Idea: Move "Updates" from "Dashboard" to "Tools"

[johnjamesjacoby]

When plugin/theme/core updates are available, a new submenu gets added to wp-admin for "Updates." IIRC, this location was picked because for a few reasons:

• Updates are important, so put them towards the top
• There is no "Notification Center" so this is the next best place
• This is the site communicating to the user, so "Dashboard" has a logical association

Revisiting this, having had this show up for myself recently, "Dashboard" suddenly felt... off...

• Updating software in other large projects is actually a bigger deal, with dedicated top-level sections for managing it all
• WordPress is logically progressing towards software updates being as invisible to the user as comfortably makes sense
• "Dashboard" shouldn't be a dumping ground for "this has no other home" type pages
• A "Notification Center" for individual users exponentially complicates how this interface works. Do "global" notifications exist? Does clearing it for one user clear it for all users? How do we re-check, without user-transients? Obviously, all of this is premature for this idea anyways...

So, this got me thinking about our other ambiguously named top-level-menu item: "Tools"

• Upgrades and updates are technically tools being ran with a mostly-acceptable interface on top of them
• The "Available Tools" page is a pretty lonely place to be
• Plugins already have started putting their own tools in that tools menu, so why not core?

I'll attach a screenshot of a relocated submenu to help visualize, and please feel free to close this issue if the notion is premature or silly or whatever.

[swissspidy]

Interesting thought. One thing that speaks against is that users might be surprised when the menu item they've been on suddenly disappears after an update.

Also, see #12517 on why it was moved from Tools -> Upgrade to Dashboard -> Updates 7 years ago.

The "Available Tools" page is a pretty lonely place to be

Funnily, there were once plans to remove that page. See #13563 and #26794.

When plugin/theme/core updates are available, a new submenu gets added to wp-admin for "Updates."

Worth noting that the submenu always gets added, there's no such condition. Of course the user needs to have the sufficient capabilities to perform updates.

WordPress is logically progressing towards software updates being as invisible to the user as comfortably makes sense

There's still a long way to go there though. We got automatic updates for minor releases, but the updates screen isn't shiny yet. I think once it is, people are more likely to (frequently) bulk update their site using one big button. When that happens, it might be easier to move menu items.

[lukecavanagh]

@johnjamesjacoby

So if Tools was not for updates, what should tools default content be?