The Hidden Secret Options Panel Within Your WordPress Admin Panel

Imagine that WordPress has a secret treasure chest. It does, and it’s called the hidden options panel.

This secret page holds settings that you can’t see in the regular dashboard. We’re here to show you how to find it and what it contains.

But wait, don’t rush in! Tinkering with these settings is like trying to defuse a bomb without instructions. You might accidentally break your website. That’s why we recommend safer methods to edit these settings.

By the end of this article, you will know how to access the hidden options page and learn about tools for managing these settings properly.

How to Access the Hidden Options Page in WordPress

To find the hidden options panel in WordPress, just follow these simple steps.

First, log in to your WordPress admin dashboard. Once logged in, you need to go to your browser’s address bar.

Type in your website’s URL, followed by /wp-admin/options.php. For example, if your site is www.example.com, you would type www.example.com/wp-admin/options.php.

Hit enter, and you’ll be taken to the hidden options page.

This page lists all sorts of settings stored in your WordPress database. Some of these settings are stored by the core WordPress software itself. Meanwhile, other options are stored by WordPress plugins or themes installed on your website.

You can also see these settings by accessing the database using a tool like phpMyAdmin. All these options are stored in the ‘options’ table.

Why the Options Page Is Hidden and What Settings It Shows

The hidden options page in WordPress isn’t easily accessible because it contains many critical settings, which are vital for the smooth functioning of your website.

Here’s why this page is hidden and the types of settings you can find there.

Why the Options Page Is Hidden

• Prevent Accidental Changes: The hidden options page includes settings that can affect your entire site. Keeping it hidden helps prevent accidental changes by users who might not fully understand the effects.
• Complexity: Some settings are complex and intended for advanced users or developers. Showing these settings to all users could lead to confusion and unexpected issues.
• Security: By hiding these settings, WordPress reduces the risk of unauthorized users making changes that could compromise the site’s security.

What Settings It Shows

Now, let’s look at the settings shown on the hidden options page and what they are used for:

• Core WordPress Settings: Includes settings like site URL, home URL, and other important configurations.
• Plugin Settings: Some plugins store their settings in the database. Instead of creating separate tables, they use the options table in the database for efficiency.
• Theme Settings: Themes might save various options here, especially those that control the layout, colors, and other appearance-related settings.
• Serialized Data: WordPress plugins may also store serialized data. This data includes arrays or objects stored as a single string. These settings are not intended to be edited manually.
• Transients: These are temporary options used to store cached data, which expire after a set period. They help improve site performance by reducing the need for repeated database queries or API calls.

From our experience, most beginners don’t need to edit anything directly on the hidden options page. There are better ways to update these settings.

The hidden options panel is intended for developers to quickly test things and use this page for debugging if needed.

Next, we’ll show you how to edit the same options more easily without breaking your website.

Better and Safer Ways to Edit Options in WordPress

As the general best practice, we don’t recommend users make direct changes to the hidden options panel.

We also don’t recommend making changes directly in the WordPress database unless you have no other option.

For instance, if you lost your WordPress password or couldn’t access the WordPress admin area, then you can try editing database tables as a last resort.

Here are other safer ways and tools you can use to manage the same options in WordPress.

1. Back Up Your WordPress Website (Important)

Before making any major changes to your WordPress site, make sure that you have a safe, up-to-date backup. This allows you to restore your website in case something goes wrong.

We often hear from users who have lost their website data due to a mistake, a hack, or a hosting issue and cannot restore it.

That’s why we advise all users to set up backups as their first WordPress security step.

The easiest way to do this is to use Duplicator. It is the best WordPress backup plugin, allowing you to create on-demand backups and schedule and automatic backups.

Duplicator also lets you store your backups securely on the cloud and restore your website with 1-click when needed.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to back up your WordPress website, which also shows additional ways to create WordPress backups.

2. Changing Default WordPress Settings

The hidden options page will also show options that are easily editable in the WordPress admin area.

You need to go to the Settings page in the WordPress admin area. There, you will find most of the settings for your WordPress website.

For more details, see our article about Settings in WordPress. It explains each option from different settings tabs.

3. Configuring Individual Plugin Settings

Many WordPress plugins use the options table in the database to store their settings.

The safest way to edit those settings is through the plugin’s ‘Settings’ page itself. Most popular WordPress plugins have their own settings, which you can access from the admin dashboard.

For instance, here you can see an example of how WPForms allows you to change plugin settings from the WPForms » Settings page.

It adds a main menu called WPForms to the admin sidebar. There, you can access Settings and other plugin configuration pages.

Some WordPress plugins don’t add a separate main menu to the admin sidebar. Instead, they place their settings panel under an existing WordPress menu.

Here is an example of Search & Replace Everything, which adds a page under the main Tools menu.

Using these pages, you can safely change plugin settings without accessing the hidden options panel.

4. Change Theme Settings

Like plugins, WordPress themes can also store configuration settings in your WordPress database.

Depending on the theme you are using, you can change those options by configuring theme settings.

For block themes, these settings are found by going to Appearance » Editor, which will launch the full site editor interface.

On the other hand, some users may be using classic themes, which don’t support the full site editor yet.

Those users will find theme options on the Appearance » Customize page.

Saving and updating theme settings will store your changes in the WordPress database.

5. Managing Transients

Transients in WordPress are a way to temporarily cache data by storing it in the database with an expiration time. They allow WordPress core and plugin developers to improve performance.

Normally, users don’t need to manage transients themselves. However, sometimes transients may misbehave and not update as they should.

For example, let’s say you were using a social share plugin, and it stopped showing the social share count. The problem could be transients not updating to reflect the new count.

The easiest way to fix this is to use the Transients Manager plugin. It allows you to view, edit, and delete transients easily in WordPress.

To learn more about transients, take a look at our tutorial on managing and deleting transients in WordPress.

6. Optimizing WordPress Database

If you’ve been using WordPress for some time, your database likely contains a lot of unnecessary data. This can include post revisions, spam comments, trash, transient options, orphaned metadata, and more.

Cleaning up unnecessary data can improve database operations and your website performance.

The safe and efficient way to do this is with WP-Optimize. It is a WordPress database optimization plugin that makes it easy to perform complex database operations.

Once activated, the plugin will analyze your WordPress database and show you a list of optimizations you can perform.

Carefully review each suggestion and then click ‘Run Optimization’ next to it. You can also select multiple suggestions and click the ‘Run all selected optimizations’ button at the top.

We have a more detailed tutorial on optimizing the WordPress database, which will help you understand different options.

Bonus Resources

The options table in your WordPress database is not the only place where WordPress stores data.

There are other places where WordPress may store configuration data that can be accessed by advanced users and developers.

Here are some of the resources that show you how to access and edit those settings:

• Editing the wp-config.php File: The WordPress configuration file wp-config.php contains critical global settings for your WordPress website, such as the database name, username, and password.
• Editing the .htaccess File: The .htaccess file contains important server settings for your WordPress website. It stores WordPress permalinks, redirects, and other server settings.
• WordPress Debug Logs: You can turn on debugging in WordPress and save errors, warnings, and notices in a log file on your website server. This file can then help you troubleshoot errors and issues on your site easily.
• Managing Media Uploads: WordPress stores all media and images you add to an uploads folder on your website.

We hope this article helped you locate the hidden secret options panel and safer ways to change those settings. You may also want to take a look at our beginner’s guide to WordPress database management or how to create a staging WordPress site to test your changes.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.