Unable to access plugin settings page in admin dashboard

After each WordPress update, users bound to encounter a problem with accessing plugin setting in admin area. When WordPress developers adding new stuff to it and all plugin needs to cope with the updates or changes as well. That’s what I get when using an old and an outdated plugins. Users will probably stumble upon an error message like this one shown below:

After each WordPress update, I always checked back all the settings to see if everything are in tip-top working conditions. And, I bumped into this error after trying to view one of the plugin setting page. So, after ‘Google’ the web and luckily I found a blog that can answer my question. Thanks a lot Hungred Dot Com for sharing this. It’s really helpful.

Hungred briefly explains why the problems occur after users have updated their WordPress to versions 3.0. I’m not going into the complexity and the technicality of it, I’m only highlighting the solution to solving my plugin setting page problem. If you need to know more you can go to the blog link and read the explanations.

To fix the problem is really simple, all I need to do is to edit the plugin script and add a little changes needed to make it work with WordPress 3.0. Don’t worry, no coding is required to do this task.

Open up the plugin script using any text editors (notepad or wordpad will do just fine) or HTML editors and look for this line of codes (mostly all plugin scripts have these): add_options_page or add_submenu_page. This functions will add plugins config links in the left sidebar area in Admin dashboard. Some plugin requires settings to be manually reconfigure by the user.

For example:

{ add_options_page('Your Plugin Name', 'Plugin Name Link', 1, 'Your Plugin Name', 'cus_control'); }

and just add dash ( – ) or underscore ( _ ) to it. Compare the difference:

{ add_options_page('Your-Plugin-Name', 'Plugin Name Link', 1, 'Your-Plugin-Name', 'cus_control'); }

The second slug parameter in that line usually referring to the plugin link in the sidebar area. If you’re using WordPress 3.0 below, you will not encounter this problem. After WordPress 3.0 and above, the slug parameter is being changed from spaces to dashes. As explained by Hungred:

WordPress get_plugin_page_hookname will remove all spaces on your slug parameter instead of leaving it which will give “Hungred Feature Post List” instead of  “HungredFeaturePostList”. Since there is only “Hungred Feature Post List” exist within the $_registered_pages global array and “HungredFeaturePostList” wasn’t being registered. The validation fail and throw me an error page.

There you have it, a simple solution to your problem trying accessing your plugin settings page. Hope that helps. Comment on this post if you have a better solutions.

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