How to go about modifying the Wordpress “Pages Add New Screen”

Question

I have been thinking about developing my own theme framework for worpdress. I\'d like to use jquery ui to build a bootstrap 3.0 drag and drop interface, which I already have

Answer 1

Instead of messing with the core files of wordpress (which would be a really bad idea) I would suggest making a custom field/sidebar or a menu page to use the drag/drop function to make a page or post.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Custom_Fields

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_menu_page

If you want some examples on how others have done something similar (as a plugin) you could look at the code from others and see if you can use similar techniques to add additional fields within the screen options.

http://simple-fields.com/

http://www.advancedcustomfields.com/

Answer 2

We add a Custom Meta Box and do our thing inside it.

There are some hooks that are not Meta Boxes and we can use to insert content into that admin page:

add_action( 'edit_form_top', function( $post ) 
{
    echo '<h1 style="color:red">edit_form_top</h1>';
});

add_action( 'edit_form_after_title', function( $post ) 
{
    echo '<h1 style="color:red">edit_form_after_title</h1>';
});

add_action( 'edit_form_after_editor', function( $post ) 
{
    echo '<h1 style="color:red">edit_form_after_editor</h1>';
});

add_action( 'edit_page_form', function( $post ) 
{
    // edit_page_form is ONLY for pages, the other is for the rest of post types
    echo '<h1 style="color:red">edit_page_form/edit_form_advanced</h1>';
});

add_action( 'dbx_post_sidebar', function( $post ) 
{
    echo '<h1 style="color:red">dbx_post_sidebar</h1>';
});

The widget_text block belongs to Advanced Custom Fields (it's a repeatable/sortable field). I'm not sure anymore, but I think it removes the Meta Box borders with CSS or jQuery.