How to Unlock the Secret “All Settings” Menu in the WordPress Dashboard

How to Unlock the Secret “All Settings” Menu in the WordPress Dashboard

Here’s a fun trick that may come in handy for you sometime down the road. This little snippet will enable you to see all WordPress options at once, even the ones that are not normally visible in the dashboard Settings menu.

The “All Settings” menu will give you an alphabetized list of everything in the wp_options table. You can adjust any of the settings, with the exception of those that WordPress stores as serialized data, and save them through this screen.

In order to get this added to your settings menu, include this bit in your theme’s functions.php file and click save:

// CUSTOM MENU LINK FOR ALL SETTINGS - WILL ONLY APPEAR FOR ADMIN
function all_settings_link() {
add_options_page(__('All Settings'), __('All Settings'), 'administrator', 'options.php');
}
add_action('admin_menu', 'all_settings_link');

Now you have easy access to the All Settings menu at any time. You can also reach this page without having to add the function by going to this address:

http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/options.php

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When is the “All Settings” Menu Useful?

  • When you’re too lazy to log in to phpmyadmin
  • Plugin development and testing
  • Change plugin settings not offered to normal users
  • Find out if your options table needs a clean up

Warning: Don’t try this at home, kids.

Be warned. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can certainly break everything and destroy your site quite easily through this options panel. I would recommend turning it on when you need it and leaving it off when you don’t. You can always access it by going to the options.php URL if you need to.

If you find a lot of old options from unused plugins, it’s a good idea to go in with phpymyadmin and clean out the options you’re no longer using. If you’re not sure about doing this, grab a plugin to do it for you. This will help to keep your database lean. For more information about keeping a clean database, check out these articles:

WordPress Maintenance 101: How to Optimize and Repair Database Tables
8 Tips for Keeping a Squeaky Clean WordPress Database

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