How to customize your WordPress Dashboard

Did you know that you can change what you see when you log into your WordPress Dashboard?

Most people don’t!

Here’s what the average dashboard looks like. The menu is down the left side of the screen. The rest of the area is filled with boxes that contain information. On the screenshot above, you can see two complete boxes – on labeled Right Now and one Labeled Site Stats. I like it this way. I’ve organized it this way.

You can control which “boxes” of information show on the dashboard and you can change the placement of these boxes.

Here’s the screen shot again, but this time I’ve added a red arrow. The arrow points at a little tab called “Screen Options” Click on that tab and you will see the following:

A little screen will drop down. As you can see there are a collection of check boxes. This allows you to decide what you want to see on your dashboard. Play with the settings and see what happens when you un-check some of the items. Many of the authors that I work with have no interest in the WordPress Blog entries or “Other Wordpess News.”

Let’s look at the boxes of information that is available to you. The first one that most people see is the Right Now box. It serves as a snippet of what’s happening on your blog. It tells you how many posts, how many pages, how many tags and categories and some information about comments.

Although I like this box to be in the upper left of my dashboard. It can reside anywhere you want it. If you click on the bar at the top of the box and drag it, you can move it where ever you want it to go.

As you can see in the above graphic, I’ve moved it so that it is now in the upper right on my dashboard.

Your job now, is to log onto your WordPress blog and play with the look of your dashboard. Remove the information that you want removed, and re-order the boxes in the way that you want them viewed.

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Author informationBarb DrozdowichOwner at Bakerview ConsultingSocial Media and Wordpress Consultant Barb Drozdowich has taught at Colleges, trained technical personnel in the banking industry and, most recently, used her expertise to help hundreds of authors develop the social media platform needed to succeed in today’s fast evolving publishing world. She owns Bakerview Consulting and manages the popular blog, Sugarbeat’s Books. Her first book is now available on Amazon - The Author's Guide to Working with Book BloggersTwitterFacebookGoogle+LinkedIn