QuickLogin Plugin For WordPress
August 7th, 2011This blog runs on WordPress, which has been a great solution for my needs. But as the developer of MarsEdit, you might guess I get the opportunity to see a whole heckuva lot of other systems, and sometimes find myself envious of their advantages, big and small.
One such advantage I noticed is that Squarespace users can log in from any page on their blog, just by pressing the escape key.
By default, WordPress requires that you either memorize the admin page URL, or list an ugly “Login” link i the blog’s template. I never liked the idea of having a login link for a site that only I should ever be logging in to, so for years I have omitted the login link from my site.
This means that when I’m reading comments or something on my site, and am not logged in, I have to do a silly dance before I respond or moderate a comment:
- Go to the URL bar in my browser.
- Change URL to /wp-admin/
- Enter the proper login credentials.
- Hit back button to get back where I was.
- Reload the page to see the comment form as a logged-in user.
This ends today. My QuickLogin Plugin for WordPress is a drop-in solution that, when activated, gives your WordPress blog the same delicious escape-key behavior that Squarespace offers. Now when I am browsing my own blog and want to log in, I just press the escape key. After I authenticate, I’m automatically returned to the reloaded page I was viewing.
August 7th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
This is great! I’ll be updating my blog to this shortly!
August 7th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Cool! Installed! Bingo!
Thanks a lot for this one.
Best regards,
Stephan.
August 7th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
Oh, very nice. Thanks Daniel!
August 7th, 2011 at 5:04 pm
I agree I think you have a unique perspective on WordPress vs. other platforms in terms of features and experience… I would love to talk to you more about what you notice in other platforms and miss when using WordPress. It would also make a great WordCamp talk too. ;)
August 7th, 2011 at 6:05 pm
One issue with using get_permalink() is that on the main/home page, the permalink variable gets the url for the latest post, not the main page, so you aren’t redirected back to what was the current page (at least this is the case for my site). Also, what about adding an “else” to the isLoggedIn function that will take the logged in user to the wp-admin/index.php with the same esc key if the user is already logged in?
Honestly, this is a great plugin and I’m surprised it’s taken so long for this type of functionality to exist.
August 7th, 2011 at 6:47 pm
My word, I can’t believe we didn’t have this sooner. Just 1 button press and off we go. I absolutely love it, good work!
August 7th, 2011 at 8:00 pm
Love it – already installed and tested.
I too will be removing the ugly site meta section as well now!
August 8th, 2011 at 2:05 am
Awesome. I do something similar with .htaccess and the built in redirect functionality, but it still involves typing in the url bar. This is way, way cooler.
August 8th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
This is a fantastic plugin! Never quite knew how useful this missing functionality could be until my blogs had it.
August 14th, 2011 at 6:28 am
Cool, what a great idea!
I wonder if perhaps just using the current page URL might offer an improved experience, for those situations when the permalink URL doesn’t accurately describe the current location? Something like:
$loginPageURL = wp_login_url(($_SERVER[“HTTPS”] ? “https” : “http”) . “://” . $_SERVER[“SERVER_NAME”] . ($_SERVER[“SERVER_PORT”] != 80 ? “:”.$_SERVER[“SERVER_PORT”] : “”) . $_SERVER[“REQUEST_URI”]);
August 14th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
@MIchael – That’s a great idea. I thought about doing it on the first version but I got a little daunted by all the ways I might screw up “the current URL”. Looks like your snippet covers most, if not all of the concerns I had in mind.