Hero Admin

A reimagined WordPress admin experience. Fast, focused and beautiful.

Hero Admin serves a modern, minimal dashboard at /hero-admin/ on your WordPress site. It's a single-page app built on the WordPress REST API with no React, no build step, and one vanilla-JS file. It lives alongside the classic wp-admin, which stays fully available.

Note: Hero Admin is a fork of Minn Admin by Austin Ginder (MIT). Maintained by Abu Taher Hero.

Features

• Overview — stat cards, a real Traffic chart with hover details when an analytics plugin is installed (Koko Analytics, WP Statistics, Burst, Independent Analytics, AnalyticsWP, Matomo, Google Analytics through Site Kit, or Jetpack Stats), click a bar for that day's top pages and referrers (Koko, WP Statistics, Burst, Independent Analytics, Matomo and Jetpack Stats today; others join via hero_admin_traffic_day) and step through days with the arrow keys, plus a recent-activity feed
• Content — posts, pages and custom post types sorted by publish date (scheduled posts lead with their go-out dates), with search, category/tag filters, status pills (live posts carrying unsaved edits wear a Modified chip, with a matching filter; a post someone else has open says who is editing), bulk actions (set status or trash, with shift-click range select), and row actions: right-click or hover for quick publish/draft/trash, view, and a block-editor escape
• Media — grid/list library, uploads, drag-and-drop, a preview overlay with arrow-key navigation and in-place title, alt text, caption & description editing, bulk select and delete (shift-range, on the grid and the list), a right-click menu, and a built-in image editor (rotate and crop, saved as a new copy). Folders arrive from your folder plugin (FileBird, Real Media Library or Folders by Premio) with a Move to folder bulk action through each plugin's own machinery; an Unattached filter and a month picker cover the daily cleanup questions; every file's detail names the post it is attached to, one click from that post's editor; Replace file works in place through Enable Media Replace; the SVG filter tab appears with Safe SVG or SVG Support active, and ↻ Thumbnails works through Regenerate Thumbnails or Force Regenerate Thumbnails
• Comments — full moderation (pending / approved / spam / trash) with bulk moderation (each tab offers its own verbs), inline replies, in-place comment editing, Block commenter (core's disallowed list, with Undo) and a right-click menu for the same verbs
• Ecommerce — full WooCommerce day-to-day in Hero: Orders open as full pages (linkable, refreshable, with a Quick view modal from the list) with search, status, notes, a Payment card that records hand-received payments through WooCommerce's own machinery, itemized refunds with quantity steppers and restocking, resend/custom email, pay URL, New order, Analytics with long-range revenue and top products, and a Store strip on the Overview naming the orders that need work today. Products open as full pages as well (pricing with its sale schedule and tax class, inventory down to GTIN and backorders, shipping, the product image and gallery as tiles you drag to reorder, categories, tags and brands, upsells and cross-sells, attributes, and variations a variable product can generate from its own attributes, with the long description in Hero's own editor), alongside stock filters, bulk and Add product. Coupons, Customers, and Subscriptions when WooCommerce Subscriptions is active (status, next payment, parent order, related orders, customer strip). Orders, products and customers carry right-click menus for the common moves (status changes, stock and publish toggles, email, jump to a customer's orders). Invoice / packing-slip downloads when PDF Invoices & Packing Slips is active. Product, coupon and subscription CPTs are fenced out of Content.
• Users — directory with search, a role filter, create/edit users, roles, passwords, bulk role change, per-user login sessions with one-click sign-out, Switch to this user when the User Switching plugin is active (a switched session shows a Switch back bar in Hero), and Copy one-time login link when One Time Login is active. Editing a user is a full page at /hero-admin/users/{id}: identity, public profile, language, sessions, plus the user's Hero appearance set by an admin (color scheme including custom palettes, default admin, toolbar) so a client's Hero looks right before their first sign-in, and a Hidden for them card restoring anything they hid
• Multisite — fuzzy-search the sites you can use from a compact sidebar switcher or the command palette; subsite administrators can add existing network accounts, change roles, and remove site memberships. Network administrators get first-class Sites, Network users, and Network settings surfaces, plus network-wide plugin activation, theme availability, and post-core-update database migrations. Main/current-site, self-lockout, and last-admin guards protect destructive actions; account creation/deletion, the long settings tail, and very large network upgrades link to WordPress Network Admin
• Your profile — a full page at /hero-admin/profile: account, public profile (first/last name, website, bio, Gravatar), per-user language with automatic pack installs, the front-end toolbar preference, appearance, hidden integrations, and login sessions
• AI Access — generate revocable application passwords for AI agents plus a site-tailored agent guide (markdown REST reference) to hand to a coding agent; configuration work stays out of Hero by design
• Extensions — install plugins and themes from WordPress.org or zip upload (Add plugin opens a catalog by category with install tips, not only free-text search), activate, deactivate, delete, per-item and bulk updates with Queued… / Updating… feedback that survives worker recycles, a Themes tab with screenshots, cards wearing real wp.org icons (linked to the directory) with linked author lines, per-item auto-update toggles on every plugin and theme card (core's own auto_update_* lists, so Hero and wp-admin always agree), Live preview on inactive themes (Customizer for classic themes, Site Editor preview for block themes), right-click menus on plugin and theme cards (Activate, Update, Delete, Open on WordPress.org or GitHub, Copy file), and a Licenses tab (below)
• Structure — post types, taxonomies and terms on one page. See every registered post type and taxonomy and manage definitions through whoever owns them (ACF, Custom Post Type UI, or Hero's own store when neither is active; code-registered ones shown read-only), and a full terms manager: rename, re-parent, merge (posts move to the survivor through core's own reassignment) and delete across every taxonomy, with an indented tree for hierarchical ones
• Settings — reorganized by intent: Site (identity, logo, site language, locale, admin, with timezone picker), Visibility (search engines, maintenance mode, membership), Homepage, Content (new-content defaults + permalinks with automatic rewrite flushing), Comments (discussion + spam), Design (the Customizer's Additional CSS, validated before saving) and Connectors (WP 7.0's registry of AI providers and external services: connection state, where each key comes from (saved, wp-config constant or environment variable), install the companion plugin in place, keys saved through core's own masked route), under a sticky section nav. The Spam page shows who filters comment spam (Akismet, Antispam Bee, CleanTalk, WP Armour) with safe toggles and blocked counts. Site-visibility warnings: an Overview banner and a persistent topbar chip appear whenever a maintenance plugin, password gate or "discourage search engines" is hiding the site, with inline fix controls where Hero can safely flip the setting, including turn-off switches with Undo for detected coming-soon and maintenance plugins that write through each plugin's own storage (third parties register via hero_admin_visibility_providers and hero_admin_visibility_toggles)
• Editor — a calm, block-aware writing surface that stores native Gutenberg markup (zero lock-in: open any post in the block editor, any time). Markdown typing conventions (**bold**, `code`, ## headings, lists, quotes, fences, dividers…), with wraps that stay on the undo stack (including inline code). Every core layout container is a writing surface: Group, Columns, Cover and Media & Text open for typing, nested to any depth, with markdown, the slash menu, the block picker and rich paste all working inside and each column its own side-by-side surface; container framing and styling re-save byte-for-byte, so the block editor always reopens the layout cleanly. Complex blocks (a spacer, a buttons row, a plugin's block) stay preserved byte-for-byte as configurable islands with real front-end styles, right where they live, with duplicate and move arrows in the ⚙ popover (left/right hops between columns) and in-place text editing. Pasting raw block markup (from an AI tool or a pattern file) converts to real blocks instantly. Link popover on ⌘K, text alignment, table and image controls in island-style cutouts, at the top level and inside containers. Slash commands stay curated and type-to-filter; Browse all or ⌘/ opens the block picker, grouped by source (basics, plugin blocks, design libraries, patterns). Plugins can register free-form slash items through hero_admin_editor_commands (boilerplate HTML, island templates, or an async REST route). Dynamic third-party blocks that render standalone auto-appear in search (no adapter); Stackable, Kadence, and GenerateBlocks free design/pattern libraries insert as valid Gutenberg markup with images sideloaded; block patterns from core, the theme, and plugins join the same search, and so do your own saved patterns: synced ones insert as live wp:block references that follow later edits, unsynced ones as detached copies, with a Patterns entry in Content to manage them. Island content is editable: text runs and an Images section rewrite only what you change; block settings scale (used fields first, the rest behind More settings); every island links out to the block editor for layout controls. Gallery-shaped blocks (core galleries, sliders and carousels, fixed layouts, Jetpack's tiled gallery) open an images editor: reorder, replace, add, remove, duplicate and caption photos, each moved as an exact unit, with dropped files uploading into the block and gallery columns, crop and random order editable from the ⚙ popover. Multi-block containers open an Edit content window: one card per block, text first, other settings tucked behind a toggle. Previews pick up lazy CSS, layout-support CSS (gallery columns, group gaps) and auto-warm browser-compiled styles when needed. Syntax-highlighted code blocks; writing stats on the sticky pill (words, reading time, session delta, optional word goal); scheduling and one-click publish. Paste cleanup turns Word / Google Docs / web HTML into the safe subset; paste or drag an image uploads at the caret with an inline caption. The publish sidebar edits the slug, visibility (a themed Public / Password / Private combobox), per-post discussion, sticky and post format (when the theme supports formats). Deleting an embed offers an Undo toast; table add/delete row and column undo with ⌘Z. Revision diffs open a side-by-side, word-marked diff against the current content. An outline panel lists headings as a live table of contents; focus mode (⌘⇧D) fades all but the current paragraph; outline mode (⌘⇧O) leaves just the writing and the outline. The internal link picker searches your own posts from the link popover, and a themed date-time picker handles scheduling. Find & replace (⌘⇧F) matches across inline formatting, never touches protected islands, and every replace is a native undo step. Built for real writing sessions: IME-safe composition (CJK and dead keys), mobile Safari keyboard and hit-target polish, and a first-cut accessible toolbar, slash menu, and block popovers. ⌘⏎ publishes; the help dialog documents every shortcut. Where this is heading: the editor roadmap
• Never lose work — post locking on WordPress's own _edit_lock (Hero, the classic editor and Gutenberg all honor each other, with takeover), plus a localStorage crash net that snapshots every edit within ~1.2s (before the first autosave) and offers recovery on the next open. Status-aware autosave: drafts save in place, published posts back up to revisions (only Update goes live), with a backup-restore banner.
• Page builders — build a page with Divi, Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, Etch, Bricks or WPBakery and keep managing it from Hero: builder-owned pages are marked, edited through the builder's own chrome-free surface via Edit in ⟨builder⟩ (no wp-admin screen), and fenced so a stray Hero edit can't break the builder's canvas. + New can start a page in any active builder. Third parties register via the hero_admin_page_builders filter
• System — a developer diagnostics page with a sticky section jump bar: a health s