It’s not an uncommon situation to have a WordPress-based web site managed by a professional programmer for an end-user who doesn’t have any interest in having access to the administrative functions; usually, it’s a straight choice by the programmer to keep the end-user away from reaching the sensitive administrative section, in order to avoid risks potentially catastrophic for the entire web site: the end-user account is set to “editor” level, leaving him free to manage his blog with no chance to access the delicate admin features.
Among the many different gadgets WordPress sports, the dashboard is usually considered all but an administrative tool: here you can always find the system status, the current posts situation, and a good amount of news about WordPress itself, its development status, its plugin modules, and so on. All these things are “daily bread” for a skilled programmer, but not for an user just interested in running his blog about the latest news in the haute couture world, knowing less than nothing about the amazing universe of computer programming.
So, how can a good administrator simplify the original dashboard, in order to cut all those unuseful stuff away and let the end user see only what he want to see?
Just use the nice WordPress Dashboard Editor, of course!
This plugin is currently intended for WordPress 2.5.x, but it also works in WordPress 2.1 – 2.3 and can work in WordPress 2.0.x too if you use the “Completely Wipe Dashboard” option (perhaps an extreme option, I suppose; why don’t you just upgrade your WordPress?).
After the usual installation steps and the usual activation procedure, you see a new item in the dashboard menu: “Dashboard Management”. Through this new feature it’s possible to gain access to a detailed customization of the dashboard’s look, by managing the “Right Now” section with the choice to hide the whole section or just its sub-sections (”You Have” and “You Are”).
The same is for the dashboard’s widget section, where you can select every single part to be hidden or not.
But there’s more: you can enable sidebar’s widgets to be included in the dashboard, thus having a very detailed and useful view of the overall web site situation, especially for the editor-level user.
And there’s more again: you can further customize sidebar’s widget by adding HTML snippets, in order to bend the appearance to your actual needs.
All in all, WordPress Dashboard Editor can be considered as a “must have” plugin, and if you’re a professional consultant involved in setting up blogs for third party users you’re going to love this amazing little WordPress add-on.
Having too many plugins will slow down your WordPress blog and is also a major source for attacks.
I would prefer directly editing the WordPress files than use a plugin. If you are a PHP programmer, editing the files is the best option.
Great info,
Its so funny too because I was looking for this type of plug in today for a client of mine. I need to have additional access information for but don’t want to have them have such limited access. Thanks for this plug in idea.
In the article a huge thank you all for the cause, a lot of people are using
Hm that sounds good but I would like to know more details.
That’s good man, keep it going.
Good information to me.
Stunning blog and good article. High 5 for u man !