Plugins menu doesn’t appear in the admin panel

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I’m having a very simple problem. I’m new to WordPress and I’m trying to install a plugin.

Everyone says there’s a “plugins” option on the sidebar-menu in the admin panel, but I don’t see one! I’ve looked for it in all the sub-menus too.

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Whenever I try to search for this problem, I get results about creating a plugin to show on the admin menu.

Anyway, how can I get the plugins menu to show up?

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12 comments

  1. The issue is almost certainly related to one of two things:

    1) You don’t have permissions (are you logged in as admin?)

    OR

    2) The theme (or a plugin) has disabled the plugins menu.

    After you’ve checked to be sure that you are an administrator, then you should attempt to view this page:

    http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/plugins.php (replacing http://www.yourdomain.com with your site’s domain name).

    If it’s accessible, then it’s time to start exploring the theme (which theme are you using?) and possibly some of the plugins that might have disabled the menu item.

    FYI, the method to remove dashboard menu items is covered here: http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-remove-menus-in-wordpress-dashboard

  2. If you did double check your file permissions (i.e. 755 for folders and 644 for wordpress files on Linux), please consider editing your wp-config.php file and change

    define('DISALLOW_FILE_MODS',true);

    to

    define('DISALLOW_FILE_MODS',false);

    The Add New option in Plugins menu will show up, also if you have internet connection, possible updates will be shown up.

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  3. This what I found looking for the same problem, I guess this is your situation also:

    If your site is hosted on WordPress.com:

    Plugins: Plugins are tools used to extend the functionality of the WordPress platform. However, they are only applicable to self-hosted blogs and web sites using the WordPress.org software. Plugins are not permitted here at WordPress.com for various security reasons.

  5. I found this post searching for help with a similar issue with a self-hosted WordPress installation — in this case it was a site that a friend had paid someone to make, but then took them off the work and asked me to help out.

    There were several regular menu options missing — it turned out to be down to a plugin called Admin Menu Editor that the previous web guy had installed to limit the options available to my friend, so they wouldn’t mess with things.

    In this case I could access the options for Admin Menu Editor by going to http://www.example.com/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=menu_editor

  7. I have never seen that problem before. However, try either expanding all the current menu items to see if “plugins” are listed there, or try deactivating some/all of your plugins to see if one of the plugins are conflicting somehow and making your plugins menu not display.

  8. I know this is an old question but I hit this problem at work recently with a WordPress site I inherited that had been originally developed by an external company. I tracked it down to the roles assigned to the user account. The “admin” account I had been given was actually assigned a restricted role that didn’t have permission to access most of the settings.

    Fortunately, I have access to the database so I was able to modify the assigned role directly. The default database prefix in WordPress is wp but you may need adjust these steps according to your own database.

    First, find the user_id in the wp_users table for the account you want to modify and then run the following SQL against your WordPress database.

    UPDATE wp_usermeta SET meta_value = "a:1:{s:13:""administrator"";b:1;}" WHERE user_id = {your_user_id} AND meta_key = "wp_capabilities";
UPDATE wp_usermeta SET meta_value = "10" WHERE user_id = {your_user_id} AND meta_key = "wp_user_level";

    The next time you log in with that user account it should now have administrator privileges.

  9. If you are using the multisite feature of WordPress you will only see the plugins menu if you are super admin.

    In the menu go to “My Sites” at the top of the page then click “Network Admin”. (If you do not have this option you are not super admin.) Under “Network Admin” click “Dashboard” and then the plugins menu will appear. In your Network settings you can enable plugins for the sites.

    The issue I was having was even trickier: No one was super admin. I fixed this by overwriting the “is_super_admin” function (simply returning true always) and then editing the settings as needed, before removing the overwrite again.

  10. If you install a local WordPress the Plugins sub menu will not appear for any of the sites you work. Click My Sites area at the top of the page then click Network Admin and then click Dashboard. The Plugins sub menu will appear there. Then install new plugins and use it on sites on which you are working.
    Good luck.

  11. For me, changing lines in wp-config.php worked. I changed:

    define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true); 
define('DISALLOW_FILE_MODS', true);

    to

    define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', false);
define('DISALLOW_FILE_MODS', false);

  12. There might be a couple of reasons for the same. Some of them are:-

    Reason 1 – When the website is hosted on wordpress.com

    Reason 2 – When the user is logged in with a non-admin account

    Reason 3 – When the WordPress website/blog is a part of a multi-site-network and the network admin has disabled the plugin menu

    Reason 4 – Plugins Conflict