Prevent custom taxonomy from being added to admin menu?

Question

I have several custom post types, which share two custom taxonomies (location and service). The custom taxonomies show up in each post type menu, and it just seems a little redundant. My client isn't going to need to edit those taxonomies, so I think it will just confuse them to see it repeated in every menu.

Is there a way to remove it from the admin menu for all but one of the post types, while still keeping it registered for all the post types? I know there are plugins to hide admin menu items, but I was wondering if I could just add something when I registered the custom taxonomy to prevent it?

Here's a sample of my taxonomy code:

// create custom taxonomy
function my_taxonomies() {

// location
    $labels = array(
        'name'              => _x( 'Location Category', 'taxonomy general name' ),
        'singular_name'     => _x( 'Location Category', 'taxonomy singular name' ),
        'search_items'      => __( 'Search Location Categories' ),
        'all_items'         => __( 'All Location Categories' ),
        'parent_item'       => __( 'Parent Location Category' ),
        'parent_item_colon' => __( 'Parent Location Category:' ),
        'edit_item'         => __( 'Edit Location Category' ), 
        'update_item'       => __( 'Update Location Category' ),
        'add_new_item'      => __( 'Add New Location Category' ),
        'new_item_name'     => __( 'New Location Category' ),
        'menu_name'         => __( 'Location Categories' ),
    );
    $args = array(
        'labels' => $labels,
        'hierarchical' => true,
        'show_ui'           => true,
        'show_admin_column' => true,
    );
    register_taxonomy( 'location', array( 'services','community','facilities','testimonials'), $args );

Answer 1

You can use the remove_submenu_page function after registering the taxonomy.

This is how it works by default, it has 2 required parameters, the $menu_slug (these are the parent menus e.g. posts, media, pages, comments and so on), and the $submenu_slug (these are the children of those menus) which is what you're removing because your custom taxonomy will appear under posts or your custom post type:

<?php remove_submenu_page( $menu_slug, $submenu_slug ); ?>

If you're not sure what your $menu_slug is, check the remove_menu_page examples to see what you'd put in the first parameter. In your case, since it's under posts or your custom post type, it'll be edit.php.

For the second parameter, $submenu_slug, what I did was after registering the taxonomy I inspected the menu item with my browser inspector to see that the link of the menu item was to edit-tags.php?taxonomy=location.

So with your custom taxonomy 'location', you would write something like this:

add_action( 'admin_menu', 'remove_custom_tax_wp_menu', 999 );

function remove_custom_tax_wp_menu() {
  $page = remove_submenu_page( 'edit.php', 'edit-tags.php?taxonomy=location' );
  /* See reference: http://codex.wordpress.org/remove_submenu_page#Examples */
}

It should only affect the dashboard sidebar and not the metabox within your custom post types. Hope it helps!