Disable more than a dozen WordPress features with the No Nonsense plugin – WP Tavern

One of the best things about WordPress is the hundreds of ways to turn things off. There are probably dozens of plugins for disabling various things, each with their own set of options. No Nonsense is no different. It is a plugin that allows users to control whether they want to use more than a dozen features.

The plugin was developed by Room 34, a Minneapolis-based web development and creative consulting studio. No Nonsense is the team’s 11th free plugin available through the WordPress.org plugin directory.

The team’s plugin caught my eye because it offers options for features that I regularly turn off on WordPress site versions, such as JavaScript emoji, individual dashboard widgets, and the toolbar. Today’s update (version 1.2) even added an option to permanently remove the Hello Dolly plugin.

Before someone asks – someone always asks – the plugin doesn’t turn off the block editor. However, it has an option to disable the block based widget editor.

Room 34 released the plugin on Tuesday, so it has less than 10 active installs at the moment. He has no opinion either. I guess this post will suffice like the first. From my experience and a glimpse of its code, the plugin looks solid.

I tested every feature and found no issues so it gets a 5/5 for doing what it says on the tin. I would like to see a few other options. An example that immediately comes to mind is the “Posts” screen. Since users can remove the “Comments” section in the administrator, it makes sense to have a similar setting for posts. Both are blogging and not all WordPress websites need them.

No Nonsense includes one of my favorite administrator access limitations. It can redirect logged in users to the home page when they navigate to anything other than their user profile in the WordPress admin.

Its toolbar options are all things I have in my code toolbox. The plugin has settings to hide it for users without edit access, remove the WordPress logo and drop the “Howdy” text.

The plugin includes options for many commonly disabled features, but one news I hadn’t thought of was the base update email. When managing sites for multiple family and friends, those “your site has been updated to WordPress xxx” emails can get irritating. The plugin allows you to disable them except in case of error.

If anyone hasn’t already, I’d like to see a deactivation plugin to end all deactivations plugins. It would contain a complete list of things a site owner can turn off, disable, disable, remove, or whatever you want from a WordPress website.

No Nonsense seems like a good place to start, but there are always other things I could remove from an installation. I almost always give the ax to theme and plugin editors. Besides how the plugin works, there’s always just a little extra that I need to get rid of, depending on the site in question. So, I’m always on the lookout for that giant plugin that gives me this one-click access to disable anything. For now, I see myself deploying this on a few sites.