Hide the content editor for certain pages in WordPress

hide-editor.php

<?php

/**
 * Hide editor on specific pages.
 *
 */
add_action( 'admin_init', 'hide_editor' );

function hide_editor() {
  // Get the Post ID.
  $post_id = $_GET['post'] ? $_GET['post'] : $_POST['post_ID'] ;
  if( !isset( $post_id ) ) return;

  // Hide the editor on the page titled 'Homepage'
  $homepgname = get_the_title($post_id);
  if($homepgname == 'Homepage'){ 
    remove_post_type_support('page', 'editor');
  }

  // Hide the editor on a page with a specific page template
  // Get the name of the Page Template file.
  $template_file = get_post_meta($post_id, '_wp_page_template', true);

  if($template_file == 'my-page-template.php'){ // the filename of the page template
    remove_post_type_support('page', 'editor');
  }
}

big up, many thanks. this works great.

Hi Ramsey,
I just had debug on and noticed the above code returns php errors, because the admin_init hook is too early - it needs to be on admin_head. Also, the post object is not attainable outside the edit page, so i added a conditional to check for that.

If you modify the top of your function it resolves the errors.

for reference [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8463126/how-to-get-post-id-in-wordpress-admin]
Thanks again for the code.

add_action( 'admin_head', 'hide_editor' );

function hide_editor() {
    global $pagenow;
    if( !( 'post.php' == $pagenow ) ) return;

    global $post;
    // Get the Post ID.
    $post_id = $_GET['post'] ? $_GET['post'] : $_POST['post_ID'] ;
    if( !isset( $post_id ) ) return;
    ...

@nimmolo you rock man, Ramsey's code is in like 8 google hits and only you were diligent enough to catch the debug error and had the fix. Wish you could push this to everyone! 👍

thanks, really useful!

Nice & thank you :) I forked your gist giving it some the functionality to define the page-title and page-templates other than directly in the function: https://gist.github.com/atomtigerzoo/0dd49ed9ca67ec111465

A cleaner way to get the template file (without relying on global variables and custom get_post_meta calls) is using get_page_template() which will return the full path that you can then filter to only get the php file:

$template_file = substr( get_page_template(), strrpos( get_page_template(), '/' ) + 1 );

thanks both of you - just stuck this in my child-theme functions.php (with admin_head) and it did just what i wanted it to. awesome.

@nimmolo is correct here that the admin_init hook is too early. Not only because of the errors but certain metaboxes will not get removed. The preferred hook is actually do_meta_boxes, but admin_head or admin_menu would probably work as well.

This worked perfectly for me. Thank you ramseyp!

Thanks. Very awesome.

Hello, thanks, this works perfectly. However, I was unable to disable the editor also on the translated pages in my admin. I use polylang plugin in order to translate my pages. The editor is disabled on the original page, but it is abled on the pages I use for traductions.
Could you please help me in hiding the editor on all pages ?
Thanks

possibly a cleaner way still to get the name of the template file:

$template_file = basename( get_page_template() );

Thanks bro, really useful 👍

Thanks to both of you, really helped me too.

Thanks! This seemed to work well for me, from the combined comments above:

add_action( 'admin_head', 'hide_editor' );
function hide_editor() {
	$template_file = $template_file = basename( get_page_template() );
	if($template_file == 'template.php'){ // template
		remove_post_type_support('page', 'editor');
	}
}

It seems simpler, and I have not seen any issues.

@jordanboston you have written $template file twice on line 3:

$template_file = $template_file = basename( get_page_template() );

Is there a way to move it below other fields on the page? I'm using Advanced Custom Fields and would like to move the default content area below the ACF fields.

Very helpful!

@jordanboston - that worked perfectly - thank you.

Thanks to @ramseyp, @jordanboston and @WebAssembler - works great.

Thanks bro!

Nice one thanks! I needed to add remove_post_type_support('post', 'editor'); to remove from posts also FYI.

Make sure you check to see if you're on the right admin screen by using get_current_screen().

What if the template files are in a folder like:

page-sections/page-hero-banner.php

I tried this to no avail:

/**
 * Hide editor on specific pages.
 *
 */
add_action( 'admin_init', 'hide_editor' );
function hide_editor() {
  // Get the Post ID.
  $post_id = $_GET['post'] ? $_GET['post'] : $_POST['post_ID'] ;
  if( !isset( $post_id ) ) return;

  // Hide the editor on a page with a specific page template
  // Get the name of the Page Template file.
  $template_file = get_post_meta($post_id, '_wp_page_template', true);

  
  if($template_file == 'page-section/page-event-feature.php'){ // the filename of the page template
    remove_post_type_support('page', 'editor');
  }
}

Very helpful. Thanks so much!