Blog Tipz

Although I didn’t cover this when the results were announced, I wanted to see what the reaction was from other members, as my opinion of the admin area might not always be the best, especially since anyone can become accustomed to something “bad” and begin liking it after some time.

The admin area of WordPress has traditionally been one of the most complete, yet easy to use out of any blog or content management system available. Personally, the current (2.7) backend is one of the most visually stunning designs released to date, taking advantage of more technologies than previous versions, especially seeing the distance we’ve come since 2.3.

Potential Contenders for the Next Admin Interface

However, there are still more improvements to be made. Now that a good structure has been laid down as a foundation, the design team at Automattic can now begin to think about what should be tweaked in an upcoming version – Versions 2.3 (older design), 2.5, 2.7, and 2.9 will be the versions that see the largest changes in terms of the back-end administration area, although tweaks were certainly made to other versions.

One Problem – One of the main problems that I currently have with WordPress is how plugin developers place nearly every plugin’s settings under the “Settings” panel, which becomes quite full and hard to navigate quickly. It isn’t a major problem if you only use a few plugins, but for sites that utilize quite a handful, it makes you not want to deal with the plugins anymore.

Although this is just a proposal/rant, I think that some of the focus should be placed back on the Plugins page. If you were able to manage every plugin from this single page, it would make it extremely easy to find all the settings. It would have to be integrated through use of drop-down menus and a bar beneath the plugin name, which states the main settings.

Integration and how this area was managed would be key – a setting to turn off the “extended plugins” page would help those who don’t want the additional settings (although there are a few plugin authors that already place a plugin setting slink near the activate link).

Beyond this, navigation is sometimes quite clumsy nonetheless, with the wide number of places that one must travel through to access a single area. Now, this has ben greatly improved over the previous versions, but there will always be room for improvement.

Recently, WordPress conducted a poll on what admin interface the users thought was the best, and I generally agree with the results, although can see why we are going in this direction.

WordPress Tweaks Results (click on image for larger version)

The results, in summary:

• Darker, cleaner color scheme.
• A more defined sidebar, which takes up less space.
• A header that takes emphasis off the WordPress logo and your site’s name.
• Typeface that could also be changing.

The winner of the competition was a theme by Dean Robinson, based on the Fluency Admin Theme. Next up was the “Current Theme,” and in third place was a lighter, more familiar format with simple modifications to save space.

I recently took the Fluency Admin theme for a spin [again] after seeing a potential version coming down the road for the WordPress admin.

All in all, I like it and could see it working as the main admin theme. It does have some caveats, like a slower-than-average loading speed, but that could all be changed. What I like most about the plugin is the fact that you can use keyboard shortcuts to browse every single admin area, without ever having to move your mouse or reload any additional pages. It doesn’t appear as thought this will make it into the WordPress version, but the plugin may still be compatible, making it easy to take advantage of this extra feature.

The theme reminds me somewhat of the Habari back-end area, but that is just my opinion. Even though I like the direction that WordPress is going – towards a more simple, but equally content-rich – admin area, it still could see some modifications where they are due.

Habari Dashboard Area (with expanded menus)

Even though Habari isn’t as popular as WordPress and isn’t seeing the traction that I would like to see it get (the system is extremely powerful and has a number of similarities to WordPress), there are many things that WordPress could “take” from it and other systems.

Your Thoughts – What do you think of a potential redesign of the admin area – do you like the current version or would you like to see an overhaul? After all, many spend a majority of their time writing posts here, so it really does matter.