Basecamp

WP Help

Create a custom help and instruction page for your admin users

Jun 08

4

WP Help is a plugin that allows you to create a simple help or instructional page in the Wordpress Admin that will display customized information of your choosing.

I’ve been using WordPress for client’s sites for quite sometime and most of the time I have to explain how to use the software at least 2 or 3 times - especially if I’ve implemented features using custom fields or special plugins. It would be great if there were a resource that they could always refer to easily while they are in the process of creating.

I came across a plugin that did this but is was not easily updatable and had some issues with a couple of installations. So I’ve improved on it and here is WP Help inspired by Sam Burdge’s wp-instructions.

I have plans to make the editing area more useful. I would love to implement TinyMCE but it doesn’t seem to play well. If anybody knows how to do this please leave a comment.

I’ve also include a sample text file of How to Create a Post in WordPress for you to try out. Just open the text file and copy and paste to the configuration screen.

Download

Wordpress 2.5 v1.0

Installation

  1. Download, unzip and upload to your WordPress plugins directory.
  2. Activate the plugin within you WordPress Administration Backend.
  3. Go to the ‘Help & Instructions’ options page in the ’settings’ menu.
  4. Type in the title that you would like to appear on the Help & Instructions page.
  5. Enter the content you would like your users to see. You can enter html if you like.
  6. Click the ‘update options’ button and you are good to go.

Advanced Options

How to change the title of the main menu tab

  1. Open up the plugin file ‘wp_help_config.php’
  2. On or about line 16 you will see this code: 
    add_menu_page('Help & Instructions', 'Help & Instructions'
  3. 3. Change the text in the quotes to what you would like your new tab to read.
  4. Example: If you want your tab to just say ‘Help’ your line would look like this: 
       add_menu_page('Help', 'Help'
  5. Save the file and upload back to your plugins folder if necessary

If you would like the help page to be in a sub-menu like ‘manage’ or ‘design’

  1. Open up the plugin file ‘wp_help_config.php’
  2. On or about line 16 you will see the code: 
    add_menu_page('Help & Instructions',
  3. Change the text ‘add_menu_page’ to ‘add_management_page’ for the ‘manage menu’ or change the text to ‘add_theme_page ‘for the presentation menu’

Screenshots

WP Help Config
WP Help

Posted in Admin, Plugins

Trackback URL

23 Responses to “WP Help”

  1. gravatar Andrea_R
    June 5th, 2008
    1

    Dang, I had something like this half-built already! :D

  2. gravatar Josh
    June 5th, 2008
    2

    Keep Going! Maybe yours will be better!

  3. gravatar vita
    June 5th, 2008
    3

    great idea and very useful!

  4. gravatar Rich Schmidt
    June 5th, 2008
    4

    OK, I’d love to use this… but what I’d REALLY love would be the ability to have multiple help pages under that Help & Instructions menu. And since the editor/TinyMCE is giving you fits…

    Shouldn’t there be a way to integrate this with WP’s pages? Say, perhaps, that “Help & Instructions” is a special Page Parent, and any pages added under it appear in the Help & Instructions menu? And, of course, they’re hidden from the rest of WP, so they don’t show up on the main pages (perhaps using Roles & Capabilities for this, so that only people using the backend see it).

    Anybody want to tackle that? Because I’d love to have multiple help pages available for the folks using the sites I build with WP.

  5. gravatar Josh
    June 6th, 2008
    5

    Hey Rich,

    I think that is a great idea. To start out, you could always password protect the pages. They wouldn’t be in the backend, which isn’t ideal but it would be a start.

    The other way you could make it work is to just duplicate this plugin a few times. You would need to change the function names and menu names but if you only had two or three it could work as a temporary solution.

    I will look into creating more pages for the plugin because that would make this plugin a lot more useful. I’m not a coder but I’ll see what I can cook up.

  6. gravatar m@rk
    June 6th, 2008
    6

    First, I agree with Rich, the ability to have multiple help pages under that Help & Instructions menu would be a great enhancement.

    Second, a hint: What ’bout changing

    echo $opt_val;
    and
    echo $opt_val2;

    to

    echo stripslashes($opt_val);
    and
    echo stripslashes($opt_val2);

    in wp_help.php and wp_help_config.php,
    to get a clean output and avoid “\’” !?

  7. gravatar Josh
    June 6th, 2008
    7

    Hey Mark,

    Sounds good, thanks for the tip.

  8. gravatar Mattias
    June 9th, 2008
    8

    This got potential. But I think it need some more work. One thing is the ability to add images. Maybe something like quicktags would work.

  9. gravatar Josh
    June 9th, 2008
    9

    Mattias,

    Totally agree. I will look into it.

    Also, if anyone has made modifications or improvements, please feel free to share.

  10. gravatar Evaldas
    July 22nd, 2008
    10

    Hi,

    is it possible to have >1 help page with this plugin ?

  11. gravatar Josh
    July 22nd, 2008
    11

    Evaldas,

    A quick and dirty way to get more pages is to just duplicate the plugin.

    Like I said above, you’ll need to change the names of the functions in the wp_help_config.php file so that there is not a conflict, but that should work.

  12. gravatar Evaldas
    July 22nd, 2008
    12

    Thank you for your fast answer ;)

    I think, it could be great to do the same thing by using just one plugin (no duplicates).

    Who knows, maybe one day I’ll find enough time to do it by myself.

  13. gravatar Josh
    July 22nd, 2008
    13

    I totally agree. I would love to put that in when I get some time.

    If you ever do it would be great to see it.

  14. gravatar Jeff
    September 29th, 2008
    14

    Great idea! I’m trying to put code in the content area, but your plugin keeps trying to escape quotes, even if it’s a “"”. Is there something I’m missing?

    Thanks!

  15. gravatar Josh
    September 30th, 2008
    15

    Hey Jeff,

    Not sure what the issue is. When I figure out how to use TinyMCE in the text area I assume that will solve the problem.

    Sorry for the hassle.

  16. gravatar David
    November 22nd, 2008
    16

    Hello!

    Really nice plugin - thanks for developing and publishing it.

    But I have a question concerning the user roles. I want to show this page to every member of the editoral staff who’s logged into wp-admin. But a user with the role “author” can’t see the page.

    How can I change it?

    Thanks!

  17. gravatar Josh
    November 22nd, 2008
    17

    Hey David,

    On lines 16 and 17 of the file wp_help_config.php there is code for adding in the menus.

    Line 16 holds the configuration menu. You’ll notice in the code the number 8 - this is defining the user level that can access this particular menu. Only admins can access menus with a level 8 or higher.

    On the next line is the code for the actual help tab. The current user level is set to 4. If you change this to 2 those with the author level should be able to access it.

    For more reading on user levels and capabilities you can check out the WP codex here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities

    Let me know if you have other questions.

Trackbacks

  1. Weblog Tools Collection » Blog Archive » WordPress Plugin Releases for 6/4
  2. le blog à Ollie » Liens du jour
  3. DogSolitude » Blog Archive » WP Plugin: WP Help
  4. Completing the CMS With Wordpress 2 : Pressing Pixels | A Wordpress Magazine
  5. Twitter Tweets about WordPress Plugin as of June 12, 2008 : The Lessnau Lounge
  6. Wordpress Plugin Centre - WP Comment Plugin - WP Comment Sorter Released | Jeffro2pt0

Leave a Reply

© Copyright 2008 Red Letters Studio & Pressing Pixels. All rights reserved. Powered by WordPress.