Addofy setup

Addofy setup takes three steps: connect AddoBase, get a license or free trial for Addofy, and click Install and switch on in the AddoBase screen. You then choose modules, visibility per role and defaults on the Addofy settings page, or let the quick start walk you through them.

What does Addofy change in the admin?

Addofy, the first of the AddoBase add-ons, restyles the WordPress and WooCommerce backend into one calm design system with light and dark mode, adds global search and a command palette (Ctrl/Cmd + K), and lets you hide menus, meta boxes, columns and notices per role. It works through hooks only: no core files or WooCommerce templates are overridden, and forms and meta boxes are never moved in the page. Without JavaScript the admin behaves like native WordPress.

Addofy never changes capabilities: hidden is not the same as forbidden. Visitors of your site get nothing from it. Logged-in users who see the admin bar on the front end get one search item there, which opens the command palette. You can turn that off under Preferences → Search on the website.

What do you need before the Addofy setup?

• WordPress 6.5 or newer and PHP 8.1 or newer. WooCommerce 9.0 or newer is optional; with it, Addofy also restyles the product, order and customer screens.
• AddoBase installed and connected; see Install and connect AddoBase.
• A license or a trial for Addofy. Licenses: From € 60,50 /yr per site excl. VAT: € 50,00 or € 6,05 per month, depending on the number of sites. The trial runs 14 days on 1 site. All tiers are listed in the WordPress plugins catalogue.
• A WordPress administrator account.

How do you start the Addofy setup in AddoBase?

From the AddoBase screen, in four steps:

1. Open AddoBase in wp-admin.
2. In the Addofy row, click Try free for 14 days to start a trial, or Buy a license. Finish the checkout on addocore.com; a trial needs no payment details.
3. Back in AddoBase, click Check now, then Install and switch on.
4. A new top-level menu item Addofy appears. The Plugins list also gets a Settings link under Addofy.

On a local development site (a host such as localhost or one ending in .test, .local or .localhost) Addofy runs without a license. AddoBase must still be installed and active there.

What does the Addofy setup quick start ask?

The quick start opens once after the first activation and takes about two minutes. First it asks “How do you want to start?”: New settings walks you through the look, the modules and how you work, step by step; Import settings from an export file takes the settings of another site and shows the changes before applying them.

Every step has Next, Skip and Previous, and your current settings stay until you change them in a step. Run it again any time from Tools → Quick start. On sites you deploy by script, the constant ADBA_SKIP_SETUP switches the automatic quick start off.

Which settings tabs are part of the Addofy setup?

Five. Each has its own Save changes button.

• Modules: switch parts of Addofy on or off, such as Admin shell, Design system, Search and command palette, Notice center, Saved views and Visibility per role. Modules for WooCommerce or ACF wait until that plugin is active (“Waiting for WooCommerce, which is not active.”).
• Visibility: hide menu items, meta boxes, list columns, notices, admin bar items and dashboard widgets per role.
• Menu: rename sidebar items, choose their group and change their order. Reset menu goes back to the default groups.
• Preferences: the Default theme (Auto, Light, Dark), Default density (Comfortable, Compact, Dense) and Default view (Advanced, Simple, Focus) for users who have not chosen their own, plus keyboard shortcuts and the notice center.
• Tools: export and import, excluded screens, data handling on removal, the cache and template overrides.

How do you check what a role sees?

Use View as another role on the Visibility tab to test your Addofy setup. It applies the rules of that role to your own session for one hour; nothing changes for other users. Click Stop preview to return. By default Administrators bypass rules is on, so administrators see everything. The Addofy settings page itself can never be hidden.

Addofy learns what each plugin adds while an administrator browses the admin. If the Visibility or Menu tab says “Nothing discovered yet.”, open a few screens (dashboard, products, orders, plugin settings) and come back, or click Scan unvisited screens.

What if a screen looks wrong after Addofy setup?

Exclude that screen. On Tools → Excluded screens, add one screen id per line, for example edit-product. Addofy then adds nothing there and the screen looks and works like native WordPress. For a wider problem, turn on safe mode, which switches all Addofy styling and visibility rules off at once:

define( 'ADBA_SAFE_MODE', true );

Or with WP-CLI:

wp adba safe-mode on
wp adba safe-mode off

Settings follow a fixed order: a constant in wp-config.php wins over an environment variable, which wins over the database setting, which wins over the default. A value fixed by a constant shows “Settings saved. Some values are fixed by a constant or environment variable and were not changed.”

How do you copy an Addofy setup to another site?

Use Tools → Export and import. Download export saves a file with your settings and visibility rules. On the other site, choose the file under Upload and preview, review the changes and click Apply import. Rules for plugins that are not installed there are kept and apply once the plugin is installed.

What happens when the Addofy license ends?

Addofy switches itself off and the site falls back to the normal WordPress admin. On the dashboard and the Plugins screen, administrators see “Addofy is not active on this site because it has no active license. Your settings are kept.” Settings, visibility rules, views and notes stay in the database and come back once the license is active again.

What happens to Addofy data when you switch it off?

That depends on Tools → Data → When Addofy is removed:

• Keep my settings (default): everything stays.
• Delete all Addofy data when the plugin is deleted
• Delete all Addofy data when the plugin is deactivated

Switch off in AddoBase deactivates the plugin, so with the last option your Addofy setup is gone at that moment. Check this setting before you switch Addofy off on a site you want to keep configured.

That completes the Addofy setup. More on switching in Switch add-ons on and off; trial and license rules are in WordPress plugin trial and licenses.