Notifications for Collapsed Admin Menu

Author: Scott Reilly

Version: 1.5

First released: 2010-08-26

Last update: 2020-09-03

Compatibility: WP 4.6 – 5.5.3

Download: [ zip ]

Description:

Highlights the comments and plugins icons in the collapsed admin sidebar menu when notifications are pending.

Extended Description

In the WordPress admin, when the left sidebar menu is expanded WordPress presents you with a highlighted number within the menu itself indicating the number of pending comments (i.e. comments in moderation) and a separate number for the number of plugins with updates.

However, if you collapse the sidebar menu, then there are no visual indications that either types of updates are available. You can view the count of updated plugins by hovering on the plugins icon (or, for comments, by hovering on the comments icon), but you must manually do that to learn of updates.

This plugin enhances the sidebar menu to display a visual indication that comments are in moderation and/or there are plugin updates available. It does so by using a different-colored background for the icon (see the screenshot). The visual indication is also updated when AJAX-based requests are made (so doing an in-line approval of the last pending comment will cause the comments icon background color to return to its non-highlighted color).

By default, the plugin utilizes WordPress’s pending/update count background highlight color, which varies depending on the admin color scheme in use by the user.

NOTE: As the plugin’s name suggests, this plugin only takes effect if the admin sidebar menu is collapsed. Also, the admin user must have JavaScript enabled.

Links: Plugin Homepage | Plugin Directory Page | GitHub | Author Homepage

Find out more at the plugin’s WordPress Plugin Repository page.

Screenshots

Click to see full-size image.

A comparison of a collapsed admin sidebar menu for a stock WordPress installation, with the plugin activated under WP 2.8+/2.9+, and under WP 3.x+ and WP 4.x+.

Installation

Install via the built-in WordPress plugin installer. Or download and unzip notifications-for-collapsed-admin-menu.zip inside the plugins directory for your site (typically wp-content/plugins/)
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ admin menu in WordPress

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Why doesn’t this plugin apply when the admin sidebar menu is expanded?
A. There is no need for this plugin to do anything in this situation because WordPress already presents a visible count of pending comments and plugins with updates.

Q. Can I change the background color used to highlight the comments/plugins icons?
A. Yes. You can customize the background color used by applying a filter to ‘c2c_collapsed_admin_menu_icon_highlight_color’. For example, in your theme’s functions.php file, you can add this line (but replace “#9932CC” with the color you want):

add_filter( 'c2c_collapsed_admin_menu_icon_highlight_color', function( $color ) { return "#9932CC"; } );

Q. Does this plugin include unit tests?
A. Yes.

Release Log

1.5 (2020-09-01)

Change: Rewrite JavaScript into vanilla JS and away from using jQuery
Change: Add $admin_color as second arg to c2c_collapsed_admin_menu_icon_highlight_color filter
Change: Remove check for theme support of HTML5 since that isn’t relevant to admin
Change: Restructure unit test file structure
- New: Create new subdirectory phpunit/ to house all files related to unit testing
- Change: Move bin/ to phpunit/bin/
- Change: Move tests/bootstrap.php to phpunit/
- Change: Move tests/ to phpunit/tests/
- Change: Rename phpunit.xml to phpunit.xml.dist per best practices
Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.5+
New: Add FAQ indicating presence of unit tests
Unit tests:
- New: Add tests for filter c2c_collapsed_admin_menu_icon_highlight_color
- New: Add test for default value for get_bg_color()
- Change: Test that JS script is both enqueued and registered

1.4.1 (2020-05-26)

New: Add TODO.md and move existing TODO list from top of main plugin file into it
Change: Use HTTPS for link to WP SVN repository in bin script for configuring unit tests (and delete commented-out code)
Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.4+
Change: Update links to coffee2code.com to be HTTPS
Change: Unit tests: Add comments to act as section labels for unit tests

1.4 (2019-12-14)

New: Add HTML5 compliance by omitting type attribute when the theme explicitly supports ‘html5’
New: Extract code to determine admin menu item notification background color into get_bg_color()
New: Add CHANGELOG.md file and move all but most recent changelog entries into it
New: Add unit testing
Fix: Correct typo in GitHub URL
Change: Allow class to be defined outside of admin context
Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.3+
Change: Split paragraph in README.md’s “Support” section into two

Copyright & Disclaimer

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

Discussion / Support

Have any questions, comments, or suggestions? Please provide them via the plugin’s WordPress.org support forum. I’ll do my best to reply in a timely fashion and help as best I can.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide guaranteed support, nor do I provide support via any other means.

Was this plugin useful useful to you? Consider giving it a rating. If you’re inclined to give it a poor rating, please first post to the support forum to give me a chance to address or explain the situation.

One reply on “Notifications for Collapsed Admin Menu”

[…] Scott Reilly has once again created a simple plugin that solves a simple problem. It’s called Notifications For Collapsed Admin Menu. This plugin shows a visual notification by providing a background color on the comment and plugin […]