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Opened 5 years ago

Last modified 2 years ago

#47124 new feature request

Admin menu: restore "Add New" in the Themes section

Reported by: afercia's profile afercia Owned by:
Milestone: Future Release Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version: 3.8
Component: Themes Keywords: has-screenshots has-patch
Focuses: ui, administration Cc:

Description

Many sections in the admin menu have an "Add New" link to navigate directly to the add new Post, Page, Media, Plugin, etc. pages. Except the Themes (Appearance) section.

Personally, not having the ability to directly navigate to the "Add Themes" page has always been a bit annoying for me. Good motivation for some software archeology:

In WordPress 2.9 there was an "Add New Themes" link:

http://cldup.com/JwtyIkudcV.png

It was removed 9 years ago for WordPress 3.0 in [13533], in favor of a "tabbed interface", see #12412 (see also [13583]):

http://cldup.com/v-lQIXw5rD.png

Finally, the tabbed interface was removed in WordPress 3.8 in [26141], with the THX redesign, see #25948. However, the link in the admin menu wasn't restored. I'm pretty sure this was considered at that time, but I couldn't find any related discussion to point to.

Today, the lack of and "Add New" link is inconsistent with other menu sections. For example, I'm not sure why the Plugins section does need an "Add New" link and the Themes section doesn't. Also, this requires some exploration and an additional click each time users want to navigate to the Add Themes page.

Worth also considering that on the multisite admin menu, the "Add New" link does exist. See in the screenshot below: single site on the left and multisite on the right.

http://cldup.com/P5_aKjtGBg.png

If the concern is that the Theme Installer screen requires JavaScript, this can be solved with an admin notice as done in the multisite screen. Also, the admin menu items can take an optional CSS class and hide-if-no-js would work.

Unless I'm missing some important consideration, I'd propose to restore the missing "Add New" link for better usability and consistency.

Related: #47012

Attachments (1)

47124.diff (1.6 KB) - added by afercia 2 years ago.

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (9)

#1 @afercia
5 years ago

Related: #47125.

#2 @joyously
5 years ago

I'm in favor of having the Add New link in the menu. I often want it there, but then I do theme review.
Maybe one thing could be fixed with the Add New? The upload for a new theme is on the same page as all the screenshots of the themes from .org. My bandwidth quota takes a big hit downloading all those big screenshots in the time it takes me to choose the file to upload. It's super annoying because I'm on a slow, limited connection, and I don't want all those screenshots every time I want to upload a theme.

@afercia
2 years ago

#3 @aristath
2 years ago

Does anyone know why we no longer have the "Add New" submenu under Appearance?
It seems a bit inconsistent that it's not there since it's present in themes, users etc 🤔
I believe it would be beneficial to bring it back for themes.

#4 @afercia
2 years ago

  • Keywords has-patch added

47124.diff adds the 'Add New' sub-menu item:

  • The new item is added at position 6 ['themes.php'][6]. 'Customize' and 'Widgets' are moved to position 7 and 8 respectively. 'Menus' is unchanged at position 10, and so on. These positions can't be overridden by plugins when using the correct way to add sub-menu items, which is by the means of add_submenu_page(). There's a remote chance that plugins that are using non-standard ways to add sub-items may be impacted but I'd say WordPress can't guarantee non-standard code to not be impacted. A quick dev note would be good anyways.
  • Given the Theme install page works only with JavaScript on, the new menu item uses a CSS class hide-if-no-js so it will not be displayed when JavaScript is disabled.

#5 @afercia
2 years ago

  • Milestone changed from Awaiting Review to 5.9

Moving the milestone to the next major, for consideration.

#6 in reply to: ↑ description @SergeyBiryukov
2 years ago

Replying to afercia:

Finally, the tabbed interface was removed in WordPress 3.8 in [26141], with the THX redesign, see #25948. However, the link in the admin menu wasn't restored. I'm pretty sure this was considered at that time, but I couldn't find any related discussion to point to.

I'm not so sure that it was considered, could just be an oversight :)

Today, the lack of and "Add New" link is inconsistent with other menu sections. For example, I'm not sure why the Plugins section does need an "Add New" link and the Themes section doesn't.

I think part of the problem is that there is no Themes section as such (on single site), it's called Appearance, which makes it inconsistent with other admin menu sections (as previously mentioned in comment:22:ticket:43697).

To me, an "Appearance → Add New" item sounds a bit weird (Add new what? New appearance?). Maybe it should be "Appearance → Add New Theme", similar to what it was in WordPress 2.9? That would make the item name a bit inconsistent with other "Add New" links, but should hopefully bring some clarity.

Last edited 2 years ago by SergeyBiryukov (previous) (diff)

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #core by chaion07. View the logs.


2 years ago

#8 @chaion07
2 years ago

  • Milestone changed from 5.9 to Future Release

Hello @afercia! Thank you for reporting this. This ticket was discussed during a recent Bug-scrub session. We've had a productive discussion and based on the feedback received we're moving this to future release. As mentioned in the comment this also needs decision. Thanks!

Props to @audrasjb, @costdev & @kafleg

Last edited 2 years ago by chaion07 (previous) (diff)
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