Customize Your WordPress Admin Area

Many users may not know it, but you can customize your WordPress Admin area more to your liking.

Like always…there’s a WordPress Plugin for that – and it’s called Admin Customizer.  It was created and maintained by Nilambar Sharma who has as of this writing, created 11 highly rated Plugins.

It’s features are listed as:

• Change the logo in admin header
• Custom CSS style for Admin and Login pages
• Hide update nagging bar
• Replace ‘Howdy’ with your own text
• Rearrange Logout menu
• Confirmation on Logout
• Hide WordPress Default Dashboard widgets
• Add new custom widget in Dashboard
• Hide or customize admin footer
• Change logo in Login page
• Add background image in your Login page
• Set maximum number of Revisions or disable completely
• Change Default Email address and Name for sending emails

It does all of these things quite easily.

Perhaps you don’t want to run another Plugin in your site and you’d rather do some of these things yourself.  That’s okay,  Here are some snippets you can add to your functions.php file in your theme that will handle some, but not all of the things that the Plugin will handle.  See our article on using the functions.php file in your Child WordPress Theme.

Users who are not site admins generally shouldn’t see the notification that there is a WordPress update. This snippet will ensure that only site admins will see this message.

// Hide WordPress update notification except for users with Administrative privileges
global $user_login;
get_currentuserinfo();
if (!current_user_can('update_plugins')) { // checks to see if current user can update plugins 
    add_action( 'init', create_function( '$a', "remove_action( 'init', 'wp_version_check' );" ), 2 );
    add_filter( 'pre_option_update_core', create_function( '$a', "return null;" ) );
}

Let’s face it, most of the default dashboard widgets aren’t helpful at all and only server to clutter and confuse new users. This snippet will hide the WordPress Development Blog, WordPress News Feed, Quick Press Form, and Recent Drafts. If you would like to keep any of these, simply leave out the unset line below the comment (the line that begins with the two forward slashes) for that particular item.

// Remove unwanted dashboard items
add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'my_custom_dashboard_widgets');
function my_custom_dashboard_widgets() {
global $wp_meta_boxes;
//Wordpress Development Blog Feed
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_primary']);
//Other WordPress News Feed
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_secondary']);
//Quick Press Form
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_quick_press']);
//Recent Drafts List
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_recent_drafts']);
}

By default, the footer in the admin reads “Thank you for creating with WordPress.”, which is generally fine, but maybe you want to replace it with a copyright, or a link or some other message. The following code replaces the default message with “© WPDoItYourself.com”. Simply replace everything between the single quotes in the “echo” line.

// Customize Admin Footer Text
// Replace "Thank you for creating with WordPress."
function custom_admin_footer() {
        echo '© WPDoItYourself.com';
} 
add_filter('admin_footer_text', 'custom_admin_footer');

Does the word “Howdy” not have the right formality to it for your website. Changing it is quick and easy. Simply use the code below and it changes “Howdy” to “Welcome”. Change “Welcome” to anything else you’d like.

// Customize "Howdy" Message
function howdy_message($translated_text, $text, $domain) {
    $new_message = str_replace('Howdy', 'Welcome', $text);
    return $new_message;
}
add_filter('gettext', 'howdy_message', 10, 3);

Perhaps having the WordPress branding in your admin isn’t ideal for your website. Simply drop this snippet in to your functions file and viola! It’s gone!

// Remove WordPress Logo from Admin
function annointed_admin_bar_remove() {
        global $wp_admin_bar;
        /* Remove their stuff */
        $wp_admin_bar->remove_menu('wp-logo');
}
add_action('wp_before_admin_bar_render', 'annointed_admin_bar_remove', 0);