Create and Manage Users from the Customizer

[lukecavanagh]

Since you can already manage and create menus, along with being able to manage widgets from the customizer. It seems logical that you should be able to create and manage users as well from the customizer.

[ocean90]

Why does this seem logical to you? What would be the live preview part?

[lukecavanagh]

@ocean90

There is no live preview part, only being able to easily edit or create users from the customizer. It might end up being a easier UI then having to deal with the current users screen in the WP admin.

[ocean90]

Replying to lukecavanagh:

Which parts of the current UI are complicated? What issues does the current screen have which we can only fix in the customizer?

[lukecavanagh]

@ocean90

I am not saying that it could only be improved by being in the customizer. But it might be an easier flow for new users using the customizer. I could see maybe a drag and drop for being able to easily change user roles on users, create a user field on the fly when creating a new user. Just a couple of ideas.

[westonruter]

I want to play around with adding user management to the customizer, with the goal of being able to manipulate all core objects in the customizer, but before users it's more important to be able to manage posts and terms AFIAK. In any case, there is:

Awhile ago I created a feature plugin placeholder for customizing users at ​https://github.com/xwp/wp-customize-users

And then I also created one for terms at ​https://github.com/xwp/wp-customize-terms but this depends on #38227

And then for posts (and postmeta) there is Customize Posts, which is pretty mature: ​https://github.com/xwp/wp-customize-posts

In any case, all of these should be worked on as feature plugins first and it may be premature to create tickets for them in Trac.

[helen]

I think it's important to continue to think about what it means to add live preview and edit functionality to something, rather than "let's be able to manage X here because you can manage Y too". Also, "managing" users is not equivalent to managing menus or widgets.

[westonruter]

The first step for adding live preview is the underling WP_Customize_User_Setting which would be part of the customize-users feature plugin. With that developed, we can then look at where live preview would make sense to add. For example, I could imagine that we could integrate with the user profile editor so that changes to the user description could be added to a changeset and then the URL to the user's author page could be opened in a new window with that customize_changeset_uuid param supplied so they could preview the changes. Likewise, live preview to changes to the user description could also be added inline in the frontend context using customize changesets.

[lukecavanagh]

@westonruter

If live preview is helped by working on users then it makes sense to work on for WP 4.8.

[jnylen0]

@lukecavanagh this ticket should remain closed with the "maybelater" resolution. Here's why:

before users it's more important to be able to manage posts and terms

If you want to help out in this area, I'd suggest testing out the existing plugins to customize posts and terms.

[lukecavanagh]

@jnylen0

Sure not a problem, I will help test customize post and terms plugins.