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Troubleshooting Common Admin Menu Editor Conflicts and Issues

52 threads Sep 9, 2025 Plugin → Admin menu editor

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Admin Menu Editor is a powerful tool for customizing the WordPress dashboard, but like any plugin, it can sometimes conflict with other code. Based on community reports, here are the most common issues and how to resolve them.

1. Plugin Conflicts Causing Missing Menus

Problem: Menus from other plugins (e.g., Newsletter, WooCommerce) disappear when Admin Menu Editor is active, or extra, unwanted menu items appear.

Why it happens: Some plugins add menu items temporarily or use methods that aren't fully compatible with how Admin Menu Editor processes the menu structure. For instance, a plugin might add an item and then remove it late in the process, but Admin Menu Editor has already captured it.

Solution:

  • First, check if the missing menu items are simply hidden. In Admin Menu Editor, ensure the required capability for the item is set correctly (e.g., the default manage_options). A common mistake is setting it to a role like 'Editor' which would hide it from administrators.
  • For unwanted 'internal' menus (common with WooCommerce), use the 'Show/Hide' button in the Admin Menu Editor interface to hide them. The Admin Menu Editor team maintains an internal blacklist to automatically hide known problematic items from other plugins, which is updated regularly.
  • If a specific plugin conflict is identified, check the settings in both plugins. Using two plugins to manage the same thing (like Admin Menu Editor and Adminimize) can cause conflicts if their visibility settings don't match.

2. The Settings Page Doesn't Load Correctly

Problem: The Admin Menu Editor settings page loads only a top bar or is otherwise broken.

Why it happens: This is almost always caused by a conflict with another plugin or theme that modifies the admin area.

Solution:

  • Perform a conflict test. Deactivate all other plugins and switch to a default WordPress theme (like Twenty Twenty-One). If the problem resolves, reactivate your plugins one by one to identify the culprit. Common conflicting plugins include those that add custom CSS/JS to the admin pages or other menu editors.
  • Check your browser's JavaScript console for errors, which can provide clues.

3. Menu Permission Changes Have No Effect

Problem: Changing the 'Required Capability' for a menu item doesn't hide it from users.

Why it happens: This is often a misunderstanding of how WordPress permissions work for submenu items. By default, if a user has access to any submenu item, WordPress will display the parent menu.

Solution: You must change the required capability for every submenu item you want to hide, not just the parent menu. Otherwise, the parent menu will remain visible because the user has access to one of its children.

4. Can't Change Certain Hard-Coded Labels

Problem: You can rename the menu link for 'Posts' to 'Articles', but the label on the edit page itself remains 'Edit Post'.

Why it happens: This label is hard-coded deep within WordPress core and is not part of the menu structure that Admin Menu Editor modifies.

Solution: This limitation is not something a plugin can easily override. Changing such text typically requires a translation file (.po/.mo) or a code snippet using a filter like gettext.

General Troubleshooting Steps

  • Clear Caches: Clear any WordPress object caches, browser caches, or server-side caches (e.g., Varnish, Redis) after making changes.
  • Check Activation Order: In some rare cases (Thread 6), the order in which plugins are activated can cause issues. Try deactivating and reactivating plugins.
  • Keep Updated: Always ensure WordPress, Admin Menu Editor, and all other plugins are updated to their latest versions to benefit from bug and compatibility fixes.

By following these steps, you can resolve the majority of issues encountered with the Admin Menu Editor plugin.

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