Hide Navigation Menus WPAdmin menu item

[noisysocks]

Appearance → Navigation Menus isn't a particularly useful screen right now. For each Navigation, you can only edit the title or delete the menu.

We could consider hiding Appearance → Navigation Menus for WP 5.9.

Or, if possible, we could consider linking each Navigation Menu to an isolated template part editor.

[noisysocks]

Or, if possible, we could consider linking each Navigation Menu to an isolated template part editor.

Is this feasible? @talldan @adamziel @getdave

[talldan]

Or, if possible, we could consider linking each Navigation Menu to an isolated template part editor.

I don't have a good understanding of how the isolated template part editor works, haven't been involved in it. But I'm guessing it shows an editor that uses useEntityBlockEditor.

If so, the things to solve are:

• The navigation block has specific constraints for its inner block types, defined using allowedBlocks and parent properties. A generic editor for the nav block's inner blocks currently doesn't support that.
• The navigation block applies styles to its inner blocks, so an editor that just renders the inner blocks will look bad
• There's some custom appender and inserter logic within the navigation block that might need to be replicated
• The navigation block uses a wp_navigation post type rather than a template part.

I also don't know how we can link a menu (from wp-admin) to the isolated template part editor, as I think that's a site editor feature?

[talldan]

I see now you're probably talking about the isolated editor in the context of this - #36379 (comment)

[getsource]

Thanks for writing up this issue!

I agree. I was a bit confused when I was testing this feature. It wasn't clear when I clicked on "edit" (or "add") for a menu whether it was broken or working as intended, and what to do to move forward to edit menus, as is expected with the "classic" menu editing flow.

If the classic menu support/block ends up landing (not 100% sure if it'd be linked to that issue?), then perhaps "classic" menus could link to the "classic" menu editor, and block style to an isolated editor (or whatever other place is possible to modify the menu)?

(Edit: More concise.)

[draganescu]

I think that, unless we figure out all the problems mentioned by @talldan above, the immediate thing to do is hide the Navigation menus from under Appearance until it actually becomes useful.

[noisysocks]

@getdave: Do you think you could work on hiding this for beta 2? 🙏

[getdave]

Yes we can work on hiding this for Beta 2 👍

At this stage we can't add the Isolated Template Editor but that is on the roadmap for WP 6.0 😄

[anton-vlasenko]

Appearance → Navigation Menus isn't a particularly useful screen right now. For each Navigation, you can only edit the title or delete the menu.

I don't mind to hide it (meaning we need to disable the show_ui option).
But I have a question.
If we hide that page, how are we going to delete wp_navigation type posts?
The reason to introduce Navigation Menus was this one:

It'd be great to have a way to manage these posts from WordPress admin. Particularly to delete a menu, without a specialized UI a user would have to assign a menu to a navigation block only to delete it.

I'm not very familiar with template parts. I'm not sure if they allow to do that.
But there could be an issue if we just hide Navigation Menus and don't provide a convenient way to delete wp_navigation posts.

@talldan @noisysocks @getdave

[getdave]

If we need them for removing posts only, an alternative might be to display a message in the single post view of wp_navigation explaining that Navigation Menus should be edited in the Site Editor.

[adamziel]

If we need them for removing posts only, an alternative might be to display a message in the single post view of wp_navigation explaining that Navigation Menus should be edited in the Site Editor.

How would that help with deleting wp_navigation posts? I don't think there is any other UI supporting that at the moment. There is a "delete" button missing somewhere. Would it make sense to lean on the pre-publish step where you confirm which entities are being modified? Could we learn something from reusable blocks here? cc @javierarce @critterverse

[critterverse]

Maybe similar to Reusable blocks, there's not a WPadmin menu item but the management screen is accessible from the ellipses menu in the Navigation block toolbar via a "Manage menus" item. That might be a good way to not overemphasize the admin screen until the isolated editing view is available.

[getdave]

the management screen is accessible from the ellipses menu in the Navigation block toolbar via a "Manage menus" item

Yup sounds like a plan.

How would that help with deleting wp_navigation posts?

I mean, if we're going to show the single post view for wp_navigation which is literally just a title box and everything else disabled, then perhaps we could/should also display a message below the title box which informs users that editing Menus happens in the Site Editor.

[spacedmonkey]

I strongly believe that we should hide this menu item / admin UI. An edit screen with just title, looks broken. I had to check the box to make sure that was the intended behavior. Until you can edit the navigation block in the UI, this screen doesn't make an sense.

Also consider, that to some users, they will think that this screen has replaced the existing menu screen and it is quite the change, for a UI that isn't even functional.

[mtias]

I agree to hide this. Once we leverage the focused template part view for the purpose of showing just the navigation we can think of more entry points, if needed. For now, the editor should be the primary way to get there. We also have #36667 to scope future access better.

[paaljoachim]

Yes. I also fully agree on what @spacedmonkey Jonny mentioned.
Let's hide it.

[noisysocks]

Maybe similar to Reusable blocks, there's not a WPadmin menu item but the management screen is accessible from the ellipses menu in the Navigation block toolbar via a "Manage menus" item. That might be a good way to not overemphasize the admin screen until the isolated editing view is available.

This sounds reasonable. How about we add Manage menus underneath Create new menu? Then we can hide the link in Appearance.

I think at this stage we're just waiting for a dev to pick this up.

[noisysocks]

This sounds reasonable. How about we add Manage menus underneath Create new menu? Then we can hide the link in Appearance.

I opened #37212 which does just this.