Managing multiple sets of user settings from a single admin page

Throughout this chapter, you have learned how to create configuration pages to manage single sets of configuration options. In some cases, only being able to specify a single set of options will not be enough. For example, looking back at the Twitter Embed shortcode plugin that was created in the previous chapter, we might want to add some options to specify the number of tweets to display and the width of the Twitter feed. It would also be interesting to be able to create multiple configurations and select the one to use when placing the shortcode in a page or post, as shown in this shortcode example: [twitterfeed user_name="WordPress" option_id="2"].

While the first thought that might cross your mind to configure such a plugin is to create a multi-level menu item with submenus to store a number of different settings, this method would produce a very awkward interface for users to navigate. A better...