I noticed from the documentation that you are supposed to be able to hook into the new WordPress 2.7 admin short cuts menu (but it doesn’t say how)!

Ok, so after a little digging around in the WordPress core, the admin-header.php file (in the wp-admin folder) contains the code for the admin header.

In the admin-header.php file there is a section of code:

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<div id="wphead-info">
 <div id="user_info">
  <p>< ?php printf(__('Howdy, <a href="%1$s" title="Edit your profile">%2$s'), 'profile.php', $user_identity) ?>
  < ?php if ( ! $is_opera ) { ?><span class="turbo-nag hidden"> | <a href="tools.php">< ?php _e('Turbo') ?></a></span>< ?php } ?> |
  <a href="<?php echo wp_logout_url() ?>" title="< ?php _e('Log Out') ?>">< ?php _e('Log Out'); ?></a></p>
 </div>
 < ?php favorite_actions(); ?>
</div>

continue

Just another quick update (I must be on a roll today!). We have released version 1.0 of our Admin Log WordPress Plugin that keeps track of pages accessed in the admin area. It also logs who accessed them, and at what time (useful if multiple people have access to your blog and you want to know who is up to what).

See our Admin Log page for more information, or go to our Admin Log Plugin page on the WordPress Plugin directory.

Update: This post is followed up with more information here.

The new admin interface in WordPress 2.7 is a great success, and improves the admin area navigation by leaps and bounds from WordPress 2.6. It certainly reduces the number of mouse clicks needed to move around from section to section, and menu items are more accessible than they were before.

New to WordPress 2.7 are two API’s that are very useful. Firstly, you can now add your own custom items to the admin dashboard, you can see more information here in the Dashboard Widgets API. You can also now add your own Plugin options to existing parts of the admin panels, rather than having to create your own custom admin option pages from scratch. This is controlled by the Settings API.

One thing I haven’t been able to find though, is how to access, and add your own custom menu items to, the Shortcuts menu, in the header bar of the WordPress 2.7 admin area. This would be an excellent place to add to the Shortcuts menu and to add other ‘quick access’ type menus.

New quick access ‘Shortcuts’ menu in WordPress

I have a few other WordPress Plugins currently in development that would specifically benefit from being in the admin header area, but have yet to track it down. Perhaps it is buried somewhere in the new Settings API. Does anyone know where?

I am sure I have seen somewhere in the WordPress Plugin developer documentation, a mention of hooking into the Shortcuts menu. But, it neglected to state how!!