How to completely customize your WordPress dashboard for admin and users

Login page is the beginning for customization. Default WordPress login page has a prominent WordPress logo, input text areas, submit button and a link back to WordPress.org.

Kartik Jhakal
Kartik Jhakal
August 27, 2020
6 min read

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If you are using WordPress for your blog, website, forum and e-commerce needs, then customizing WordPress admin dashboard is an essential element.

Customizing WordPress dashboard has few reasons behind it.

  • Customize it for a client before handing it to the client.
  • Ease of access to different elements of the dashboard; increase productivity.
  • Customizing it to get the feel of a customized website.
  • Customize it for different user roles.
  • Complete Personalization.

Customizing the admin dashboard lets you personalize it, and thus improve the experience for both you and your clients. For example, you can simplify the dashboard so it’s easier to use. In addition, eliminating points of confusion for them can help you increase your own productivity.

If you have put your hard work in developing a WordPress website, then applying a little bit of more effort will only add to your benefit.


How to customize WordPress admin

Customizing WordPress dashboard will require plugins to completely transform WordPress dashboard to a new white labeled dashboard. Dashboard customizer plugin and White Labeling will make the dashboard look fully customizable.

1- Login Customizer - Add Logo, Background image

Login page is the beginning for customization. Default WordPress login page has a prominent WordPress logo, input text areas, submit button and a link back to WordPress.org.

LoginPress is a convenient login page plugin for WordPress which allows you to customize the style of the layout to the very last detail. Meaning, from colors and images to texts an other whatnot, all is waiting your creative touch. Add a logo, create an enticing background an specify the exact error message that you would like to show your users.

Instead of featuring a boring login page, the web design can now fully follow your branding regulations. It will feel like the page is custom-made from scratch. Yes, that powerful and modifiable LoginPress is.

On top of that, any changes you make, you can preview instantly. This process ensures a quick creation while still reaching the same professional levels. Last but not least, the design will also be 100% responsive, compatible with web browsers and high performing. No slowing down of your website’s loading speed.

Features

  • Logo: Can change the login logo {image, width, height, padding, URL and Title}.
  • Background: You can customize background Image or Color. Set its position, Size and repeatable property.
  • Login Form: Even you can customize the login form {image or color, width, height, padding and border}. More over customize Input Text Field {width, margin, text color, label color and background color}.
  • Forget Form: Beauty of the plugin here you can change the background or color of the forget form.
  • Button: You can set the color of your button WYSIWYG.
  • Error Messages: Main Feature of the plugin. You can change the error log messages as you want to show users form LoginPress → Error Messages.
  • Welcome Messages: Same as error log messages you can customize the welcome messages from LoginPress → Welcome Messages.
  • Form Footer: After the login Button, here is form footer. You can customize the footer {text, display, text decoration, text color, text hover color and text size}. In this section you can also customize the page footer text.

2- Admin Theme- Customizes WordPress dashboard and creating a complete white labeled dashboard

Just like WordPress theme, admin theme customizes WordPress dashboard,  creating a complete white labeled dashboard. By customizing dashboard you can arrange your admin area for improved productivity; rearranging and omitting elements which are less or never used.

WPShapere is a complete WordPress admin dashboard theme that lets you customize the entire look of default WordPress admin theme to a customized white labeled theme.

It offers following prominent features:

  • Unlimited color options + 16 pre-made Pro themes.
  • White Label Branding.
  • Hide, rename and sort admin menu items.
  • Privilege Users who can access to all menu items.
  • Manage and Create custom dashboard widgets.
  • Hide unwanted widgets from dashboard.
  • Manage Admin Bar elements.
  • Ability to add custom links to the admin bar.
  • White Label Emails.
  • Multi-site Network Support — Global option/Individual blog option.
  • Add custom css styles for login and admin pages.

You can make all of these tweaks without any coding efforts. Unfortunately, it is not available for free and you can buy it on codecanyon.

As an alternative to it, you can use White Label CMS, which is free and offer some similar features. Some features are:

  • Add a custom logo to the header, footer, and login page.
  • Add custom dashboard widgets.
  • Rearrange menu items and/or hide them from certain user roles.
  • Display different dashboard profiles for users with different roles.

3- User Roles- Assign and limit the access of users

Assigning power and access to different user groups is another challenge. Users should see those elements which they have access to.

Adminimize is one of such plugins which is used to hide items based on user roles. It cleanup the mess in admin menu efficiently and supports multi-author websites. Its features include:

  • Activate/Deactivate every part of menu and sub-menu.
  • Meta fields can be administered separately for posts and pages.
  • Certain parts of the write menu can be deactivated for admins and users.

The header of the back-end can be minimized and optimized per user.

4- Custom Columns- **Organize, **find** and **update**** WordPress content in seconds with Admin Columns.

Custom columns let**s** you add custom columns to page/post listings and more. There are 120+ columns to choose from to display in posts and page dashboard menu. This plugin displays various columns like featured image column etc with sorting feature.

It works with all content types and can integrate with lots of plugins, including Advanced Custom Fields and WooCommerce.

Features

  • Display relevant content
  • Sort and Filter content
  • Find content quickly
  • Edit content directly
  • Bulk Edit content directly
  • Export content

**5- Minimalist Dashboard- **Hide all default dashboard widgets and add a custom one that show a quick access

For those websites where customization isn’t much needed a minimalistic dashboard can prove to be a time saver. The WordPress dashboard can get a little cluttered. Custom Dashboard Widgets helps less serve some of only required dashboard elements by allowing you to replace all the standard home page widgets with simpler versions. Consisting of an icon and label beneath, each widget can be displayed or hidden based on a user’s role. You can also add your own custom links as well

**6- User Edit History- **Simple History shows recent changes made within WordPress

It is a plus point to have live track of changes done by users. Simple History is a plugin which adds a widget to the dashboard home page that shows which users recently added or updated posts when a widget has been added or removed or even uploaded an image to the Media Gallery. It can track changes on

  • Posts and pages
  • See who added, updated or deleted a post or page
  • Attachments
  • See who added, updated or deleted an attachment
  • Taxonomies (Custom taxonomies, categories, tags)
  • See who added, updated or deleted an taxonomy
  • Comments
  • see who edited, approved or removed a comment
  • Widgets
  • Get info when someone adds, updates or removes a widget in a sidebar
  • Plugins
  • Activation and deactivation
  • User profiles
  • Info about added, updated or removed users
  • User logins
  • See when a user login & logout. Also see when a user fails to login (good way to catch brute-force login attempts).
  • Failed user logins
  • See when someone has tried to log in, but failed. The log will then include ip address of the possible hacker.
  • Menu edits
  • Option screens
  • View details about changes made in the different settings sections of WordPress. Things like changes to the site title and the permalink structure will be logged.

These admin customizations can be implemented individually and according to need. Some plugins can transform whole admin dashboard into a customized dashboard and some can add specific functionalities.

Wrapping Up Things

If you are creating sites for your clients then you should definitely consider white labeling and if you have your own website then consider customizing your dashboard according to elements which are used on regular basis like daily sale report or add post; it increases efficiency and productivity.

If you have any suggestions or doubt, do comment below and get a conversation kicking.


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What is Social9?

Welcome! Social9 is a one-stop-shop platform to drive more traffic and increase audience engagement by leveraging the power of social media.

Social9 provides free tools such as Social sharing plugin, Cloud Commenting tool, URL shortener, and Twitter post scheduler(Beta) that helps you in growth of your website.

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Kartik Jhakal

Kartik Jhakal

Product Manager Social9.com

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