Beginner’s Guide to Customizing the WordPress Dashboard
One of the biggest draws of WordPress is the flexibility and the customization options that are available. You can change the appearance of your site to your liking with minimal effort. When it comes to modifying the frontend, there is no lack of options available. The backend, however, is often neglected in comparison. As a result, some might find themselves at a loss as to how to customize the WordPress dashboard.
Why customize your WordPress Dashboard?
Anyone who has a WordPress site would no doubt be familiar with the admin dashboard. It is more or less your headquarters from where you go on to create and manage content for your site. While it fulfills its functions and isn’t too hard on the eyes to look at, it can certainly be improved through customization. There are many reasons why you would want to customize your WordPress dashboard.
- Arrange things so that important things are easier to access.
- Add useful widgets and functions.
- Improve its appearance or to match the way it looks with the rest of your site.
- Represent your brand image in the back end through logos, brand colors, etc.
Using Screen Options
From your Dashboard, look for the ‘Screen Options’ button on the top right. If you click on it, a drop-down menu will appear, containing some checkboxes. You can see that each of those checkboxes corresponds to a widget that is already present in the dashboard. If you do not want to see a widget then simply uncheck its box by clicking on it. Similarly, you can make the widget reappear by clicking once more and checking the box.
It is also possible to change the position of the widgets in the dashboard. You can do it by dragging them by clicking their headings and releasing them once you drag them to the required place. If you play around with the positions of the widgets, you might find one that fits your liking
It is also possible to use the ‘Screen Options’ settings to customize the looks of other screens. You can adjust the number of items visible on one page, the type of view, the visible columns of information, etc. Adjusting these options to best fit one’s needs can make the backend feel better to use.
When you make the changes through this option, they are saved just for you and will not be visible to the other users. It becomes a problem if you are running a multi-author blog. Unfortunately, it won’t be effective if you want the customization to appear for other users as well. In order to customize further than this, you are going to have to install plugins. Fortunately, there is a large directory of easy to install plugins for WordPress. Some of these plugins might fit your requirements.
Using Plugins
Before we go any further, you’ll have to know what a plugin is. It is basically a tool designed to add certain functions or services to your WordPress site. Plugins can be very helpful for people who want to improve their site. For instance, imagine that you are running a site for your restaurant and want a clean and beautiful way to show your menu. You can simply install a plugin such as RestaurantPress which will allow you to do just that. It is very simple! If you are unsure as to how plugins are installed, we have a short guide that’ll be very helpful.
How to Install WordPress Plugins – Simple Guide for Beginners
There are many different plugins which you can install in order to customize your WordPress dashboard even further. A few of them are listed below.
Admin Menu Editor
Admin Menu Editor is a very useful plugin that allows you to edit the WordPress dashboard menu. Now you no longer have to hunt for the menu items you use regularly among the others. You can edit, reorder them, hide or change icons for menu titles to your heart’s content. Similarly, it also allows you to create new menus and submenus.
Absolutely Glamorous Custom Admin
Absolutely Glamorous Custom Admin is a plugin that lives up to its name. It gives you lots of customization options so that you can edit and change things as you want. This plugin allows you to use your own custom colors, images, and text to spice up your dashboard. Likewise, you can also modify the admin bar, admin menu, as well as the login page.
Aquila Admin Theme
Aquila Admin Theme is a beautiful looking plugin based on Material Design. It boasts a customizable color scheme, cleaner, and intuitive design, as well as impressive levels of customizations. In fact, you can even customize the login screen to use your own logo.
Concluding:
As you can see, customizing the WordPress dashboard is actually not that hard. Simply by changing the ‘Screen Options’ and installing some plugins, you can have a look and feel for your dashboard that suits you best. Feel free to let us know in the comment section what you thought of this tutorial.
If you want more informative tutorials about WordPress, please check out more our articles and guides.
- How To Back-Up Your WordPress Website? 3 Best WordPress BackUp Plugins for 2018!
- 8 Of the Best WordPress Plugins – Essential Plugins for Your First WordPress Site
- A Beginner’s Guide on How to Add WordPress Widgets
