"How to Customize the WordPress Admin Area for Your Client and Yourself" - Presentation for Vancouver WordPress MeetUp on 30-10-17

1. How to Customize the WordPress Admin
Area for Your Client and Yourself
Parandis Saheli
TWD16 GRADUATES
@parandis-t-saheli
@parandists
Christel Chan
@christelchan
@christeldesign

2. Introduction
What is the issue?
● WordPress Dashboard has lots of unnecessary items that we don’t use
What can we do?
● Customizing the WordPress Dashboard to make it more user-friendly for
yourself and your client, including:
○ Removing, and adding your own Dashboard Widgets;
○ Renaming and reordering the Dashboard navigation menu items;
○ Removing the toolbar/admin bar items
How can we fix it?
● Adding code in the back-end in functions.php, or use plugins

3. Before

4. After

5. Dashboard Widgets
● WordPress comes with default
widgets on the dashboard:
○ Welcome
○ At a Glance
○ Activity
○ Quick Draft
○ WordPress Events and News
● Some plugins will add
metaboxes on the dashboard
○ e.g. Yoast
● Looks cluttered and can
confuse clients

6. Remove widgets for relevant users
Remove Widgets for Relevant Users | Gist

7. Remove widgets globally
Remove Widgets Globally | Gist

8. Inspect the metabox you want to remove to find the ID name you should target in your function

9. Remove welcome panel
Remove Welcome Panel | Gist

10. Custom Dashboard Widget
● After clearing the default
dashboard, you can add your
own custom widget
○ E.g. tutorials for your client or
custom welcome screen
Custom Dashboard Widget | Gist

11. Renaming Dashboard
Navigation
● A nice touch to customize some
menu items for your client
○ E.g. Media -> Gallery
● WordPress menu is an array
○ To target the right menu item, you
need to find it’s index number in the
array (see gist or WP
stackexchange answer)
Rename Dashboard Menu Item | Gist
WP StackExchange Answer to Print Menu Array

12. Remove Dashboard Navigation Menu Items
● You don’t need to use every menu item, for example:
○ If your website doesn’t have a blog, you probably don’t need ‘Posts’
○ If you are developing a custom theme for your client, you might not want them to change the
Themes, Header or Background under ‘Appearance’
○ No one should touch the dashboard code editor!
● WordPress has core functions remove_menu_page and
remove_submenu_page for most of the menu items, but for some of them,
e.g. customizer, header, or background, you need to delete the relevant code
from functions.php
Remove Dashboard Menu Items | Gist

13. Reordering Dashboard
Navigation Menu Items
● Can make navigation more
user-friendly by putting the most
important menu items at the top
○ E.g. In our website for Maximus
Hair Studio, we moved Hair
Services and Beauty Services
higher
● Use code to return array in the
order you want
Reorder Dashboard Menu Items |
Gist

14. Remove Admin Bar Items
● If you’ve developed a custom
theme for your client, you probably
don’t need any of the toolbar links,
except the one to the live
site/dashboard
● Inspect the <li> element of the item
you want to remove, and use its ID
name without the prefix
“wp-admin-bar” to target it
Remove Admin Bar Items | Gist

15. Plugins
● If you prefer not to touch the code, here are some articles and plugins you can
explore
○ http://www.wpsuperstars.net/organize-wordpress/
■ https://wordpress.org/plugins/admin-menu-editor/
■ https://wordpress.org/plugins/hierarchy/
■ https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-admin-ui-customize/
■ https://wordpress.org/plugins/enhanced-media-library/
○ https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/adminimize/
○ https://wordpress.org/plugins/admin-menu-editor/
○ https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/useful-admin-tools/

16. Admin Themes
● You can also install admin themes to give your admin area a customized look
and feel
○ https://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_Admin_Themes
○ https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/admin-themes/

18. Thank you! :)