Drupal 7: Hide Sticky and Promote

Promoted to front page? Don't worry about that, we don't use it.

That was the phrase I heard from a developer on the first site I was tasked to theme. I had asked what the "Promoted to front page" check box on the admin screen of a content type was what put it in the queue on the home page. 

It turns out that most every home page our agency ever built in Drupal had more complex requirements than that sole checkbox allowed for. 

The same goes for Sticky at top of lists. No one ever uses those, just ignore them.

What makes sense for a developer to ignore, can cause confusion for an administrative user.  The admin doesn't know all of the hard work that went into the Panel that drives the home page, or the view that creates the pane for the home page.  They just see a simple checkbox.  And when that checkbox doesn't do what it says it does, the site seems "broken".

So, I started searching, and found a great post discussing this problem, and a great solution from user StudioZut, who has created a custom module called "Hide Sticky and Promote" as a Drupal Sandbox and a Github Repository.

The Hide Sticky and Promote module simply hides the two checkboxes from the user.  It does not remove the code or database settings for existing content.  If you ever need the functionality back, you can just uninstall the module.

While the Hide Sticky and Promote module is enabled, you will be providing your admin users a much cleaner UI for them to work in.