The stateful navigation is a very useful feature included in WP Frontend Admin.
When you navigate to any section of the front end dashboard, we add a parameter to the current page URL to keep track of the section, the parameter looks like this: #wpfaxxxxxx.
Also, we modify all the internal links in the dashboard to detect the navigation flow.
What is an internal link?
Any link inside a dashboard page pointing to any wp-admin page. For example, if you open the list of pages, every page title is linked to the editor, you also have links at the top that filter the list by page status. Those are internal links. It doesn’t apply to front end links, external links, and links that use a protocol other than http/https
Benefits:
- You will be able to navigate in the dashboard, reload the page, and continue seeing the current page section
- You can navigate in the dashboard and share the current URL with your clients or other users, and they will see the same page as you are
- You can right click on the dashboard links, open in a new tab, and see the page section that you wanted to see
Limitations:
- This works on pages that contain one WP Frontend Admin shortcode. If you have multiple shortcodes in tabs, the stateful navigation will not be activated for this page because we won’t know what shortcode instance to track in the URL
- The stateful navigation applies to internal links only
- Some plugins have links/buttons/switch with a wp-admin URL as a placeholder, but the click action is handled interactively with JavaScript. It’s possible that our plugin thinks that they’re regular links and intercepts the clicks and break the JS action. For example, it’s possible that a dropdown arrow opens a new page instead of expanding the dropdown. In this case, you should contact us so we can add compatibility for that button.
What happens if I disable the stateful navigation?
- If you navigate to an internal page of the dashboard and reload the page, you will see the initial page section and not the internal page that you were seeing
- If you navigate to an internal page of the dashboard and you haven’t configured the Access Restrictions correctly, when you open an internal link in a new tab, you might be sent to wp-admin instead of the front end dashboard
- If you navigate to an internal page of the dashboard, the page URL will not change, you will see the same initial URL, so you won’t be able to share the URL of the current section with other users