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If you are a regular user of WordPress like me then you might get bored of the default user interface of WordPress. Although the User Interface of WordPress is good but there is always room for improvement. Automattic the company behind WordPress has decided to go for Open Source Design Contests to make the User Interface of WordPress even better.
Are you ready to give it a try?
Default WordPress Dashboard
In the article we will take a look on some awesome plugins that can alternate the user interface of WordPress to make it more users friendly.
Admin Drop down Menu is one of the best WordPress plugins to change the default user interface of WordPress admin area. The plugin replaces all the admin links with super charged and beautiful horizontal CSS drop down menu. The plugin also saves you from unnecessary clicks to expand the menu and enhances your productivity.
The plugin comes with a comprehensive options page. You can change the color schemes of drop down menu and to make the plugin faster, you can also disable the supported icons for each admin link.
An interesting feature is compact mode which only shows icons for top links and saves space in the drop down menu. The following screen shot elaborates this feature.
Give your WordPress an attractive look with Fluency Admin. The plugin replaces all the admin links with splendid vertical CSS drop down menu. Fluency also adds support of Keyboard shortcuts to your admin links hence enables you to control your WordPress with keyboard only. You can switch between full menu view and icon-only view to save the space of your dashboard area with a single click.
Fluency comes bundled with login page theme too which can be enabled from plugin options panel. For custom branding you can also use your own logo at the top of dashboard area and login theme.
The default WordPress installation comes with two color schemes, grey and blue. This plugin adds two more color schemes for your admin panel. Moreover it also grants you to create your own color schemes. You can also export your custom color scheme to use it on other blogs. Depending upon the settings, each user can have its own customized color scheme. Have a look at the Green color scheme and the plugin’s option panel.
Qwerty Admin Panel Theme is a nice looking Admin Panel theme. The permits you to style the admin panel and login screen for all users. The WordPress logos can be swapped the with your own logo images for custom branding.
A distinct feature of this plugin is ”
” capability that helps you in hiding different admin panels from different users of your WordPress installation.
Qwerty Login theme
This simple plugin will be saving you time by creating quick and easy to use pop menus for your WP-Admin sidebar. Popup menus uses jQuery and CSS to popup animated admin-sidebar links. Moreover it makes the admin sidebar sticking with scrollable page that makes it a real time saver with the help of jQuery.
Adminimize is a very comprehensive and advanced WordPress plugin that comes with a lot of features to customize your WordPress backend. The plugin has a lot of options to hide unnecessary items from the WordPress administration menu, submenu and even the ‘Dashboard’, with forwarding to the Manage-page. The plugin has more than 50 options to tweak the backend of your WordPress installation. The following screenshot shows the admin option panel of Adminimize.
Customizing your WordPress login page can’t be easier than this. Simply install this plugin and with the help of my brand option page you can select the background color or background image for your WordPress login page. You can also upload the custom logo for your login page with the help of my brand. The plugin is very useful for multi-author blogs and user contributed websites.
My Brand Options Panel
If you know more beautiful WordPress dashboard themes or ways to customize the admin panel of WordPress please share them with us.
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Saad Bassi is a 20 years old web developer from Pakistan who loves to create beautiful websites with great user experience. He is co-editor at CrispyTech and 1stWebDesigner and blogs about the next Windows at Windows8Geek. He also loves to make new friends so don't forget to say him a hello on Twitter. Last but not least, make sure that you check out my latest project, Addictive Fonts which focuses on free high quality font downloads.
Sunday, March 11th, 2012 08:40
My blog dashboard look cool with these plugins ;) Nice plugin list to customize the dashboard
Friday, February 17th, 2012 05:12
Hi,
I came to this post while searching something else, and hopefully that anyone could help me out.
I want to creat a custom “Add new post” page for WP?
To make it clear, let’s say that I’m an admin.. I want to make a page that allows authors to add new post, from an external page, without needing to go to the dashboard..
I guess it has something to do with “post.php” function, but i don’t know where to start or how to do it.
Friday, February 17th, 2012 07:01
I’m not sure what you mean by custom add new post..but you can post on WordPress without logging in on the dashboard by using an email. Here’s more info: http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_to_your_blog_using_email
Sunday, January 1st, 2012 20:36
I want to add plugins to my site. But my dashboard does not contain any plugin options as you show in above pics.
So, how should i get the plugin option BELOW APPEARANCE.
PLEASE HELP ME..
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 01:05
Good Post. I am using Fluency Admin 3.2. Its awesome, but if you have lots of plugin in settings, then it may cause little bit problem..
Sunday, September 18th, 2011 15:35
Great plugins. Thanks very much for sharing. I’m using Fluency Admin 2.2 ant it’s very cool.
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Brow
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 00:51
Good post. I’ve recently started using WP and am looking for ways to tweak the admin…this will help!
Robert
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 09:04
Very nice collection. I’m going to have to give it a try.
Thanks!
Yan Charbonneau
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 19:03
Nice post! Useful when you sell WP as CMS!
اسعار الذهب
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 15:50
thanks alot
i realy love wordpress
it is my best cms
wparena
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 13:38
these are good plugins