I bought your book when it first came out and have been very pleased with it.

Now I have a question concerning plugins and User Front ends.

The big trend over the past few years with"User Self-Registers" Themes (Directories, Jobs, Coupons, Real Estate portals, etc) is to strip away the User interaction with the core WP Admin dashboard and replace the User interface with Front End Forms.

So hundreds of commercial WP theme developers discard the WP Admin dashboard as a place to Register, Add, Modify & Delete listings or Posts for their Authors or other User roles.

I have a Real Estate theme that allows Users to Sign up and Register themselves. After that their Logins are conducted via a custom Front End form... this has been the big developer trend for a few years now, as you know.

But as far as I know ALL plugins can ONLY be Administered via the Wp Admin Dashboard in the core WordPress installation.

I have some plugins that have been written giving some OPTIONS to USERS, not just me as the Admin.

For instance, an Availability Calendar plugin that installs Options in the WP Admin dashboard specifically for all Post Authors. Just as the master Admin can set up many options in a plugin via the WP Admin dashboard, so can, in these plugins, an Individual Post Author see their own sub-set of Options .. such as defining a new Calendar, naming it, setting certain dates, and then adding it via shortcode to an individual listing that they "own".

But all of this necessary functionality in the WP Admin back end dashboard for a USER is nullified when the Real Estate theme re-directs the logged in user away from the core WP Admin dashboard and into the Custom Front End Admin form for the posts or listings.

Question: Is there a NEW WAY to write plugins that can Import all of the Options available in the WP Admin core Dashboard windows straight into any theme's Front End User form?

Is there a way to write a Plugin that has "back end" options and tabbed settings operating and savable in the themes/realestate101 path where the front end template resides but with all of the jquery, css, and Wordpress API functions that exist in pluggable.php, plugin.php, post.php, and functions.php?

Does anyone understand what I am asking?

Are plugins with User options forever destined to only work inside the core WP Admin dashboard?

Is there a way to present all the same options OUTSIDE of the WP Admin path, OUTSIDE of the core dashboard, INSIDE a Theme's Front End template?

Thanks for insight!