Sunday, September 4, 2011





Adding an Appearance sub-menu on Wordpress Admin


I dove head-first into the Wordpress a few month ago and have been swimming along with varied results ever since. Recently I've run into an annoying issue that I think is worth documenting for next time I need the solution to it.

The problem I've encountered requires adding a sub-menu page to the WP Admin built-in Appearance menu. There are vast amounts of information on adding option pages, new menu pages and even sub-pages. When you search for something like 'wordpress admin add sub-menu' (or anything else to that extent mentioning 'sub-menu' as it is the keyword in question) you'd probably end up with a bunch of tutorials and function reference pages guiding you to use the add_submenu_page function. Codex reference page for the function states that general usage being

add_submenu_page$parent_slug$page_title$menu_title$capability$menu_slug$function );


you just need to use an appropriate parent_slug for the desired WP Admin menu and

7. For Appearance: add_submenu_page('themes.php',...) 

Well, guess what... nothing happens when you do that. I've stumbled across a line of code on one of the many tutorials that was a small unexplained aside followed by the full tutorial that was a lot like numerous others. However, adapting that 'aside' line to my code did the trick!!

The solution:
instead of

add_submenu_page('themes.php',...)  

use

add_theme_page('your-theme-name',...) 

where 'your-theme-name' is, in fact, just the name of the theme you are adding the page for. The rest of the meat filling is the same as for any of the add_xxx_page functions.



Sunday, June 12, 2011

Learning Curve

Having had to learn a whole bunch of new frameworks and other libraries recently it occurred to me that in reality learning curves for adults are nothing like those nice curves we're used to seeing and I've come with a bit of a less 'curvy' graph just because I felt I had to document it! :D