Mark on WordPress

New WordPress Plugin: Clutter Free

Posted in GUI, plugin, wordpress by Mark Jaquith on September 26th, 2006

Many people have told me that there are portions of the WordPress posting interface that they never use. Even when collapsed, these sections can take up significant room. My new plugin, Clutter Free aims to fix that. Using this plugin, you can eliminate several portions of the posting interface, including:

  • Categories
  • Comment Status (”Discussion”)
  • Post Password
  • Post Slug
  • Post Status
  • Post Timestamp
  • Post Author
  • Optional Excerpt
  • Image Upload
  • Quicktags
  • Bookmarklet
  • Footer

These settings are stored for each user, so every author on your blog can have his or her own customized interface.

For an extreme example, check out this shot with everything removed. (The section on the right is something I developed… see here for more info.)

WP Posting Interface

Clutter Free requires WordPress 2.0.5 or 2.1 (works with these builds as of September 26th, 2006). You can use it with 2.0.4, but there are several sections that you won’t be able to hide, because they didn’t have distinctive CSS IDs in 2.0.4

27 Responses to 'New WordPress Plugin: Clutter Free'

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  1. Weblog Tools Collection » WP Plugin: Clutter Free said, on October 3rd, 2006 at 10:34 am

    [...] WP Plugin: Clutter Free Strip down the WordPress posting interface to the bare necessities with this plugin from Mark Jaquith. Bookmark:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

  2. WP Plugin: Clutter Free » WordPress New Plugins & Themes said, on October 3rd, 2006 at 11:12 am

    [...] WP Plugin: Clutter Free Strip down the WordPress posting interface to the bare necessities with this plugin from Mark Jaquith. [...]

  3. Texto.de said, on October 3rd, 2006 at 1:20 pm

    Clutter Free - jedem User sein Admininterface

    Mit diesem WordPress Plugin kann jeder user seinen Adminbereich beim Beitrag schreiben gestalten. Clutter Free - ein WP Plugin das aufräumt, hier auf deutsch.

    …

  4. TechZ said, on October 3rd, 2006 at 1:56 pm

    Sounds great, it’s a practical plugin because it does what alot of us need. I’ll wait till WP 2.1 reaches us and then use it.

  5. Aaron said, on October 4th, 2006 at 2:26 am

    Same here, I’ll wait for 2.1 before installing it.

    I think it will be better if there is an option where only the admins can change the settings for multi-user blogs and not on a per author basis (and also saving database space). Or maybe it’s another plugin.

  6. Olaf said, on October 4th, 2006 at 3:31 am

    This is what I was waiting for,… I will try.

  7. Akkam’s Razor said, on October 4th, 2006 at 8:13 am

    [...] New WordPress Plugin: Clutter Free « Mark on WordPress “[Clutter Free] aims to fix that. Using this plugin, you can eliminate several portions of the posting interface[…].” (tags: WordPress plugin streamline clutter write interface) [...]

  8. Mark Jaquith said, on October 4th, 2006 at 10:59 am

    Aaron,
    I thought about adding that, but it would have been a lot more coding. :-) Right now it’s just a cosmetic change. If it was an admin forbidding, I’d have to take steps to actually disable the hidden sections, so that a user couldn’t work around it. Maybe for version 2.

    And the plugin works on 2.0.5, which should be out in a few weeks.

  9. [i:rrhoblog] » links for 2006-10-04 said, on October 4th, 2006 at 6:18 pm

    [...] WordPress Plugin: Clutter Free Using this plugin, you can eliminate several portions of the posting interface (tags: wordpress plugin) [...]

  10. Mr Angry said, on October 4th, 2006 at 9:55 pm

    Is it easy to toggle between the “clutter free” and “cluttered” versions?

  11. Mark Jaquith said, on October 4th, 2006 at 11:30 pm

    Mr Angry,

    You could just disable/enable the plugin. That’d do it. Two clicks to do that.

  12. HackTalk.org » WP Plugin: Clutter Free said, on October 5th, 2006 at 7:47 am

    [...] WP Plugin: Clutter Free Strip down the WordPress posting interface to the bare necessities with this plugin from Mark Jaquith. [...]

  13. Easy Wordpress » Plugin: De-Clutter Your Wordpress Dashboard said, on October 7th, 2006 at 6:26 pm

    [...] Clutter Free will finally rid you of any of the un-wanted options the WordPress Dashboard provides. Most blog users probably won’t use half of the functions that are available for WordPress, and these functions only get in the way. This plugin will strip WordPress down to the bare minimum, allowing quick and easy blogging. [...]

  14. Lean, Mean, and Clean WordPress Write Post Panel « Lorelle on WordPress said, on October 7th, 2006 at 10:06 pm

    [...] Tired of a cluttered Write Post panel in your WordPress Administration Panels? Mark Jaquith has created the Clutter Free WordPress Plugin just for you. [...]

  15. friedclyde said, on October 11th, 2006 at 3:14 am

    Ill wait for a while begore i use it on my wordpress blog. Keep up the good work!

  16. Jeff McNeill » Blog Archive » links for 2006-10-15 said, on October 15th, 2006 at 4:05 pm

    [...] New WordPress Plugin: Clutter Free « Mark on WordPress (tags: wordpress) [...]

  17. Novidades esperadas para o Wordpress 2.0.5 por Bruno Alves said, on October 20th, 2006 at 6:06 pm

    [...] Mas o que me deixou mais impressionado foram as novidades previstas para a versão 2.1, a nova tela de administração que pode ser, quase que, totalmente reformulada por CSS e a definição de categorias usando Ajax, são simplesmente impressionantes. [...]

  18. The WordPress Podcast · Episode 8: Dealing with splogs, posting by e-mail and more said, on October 24th, 2006 at 1:26 am

    [...] Clutter Free [...]

  19. WordPress et fier de l’être! - » said, on November 3rd, 2006 at 11:26 am

    [...] Clutter Free Vois permet de ramener l’interface d’écriture de WordPress au plus petit dénominateur commun, et nécessaire! [...]

  20. ^^DVDA~~bLoG » Blog Archive » Links said, on November 11th, 2006 at 7:44 pm

    [...] Clutter Free [...]

  21. Kevin said, on December 1st, 2006 at 12:53 pm

    Is there a way to use this to allow members of the public to post articles that automatically go to “draft” so a Admin can authorise later?

  22. sam said, on December 13th, 2006 at 9:36 pm

    Great plugin — it is working well on 2.0.5. Is there anyway to have all the panels disabled by default? I’ve modified the plugin so that “Post Preview” can’t be disabled, but I’d like for everything else NOT to be visible until manually enabled by the user (the opposite of how it is now).

    It seems like there would be a quick way to add this functionality into the plugin, but I’ve spent 2 hours on it so far and have yet to find it!

  23. Customize the WordPress posting interface at FactoryCity said, on January 23rd, 2007 at 5:29 pm

    [...] This is kind of a hack (and only works in the upcoming 2.0.5 version) but I’m happy finally to have some control over the posting controls in WordPress. If you want the same control, grab Clutter-free, by Mark Jaquith. [...]

  24. philippe said, on January 24th, 2007 at 7:24 pm

    Same question as sam :
    This plugin is great ! But I would like other users to have a default setup with fewer panels… There should be an easy way to do that ?

  25. MagicWordpress - Total Wordpress Connection - Home said, on April 13th, 2007 at 5:10 am

    [...] Clutter Free will finally rid you of any of the un-wanted options the WordPress Dashboard provides. Most blog users probably won’t use half of the functions that are available for WordPress, and these functions only get in the way. This plugin will strip WordPress down to the bare minimum, allowing quick and easy blogging. [...]

  26. Russ Lipton said, on October 30th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

    Great plugin. Any chance of implementing the default behavior of a clean write screen as requested by folks in this comment thread?

  27. テスト記事 - 北海道で遊ぼう！ said, on April 20th, 2008 at 10:26 pm

    [...] New WordPress Plugin: Clutter Free « Mark on WordPress [...]

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