Since WordPress seems to be revamping the admin dashboard, I thought I’d throw in my fantasy requests.
Whether or not you like the current dashboard design, we can all agree on the following:
- It can be much prettier. Especially new webmasters deciding between WordPress vs other platforms (Shopify, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, etc).
- It can be more organized.
- It can be more useful.
Here’s what I would suggest…
1. Prettier
It can be cleaner, nicer, and especially more friendly to new users. It could definitely feel more modern.
- A little more white and black, and less gray. I don’t want them to remove the gray, just make it feel less gray.
- Many elements could just be cleaner. Fewer border lines so we don’t have an inception of divs/tables.
- Clean up that intro dashboard. Make it useful.
2. More organized
No doubt about it. WordPress needs to have better organization, not only for finding things but also to teach users how WordPress works. That side menu gets especially confusing when you add more plugins.
Sure, I know where to look for things because I’ve used WordPress for forever. But new or casual users don’t understand what things are what. And what relationships things have with other things.
Side tool bar suggestions:
- Post types – posts, pages, media, links, comments, CPTs, etc.
- Design – customizer, widgets, menus.
- Plugins – add, edit, also plugin settings/options go here. Allow users to re-organize items as they like.
- Settings – default WordPress settings here, can put WP default Tools here as well.
- Favorites – this area goes beneath settings. Users can add links here to whatever backend or settings page they like. Can be shortcut to plugin settings, design settings, post item edit, etc.
Top toolbar suggestions:
- Have visible icon link for both frontend and backend.
- Favorites – area for custom-chosen links as well.
3. More useful
Easier said than done. But if you make it prettier and more organized, that’s already half the battle.
The other half would be adding useful functions:
- Duplicate post – this definitely feels like a necessary core feature
- Trash – where we can see all trash items in one place, grouped by their post type.
- Server info – so developers can quickly see web server type, size of site and DB, PHP modules, memory limits, etc. Really useful stuff for diagnosis.
- Activity log – this needs to be a dashboard item. In case your site acts weird, you can see a list of the last 10-20 changes made. Might also make you keen to hacks.
- Notepad – some kind of simple bulletin board function so admins can leave notes for themselves or each other.
- I have so many more I can think up but not this second. Will add more really soon.
Thật tuyệt nếu phản hồi của bạn được gửi tới https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/08/10/admin-design-kickoff/
Hi Johnny,
I think you would like UiPress; https://uipress.co
Have been using this myself for quite some time and like all the options it offers.
Best regards,
Patrick Dankers
I’m aware of that plugin. I think it’s nice for a custom client panel. But I’m not willing to pay and setup for all my personal sites.
As usual, you are exactly on point. Especially about “being more useful”. Things like “duplicate post” should be in core for years.
I feel today it’s necessary to have an own plugin with a bunch of “hacks” and “tweaks”, just to make the backend a bit more useful. Or to keep other plugins from spamming everything with “premium/freemium” stuff.
But I hope, a new design doesn’t look like the proposals. It looks very boring and reminds me of so many other systems. Reminds me of Silverstripe, October CMS and so many others. It’s hard to think of a more generic backend design.
I agree with you.
There is a code snippet that you can use to add the ability to duplicate posts. I add it with the HFCM plugin.