Administration Menu

Submitted by jason on Tue, 01/16/2007 - 21:40

Administration Menu is one of the most useful modules for any Drupal webmaster. Because of this, you will find it to be on the top or near the top of any top 10 Drupal module list. It brings all of the most important sections of the back-end of the Drupal server together with an easy to navigate CSS menu.

All Drupal Webmasters, Admins, and Moderators will want to pick this module up for your Drupal server. It is always the first module I install to cut down the time it takes to do everything else on a new Drupal server install, or to modify an existing server install.

Administration menu module provides a theme-independent administration interface (aka. navigation, back-end) for Drupal. It's a helper for novice Drupal users coming from other CMS, a real time-saver for Drupal site administrators, and definitely a must for Drupal developers and site builders (keyword: Devel integration).

The module renders all administrative menu items below 'administer' in a clean, attractive and purely CSS-based menu at the top of your website. It contains not only regular menu items - local tasks are also included, giving you extremely fast access to any administrative resource and function your Drupal installation provides.

Drupal exposed! Administering, developing, and working with Drupal has never been that fast, easy and concise.

Administration menu needs help

The following bugs in Drupal core prevent stable 3.x release for Drupal 6:

#296693: Empty admin categories are not hidden
#550254: Menu links are sometimes not properly re-parented
~~#566094: menu_tree_data() doesn't build proper hierarchy~~
#631550: Stale + improper logic for MENU_VISIBLE_IN_TREE and MENU_VISIBLE_IN_BREADCRUMB

Showcase and Quality Assurance

Test-drive in various themes on the Administration menu showcase site or watch a short demo reel (better replacements welcome!).

Behaviour and Integration

Administration menu works in any theme and all browsers and gracefully falls back to pure CSS positioning.
The entire menu tree below "Administer" including all invisible local tasks is exposed, so you have direct access to any page you want.
The menu is absolute positioned at the top of the window, but can optionally be positioned fixed.
Administration menu can be enhanced by other modules. Integration with Devel module is provided out of the box.
The administration menu icon is themeable.
3.x: Cutting-edge client-side caching ensures a minimal performance impact.

Related modules

This module is intended for administrative users - not for regular or anonymous site users. For such use-cases, try SimpleMenu, Nice Menus, or DHTML Menu.

Installation

Please see current README.txt.
Make sure to grant the "access administration menu" and "access administration pages" user permissions.
The "Administer" menu item must be enabled, but may reside in a different menu than "Navigation".
Make sure your theme outputs $closure. If the administration menu is not displayed, please consult the README.txt first.

Credits

Current maintainers:

This project has been sponsored by:

unleashed mind
Specialized in consulting and development of Drupal powered sites, our services include installation, development, theming, customization, and hosting to get you started. Visit http://www.unleashedmind.com for more information.
Lullabot
Friendly Drupal experts providing professional consulting & education services. Visit http://www.lullabot.com for more information.
Acquia
Commercially Supported Drupal. Visit http://acquia.com for more information.