How to remove entire admin menu?

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The question:

I need to customize the admin panel for my user. So how do I remove the entire admin menu? Not remove the menu item, I mean entirely remove the left vertical menu bar, include the design of the menu (eg, css, background..etc). I want it become blank.

I can do it by css hack. But I prefer to use hook to do it. Any ideas?

Thanks

The Solutions:

Below are the methods you can try. The first solution is probably the best. Try others if the first one doesn’t work. Senior developers aren’t just copying/pasting – they read the methods carefully & apply them wisely to each case.

Method 1

The correct hook to use is admin_menu and then create a function to remove the menus you want to remove. The following 2 functions remove all the menus. 

add_action( 'admin_menu', 'remove_admin_menus' );
add_action( 'admin_menu', 'remove_admin_submenus' );

//Remove top level admin menus
function remove_admin_menus() {
    remove_menu_page( 'edit-comments.php' );
    remove_menu_page( 'link-manager.php' );
    remove_menu_page( 'tools.php' );
    remove_menu_page( 'plugins.php' );
    remove_menu_page( 'users.php' );
    remove_menu_page( 'options-general.php' );
    remove_menu_page( 'upload.php' );
    remove_menu_page( 'edit.php' );
    remove_menu_page( 'edit.php?post_type=page' );
    remove_menu_page( 'themes.php' );
}


//Remove sub level admin menus
function remove_admin_submenus() {
    remove_submenu_page( 'themes.php', 'theme-editor.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'themes.php', 'themes.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'edit.php', 'edit-tags.php?taxonomy=post_tag' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'edit.php', 'edit-tags.php?taxonomy=category' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'edit.php', 'post-new.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'themes.php', 'nav-menus.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'themes.php', 'widgets.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'themes.php', 'theme-editor.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'plugins.php', 'plugin-editor.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'plugins.php', 'plugin-install.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'users.php', 'users.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'users.php', 'user-new.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'upload.php', 'media-new.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'options-general.php', 'options-writing.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'options-general.php', 'options-discussion.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'options-general.php', 'options-reading.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'options-general.php', 'options-discussion.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'options-general.php', 'options-media.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'options-general.php', 'options-privacy.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'options-general.php', 'options-permalinks.php' );
    remove_submenu_page( 'index.php', 'update-core.php' );
}

Screenshot of left menu using the above 2 functions:

enter image description here

Method 2

Following the lead of /wp-admin/admin-header.php -> /wp-admin/menu-header.php there’s no hook to do it.

A solution is to hook in admin_head and do some CSS + jQuery

add_action('admin_head', 'wpse_52099_script_enqueuer');
function wpse_52099_script_enqueuer(){
    if(!current_user_can('administrator')) {
        echo <<<HTML
        <style type="text/css">
        #wpcontent, #footer { margin-left: 0px; }
        </style>
        <script type="text/javascript">
        jQuery(document).ready( function($) {
            $('#adminmenuback, #adminmenuwrap').remove();
        });     
        </script>
HTML;
    }
}

[update]
As per a clarification to the question, where it gets clear that the motivation is branding the admin area, these are the 4 plugins that I use for that:

Method 3

The only hook-friendly way I know is to use remove_menu_page() for every single menu item. Even then, I don’t know what happens to the left bar itself (whether it would collapse down to 0px width or what). Even with using the hooks, I imagine at some point you’ll want to enqueue an admin stylesheet to cleanup what remains of the menu markup styles.

I would be careful about doing this. For instance, if you remove “Settings,” then any plugins that creates menu pages in the “Settings” menu can’t be reached. In general, I wonder how sustainable it really is to completely remove the menu.

Method 4

add_action( 'admin_menu', 'remove_admin_menus' );

function remove_admin_menus(){
    global $menu;
    $menu = array();
}

Method 5

I improve the solution of @brasofilo as it is have small bug – on page reload with not best internet connection menu will appear for very short time. To avoid it I added a bit of more css:

add_action('admin_head', 'wpse_52099_script_enqueuer');

function wpse_52099_script_enqueuer() {

    if(!current_user_can('administrator')) { 

echo <<<HTML
<style type="text/css">
#wpcontent, #footer { margin-left: 0px !important; }
#adminmenuback, #adminmenuwrap { display: none !important; }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready( function($) {
    $('#adminmenuback, #adminmenuwrap').remove();
});
</script>
HTML;

    }
}


All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0

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