Eliminating "Add New" Button Beside Titles in Admin

[s3w47m88]

This is apart of a bigger project for my staff and I, you can find the context here ​https://www.theportlandcompany.com/2017/09/10/proposed-improvements-to-the-wordpress-ui/.

Our goal is to clean up the UI, especially to reduce scrolling on mobile, with three principles in mind:

• Context Visibility - Only show something when it's in context.
• Add With Purpose - If something, such as padding or margins, don't serve a purpose, don't add them.
• Simplify Number of Actions - If a step can be avoided in a process, avoid it.

We propose eliminating the Add New button that appears beside Titles when on various admin pages because:

• There is already a button in the admin menu on the left.
• The position of the button changes depending on the length of the title, disorienting users.
• On mobile, especially, it makes the page look broken as a result of the above mentioned issue.
• Feedback from dozens of clients we've trained concur - for some reason - that they are confused by multiple "Add New" links/buttons. Maybe this is subjective - we're not confused by it and feel multiple access points is helpful, but only when it's in a sensible and easy to accessible place. We think maybe because "Add New" is appearing next to the page title they don't understand it's creating a new Post, but rather something related to whatever they titled that page.

[joyously]

Could you be more specific about which ones?

• Add New post
• Add New media
• Add New page
• Add New theme
• Add New plugin
• Add New user

And on multisite, is there Add New site?

[s3w47m88]

Replying to joyously:

Could you be more specific about which ones?

• Add New post
• Add New media
• Add New page
• Add New theme
• Add New plugin
• Add New user

And on multisite, is there Add New site?

Yep. I think multisite is definitely an exception, but in every other case if there is an "Add New" menu item in the navigation it seems to me it's redundant to have the button.

As an alternative proposition, I think if it was only removed on Posts, Pages and generally Custom Post Types (with an option to add it if the Plugin author chooses) AND it was relocated on *all* pages to somewhere beside the right side of text - so it doesn't change position on every page - then I'd feel that is a good start / solution still.

[melchoyce]

Hey @s3w47m88, what are your thoughts on the updated header design in ​https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/12/19/block-directory-in-wp-admin-v1/? Once componentized and It updated on all admin pages, would change the position of the "add" buttons to the bottom of the page header, rather than next to the title.