Sometimes as a blogger, I get tired of the traditional feel and look of the Administration Panel, and the slow loading of the WordPress feeds drives me nuts. I’ve already tinkered with the Administration page before on more than one occasion, but recently, I’ve been trying two plugins that are pretty neat: DashBoard Editor (this post) and MyDashBoard (Thursday).
DashBoard Editor
The first is Dashboard Editor, which is a simple panel that adds a dashboard configuration switch under the Dashboard editor. Currently, I can’t get the website to load but you can try again later.
It’s very simple to operate. And, most importantly, it works in a non-destructive way, so you can simply disable the plugin, and everything’s back to normal.
At the top you will see a text area that you can type in. This text will appear in the dashboard. Formatting is very similar to the bb-code style of posts and pages. If you used to blog in WP1.0+, you will already be familiar with the switches.
Below that area are a number of check boxes, all of which are self explanatory. They will allow you to remove the feeds, incoming links, news and so on. Of course, you can simply clean everything and start from nothing. One of the neatest features is that you can use Plugins, too. If you look at the last switch entitled “Use Sidebar Widgets”, this will create a separate column under your Presentation >>> Widgets menu. Simply create, add or move any widgets you want to show up on the Admin panel.
There are some limitations that you may wish to consider:
1. There’s no obvious way to have a widget in two places, though, ie. in your Admin Sidebar as well as the general sidebar(s). Also, the Admin sidebar is only available to those who login.
2. If your blog has many users who can register and login, you may wish to think carefully about the information you enter. For example, putting passwords for your email account in there may not be the wisest thing to do! Currently, there is no way to change the Admin area for different levels of users.
Overall, it’s easy to implement, easy to use, and easy to remove. We are looking forward to the developer adding features in the future!