WordPress 2.9 introduced compete new functionality – Trash. By default it is not possible to directly delete posts, pages and comments – you have to move them to Trash first, and then delete them. This is of course helpful for novice users, but for advanced ones this is only an obstacle.

It is possible to disable Trash completely (by defining EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS to 0 in your wp-config.php file, but there is no way to have both Trash enabled and be able to delete without moving to Trash at the same time.

Another change done in WordPress 2.9 is removal of all ‘Are you sure?’ dialogs. For trashing posts/pages/comments it is fine (although many users may expect to confirm this, like in MS Windows). Unfortunately there is no confirmation dialog when you remove trashed item completely, so you have to be more careful than before when you click somewhere.

In order to resolve above issues, I wrote Trash Manager plugin. It adds ‘Delete Permanently’ link to post, page and comments list, so you can delete them directly without moving them to Trash first. It also restores ‘Are you sure?’ dialogs, so you do not have to take extra care when you click.

Available translations:

• English
• Polish (pl_PL) – done by me
• Dutch (nl_NL) – thanks Rene
• Japanese (ja_JP) – thanks Fumito Mizuno
• Belorussian (be_BY) – thanks Marcis G.

Changelog