Time For Some Dashboard Customization in WordPress

Have you ever been in your car and looked at the big dial that shows you the RPM’s, thinking that you really don’t care about that. Wishing something else there—maybe a large clock or a picture of your kids?

When you first opened up your dashboard in WordPress, you might have had the same thought.

Maybe you’ve been thinking that the latest plugins or WordPress news just clutters the screen. What you may not know is that you can customize your dashboard,—or, better yet—declutter it.”

Here are five ways to customize the look of your dashboard:

1. Sidebar Menu –  In 3.2, they have made this even more obvious. You can easily collapse the side menu to just icons by clicking at the bottom of the menus. Before this version,  you had to remember what each icon was. Now by mousing over the icon you get a nice drop down menu.

2. Drag and Drop – On every page you can drag and drop each box to reorganize the layout to better fit your needs.

3. Screen Options – On every page, you have a tab that is called screen options. If you click on it, you will find a list of everything on that page and how you can hide any unused features. Also, on pages and posts, you can control how many you want listed per page. Some pages give you the option of choosing the number of columns. This is a great way to make your ‘edit post or page’ box bigger horizontally.

4. Admin Bar – You get to decide whether you want the admin bar to show when you are in the dashboard or when logged in and viewing your site. Go to your user profile, and choose where it says “show admin bar.”

5. Resizing your post or page edit box – There are two options. To keep it at a certain size all the time, go to your Settings > Writing and choose the number of lines you want for the size of your post box. Also, when you are doing a post or page, you can go to the bottom right-hand corner of your edit box, grab the ridged corner and drag it to resize.

There they are: 5 ways to take control of your dashboard and make it work better for you.

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net