Re-Thinking The WordPress Admin, A New Concept Dashboard Design

I’ve been thinking a lot about the WordPress admin lately. I think there’s a lot of room for improvement.

The WordPress team has done a great job improving the admin design over the years, but we still have a long way to go.

I deal with customers almost every day who tell me how difficult WordPress is to use. As designers/developers, sometimes we forget what it’s like to look at WordPress with virgin eyes.

For most non-developers, the first feeling is overwhelm. Confusion. Panic!

Even as an experienced WordPress user, I am getting tired of looking at all the excess (dare I say clutter?) in the admin. So I decided to do a mockup of what I want the admin area to look like.

Not really for anyone else, not thinking of how difficult it would be to implement, just sort of a dream.

Here’s what I came up with.

Read More

Choose a design for our next theme, get it free!

Update: Voting is now closed. Design #3 is the clear winner so that is the theme we will be developing next! Thanks to all the people who voted and left comments! We will announce the winners in due course who will get a FREE copy of the new theme.

Can I get your opinion?

I created a few designs for our next theme, and I’d like to know which one you like best.

As a thank you for your time, I’d like to give you a chance to win a free version of the theme just for voting.
Read More

How to Simplify the WordPress Admin for Your Clients

The WordPress admin dashboard can be a scary thing for first-time users.

When we develop sites for clients, sometimes it makes sense to remove some of the UI items they don’t need in the admin area to make it less intimidating. We used many of these admin customizations with WordPress Multisite (or WPMU), to make our customer’s sites more user-friendly. (The code in this article works with normal WP and multisite)

There are basically 3 things you can do easily to start:

1. Remove some admin menus and sub menus
2. Remove some default widgets
3. Simplify dashboard and post/page list screens

Here are some tips and tricks for customizing the WordPress admin by adding code to your child theme’s functions.php file.

Read More

New theme: Façade

We are excited to announce our newest theme, Façade!

Façade is a minimal, modern theme, packed with features to make your business look amazing. Showcase your products and portfolios, and make your site look clean and modern.

The best part about Facade is that you can customize every color in the theme with no coding. We’ve stacked the theme customizer so you can change the background image, any color, add your logo, and even change fonts with a couple clicks. Check out this video for a demo:

View a live demo, get pricing information and more details here: http://www.presscoders.com/facade/

Cheers!

10 Things I Hate About WordPress (And How to Fix Them)

I love WordPress, but I don’t love everything about it.

I think it’s the best way to build a website for most people, but like any piece of software, it’s not perfect. There are a few things that really chap my hide, and I’d like to air my grievances here.

To be clear, this post is not about complaining, it’s about providing solutions to some common problems. One cool thing about WordPress is that if you don’t like something, you can always contribute your idea for a fix because it’s open source.

Some of these fixes are specific to the way I like to use WordPress, so they might not be a good idea for the core software. So without further adieu [french accent], here we go!
Read More