I am a big fan of customisation this isn’t a new thing and I have gone all in on SureMail as my SMTP plugin of choice for numerous reasons. I have created tools to make it more useful to me, including Suremail Notify and my own MainWP integration, allowing me to control it from my MainWP dashboard, and also test email delivery for individual sites, and I am still working on bulk control within MainWP
There have been a few changes to the overall plugin, and I’ve not been in love with them, but I have found ways around them. My understanding is that an option to move the menu back natively will be coming soon, but I thought I would still publish this article.
Sub Menu to Main Menu
Recently, they pulled it out of the shadows of the settings menu and gave it its own top-level menu item. I am not a fan of this and have written a tiny function to pull it back to the settings page, where I think it naturally belongs on most of my sites I understand the idea for new users but for me settings is where this belongs.
<?php
// Move SureMail from top-level to Settings
add_action( 'admin_menu', function () {
remove_menu_page( 'suremail' );
// Add SureMail under Settings
add_options_page(
'SureMail', // Page title
'SureMail', // Menu title
'manage_options', // Capability
'suremail', // Slug (from ?page=suremail)
null // Use original callback
);
}, 999 );
Onboarding Screen
SureMail has this onboarding screen, but it’s of no use to me in part due to the fact that the configuration of most of my sites is automatically done using my config script, and when I deploy, this is again updated via a script.
The good news is evaulating the code there is a filter to prevent this from running which is now in my utility plugin.
add_filter( 'suremails_enable_redirect_activation', 'nu_disable_suremails_activation_redirect' );
function nu_disable_suremails_activation_redirect( $do_redirect ) {
// Always disable the activation redirect.
return false;
}Branding
This is a free plugin and branding is to be expected, but as an end user, I absolutely hate it. I always have clean and neat and defined is what I like, and in fact, it’s one of the reasons I’ve picked the Sure products. They just look good and clean, its also one of the reasons I love WordPress the GPL and the ability to modify
I have this issue with all there free variates though they are branding heavy and its the same with suremail, but I have also fixed this with a little custom code in my debrand snippet.
/**
* Hide SureMail branded dashboard sections and links
* - Extend Your Website
* - Quick Access
* - Notifications link
*/
function hide_custom_admin_sections_suremail() {
echo '<style>
/* ==============================================
SureMail – Admin UI Cleanup
============================================== */
/* === Hide "Extend Your Website" promo grid === */
.wp-admin .flex.flex-col.p-3.rounded-xl.border-0\.5.border-solid.border-border-subtle.gap-1 {
display: none !important;
}
/* === Hide "Quick Access" block === */
.wp-admin .flex.flex-col.p-3.rounded-xl.border-0\.5.border-solid.border-border-subtle.gap-2.shadow-sm {
display: none !important;
}
/* === Hide "Notifications" link in admin header === */
a[href="#/notifications"][data-discover="true"],
a.inline-block.relative.h-full[href="#/notifications"] {
display: none !important;
}
/* --- Optional fallback hiding inner content if wrapper classes change --- */
.wp-admin .bg-field-primary-background,
.wp-admin .shadow-soft-shadow-inner.bg-background-primary {
display: none !important;
}
</style>';
}
add_action( 'admin_head', 'hide_custom_admin_sections_suremail' );
Once I run this I have a much cleaner experience
