Settings: Make Site Settings available to duplicate views experiment users

[lsl]

We want Site Settings from classic view to be available to users in the duplicate views experiment.

Site Settings is a calypso based page that offers site settings we need to control from the wordpress.com domain, e.g. to delete or transfer sites.

Options for duplicate view experiment users only are either:

Add Site Settings to Upgrades menu & rename Upgrades to Hosting

Add Site Settings to the Settings menu above General settings in wp-admin.

Notes:

• Site settings will eventually move out of wp-admin to one of the global pages (waiting on the new design)
• Hosting menu will likely become a single link to wordpress.com hosting overview

If we move these site options from Settings > General Settings to Settings > Site Settings and then later move them to the overview page we're moving things twice.

If we move the options from Settings > General Settings to Hosting > Site Settings and then later move them to the overview page we're still moving things twice.

Is there a better option? @matt-west

[github-actions]

OpenAI suggested the following labels for this issue:

• [Feature Group] Site Settings & Tools: The issue revolves around making site settings accessible to users in the duplicate views experiment, which falls under site management features.
• [Feature] Hosting Dashboard: The suggestions involve re-organizing site settings under hosting-related menus, thus impacting the hosting dashboard's structure.
• [Feature] Site Migration: The concern about moving site settings multiple times indicates a need to consider migration paths for these settings.

[matt-west]

Could we move Site Settings out to the global hosting overview as another tab next to Server Settings?

It’s not ideal, but it would at least mean that we get them out of WP Admin.

We’d still have to move them again once the new design is implemented, but the whole settings section is getting a bit of a makeover anyway.

Another option could be to do nothing and leave this as blocked while we get approval on the new designs. I understand that there's probably a need to keep moving on this though.

[lsl]

We can move it there but we'll still want a link to it from wp-admin for the time being, most single site users see /home when they login instead of /sites so discoverability of the overview pages is very low at this time.

We could add some links inside the general settings page instead? "Delete your site on WordPress.com" but there's a few settings that we would need to do this for, it might be easier to just move it into Settings > Site Settings separate from General and then move it properly later.

[fushar]

Could we move Site Settings out to the global hosting overview as another tab next to Server Settings?

If the eventual goal is to move the settings to the "hosting layer", I think this approach makes the most sense. We've already redesigned the cards to match with the other hosting dashboard cards; it's just under a feature flag.

We could add a link to SMP in the Core's Settings -> General page, something like this: #96772.

[matt-west]

most single site users see /home when they login instead of /sites so discoverability of the overview pages is very low at this time

I thought this was changed recently so everyone sees /sites? I can’t find a PR for it though, so perhaps I misunderstood the change.

We could add a link to SMP in the Core's Settings -> General page, something like this: #96772.

This works for me!

[matt-west]

Just a heads up that I’m revisiting the settings page design today after feedback that was shared in the self-serve check-in last week.

The goal is to see if we can take the setting IA from the latest multi-dashboard designs and make that work within the existing design on the SMP that has the horizontal tabs.

[lsl]

most single site users see /home when they login instead of /sites so discoverability of the overview pages is very low at this time

I thought this was changed recently so everyone sees /sites? I can’t find a PR for it though, so perhaps I misunderstood the change.

Wasn't aware of this can you find the PR? / discussion? The option is still there in account settings:

So this issue is now looking like:

• Move Site Settings to SMP
• Link to it from wp-admin in some way

e.g.

We could add a link to SMP in the Core's Settings -> General page, something like this: #96772.

I was more thinking like this for the options moved:

But a banner could work, Jetpack does similar for Writing options:

[okmttdhr]

I'm becoming a bit concerned that users have to switch back and forth between the Hosting dashboard and wp-admin. In the future, we should aim to separate them as much as possible (p9Jlb4-fpU-p2#comment-15039).
For now, it should be fine, as we plan to revisit this issue.

[matt-west]

Wasn't aware of this can you find the PR? / discussion?

I think it was discussed in Slack, but I can’t find the thread. It obviously wasn't implemented.

Link to it from wp-admin in some way

Playing devil’s advocate a bit here, but do we really need to do this?

We could add this type of contextual pointers to help people find where settings have moved to. Then remove them after a period of time.

I’m not sure we need to have a permanent link to the hosting settings from WP Admin though. There should be a link back to the hosting panel and then users can access server settings from there. Otherwise we still have the mess we have now where users see completely different UIs depending on which menu item they select.

[lsl]

Playing devil’s advocate a bit here, but do we really need to do this?

I guess not.

So, to close this issue we need to:

• Move Site Settings to SMP for classic and hold out users
• Hold out users have no link to it in wp-admin, classic users continue to see it in the hosting menu
• Request updates for support docs, e.g. https://wordpress.com/support/delete-site/, https://wordpress.com/support/transfer-a-site/ etc
• Happiness heads up

We could add this type of contextual pointers to help people find where settings have moved to. Then remove them after a period of time.

Let's try to avoid these if we can, per @okmttdhr's thinking above.

[okmttdhr]

Moved the discussion to "Untangling Settings: Approach for Moving Site Settings in SMP" pfYzsZ-1uU-p2