The Saola – Custom Contextual Help for Every Admin Page plugin that was just released by Morfi is a really slick little plugin that makes it really easy to add contextual help tabs to any page in the WordPress dashboard. I decided to pick up a copy of the plugin and give it a short text run.

From the developer:

Your users find it difficult to work with WordPress or they simply do not know how to add new elements? Then Saola plug-in is exactly what you need. It will allow you to:
install the plug-in without editing the code; simply click “Activate” and the plug-in is ready to work.

The plugin is quite simple to use. Once activated, there will be a new “Contextual Help” page under the Settings menu, and through this page you can add as many help sections as you want, in the exact same way that you add items to any other custom post type.

One of the great features of the plugin is the ability to add help tabs to any and all pages in the dashboard, whether they are part of WordPress core, or added via a plugin or theme.

Being the developer I am, of course I checked out the code and was pretty happy with it. It’s simple and pretty well organized.

There are just a couple of criticisms I have of the plugin:

• It’s not localized or ready for translation
• It would be awesome if the help sections for each tab could be grouped by the tab they belong to
• Drag and drop ordering for tab sections, instead of the default “Order” field would be great
• The Element titles (or post type item titles) are only used for organization, and not for the Help section titles

Aside from the few suggestions above, the plugin is great and I would highly recommend it to anyone that is looking for an easy way to add helpful information.

My Rating: