the EcoVolunTours website, I ran into an interesting social challenge.
The woman I was working under was used to the administration panel for Drupal, but not WordPress. This meant that after setting up the site with her, it took some time to get familiar.
However, many things in the WordPress administration area, as is the case among most CMSs, are not relevant to her, and how she uses the administration options.
Let me step back:
She used the admin area to edit pages, add blog posts, and upload images for
those two respective content pieces. Settings, configuration options, themes,
and all that was not of her interest.
But as is the case for everyone, when you're exposed to an interface with many options, you can get lost.
The Idea
Creating an alternate WordPress API that is hosted somewhere else (eg. ecovoluntours.wpadminapp.com) whereby she can login, and gain access only to those configuration and update options she is required to.
- Uploading pictures for a blog post
- Adding blog posts
- Adding pages
- Viewing comments
This would prevent the confusion that naturally comes to everyone when we're exposed to 200+ options, and all we really need is 10.
A Workaround
This idea would require an extensive application, so what about this:
A WordPress plugin that is added to your WordPress install. This plugin does nothing outright. It simply includes a script, hosted by the domain you control (eg. again, wpadminapp.com), that is injected into the administration panel pages, passing in information about the user who is logged in (eg. username).
Then, you go to the website accompanying the plugin. Here, you specify the host of the WordPress install, and set up rules for users (specified by the username). For each user, you can specify which parts of the administration panel they can see.
It's goal is not to implement security and restrictions, but to clean up the UI for the user to hide areas that they don't need and may confuse them.
Additional Considerations
Some areas of the WordPress administration panel have labels that aren't exactly relevant.
For example, at the EcoVolunTours site, we installed a theme that has a new post type entitled `Testimonials'. But they aren't used as testimonials, but rather quotes.
This can be confusing for users when using an administration panel, so this script and plugin could make text-changes to the UI to make it clearer.
Business Model
Test it for 30 days. After that, $10/year. I think that'd be fair, considering the basic development costs to execute it.