The WordPress admin area is where millions of webmasters, editors and writers carry out their daily duties, making sure content is prepared and eventually made available to website or blog visitors.
WordPress offer great usability and a simple to use administration interface, helping publishers to focus on delivering value content. It is clearly designed to allow anyone to get started publishing blog posts or web pages and the default installation does not overwhelm you with options and features you do not need.
This however, does not mean that the WordPress admin area cannot get better and enhanced to fit your specific needs. The WordPress platform is highly extendable through plugins, and there is a large supply of solutions, which improve or extend the administration pages found within the WordPress admin area. As an example, it can be quite difficult to manage a lot of pages and a complex menu structure in WordPress, and since WordPress is now very popular as a CMS for business websites, this can become problematic as a website grow in size. Good news is that the large community of developers, have found ways to help WordPress users add the features they need with just a few mouse clicks. If you want to know more about how to customize your WordPress admin area, then keep reading. Keep in touch…I’ll add more categories soon as there are so many areas, where the WordPress admin area can be improved.
[exec]$filestr = file_get_contents(‘http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/googleadsensebelowmoretag.inc’);echo $filestr;[/exec] Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you purchase through those links (at no extra cost to you). I recommend that you do your own independent research before purchasing any product or service. This article is not a guideline, a recommendation or endorsement of specific products.
Administration Area
Codepress Admin Columns
With this plugins you can completely customise the columns on the administration screens with a nice drag and drop interface. This means you can customise administration screens for post(types), pages, media, comments, links and users to include the information you need.
Admin Management Xtended
This plugin adds an AJAX-driven interface to some of the management pages in WordPress. This makes it possible to change categories, tags, visibility, dates etc. on posts without having to open the edit screens. It is a quite useful plugin when ever you need to update information on multiple entries at once.
![admin-xtended[3]](http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/admin-xtended3_thumb.jpg "admin-xtended[3]")
Adminimize
Adminimize is a WordPress plugin that lets you hide ‘unnecessary’ items from the WordPress backend. The plugin also makes it possible to change back-end options; global options; dashboard options; write options for posts, pages and custom page types; link options; and menu options. There is also an export function that lets you easily duplicate settings across your other websites.
Reveal IDs
This plugin will give you back most entry IDs on admin pages, such as post id, page id, as it was in WordPress versions prior to 2.5. Most WordPress users may not need the Ids, probably why they where taken out of the WordPress interface. Advanced users and developers however often use the Ids and this plugin makes it a lot simpler to get them fast.
WordPress Admin Bar Improved
This plugin provides a set of custom tweaks to the WordPress Admin Bar.
Editorial Management
Editorial Calendar
On a busy blog with multiple editors and writers it can be quite a challange to manage the editorial planning. What is going on tomorrow and who is writing, adding images, reviewing etc. The Editorial Management plugin add a calendar view to WordPress and this way helps managing the editorial process in a visual fashion. From the calendar view it is possible to carry out most of the editorial tasks, like e.g. drag and drop to change your post dates, ´post status, titles etc.
Edit Flow
Edit Flow empowers you to collaborate with your editorial team inside WordPress and just like Editorial Calendar it adds a calendar inside WordPress. It also allows you to define custom post statuses and it makes it posssible to design the editorial process your team follows inside WordPress. Team members can also receive updates on the content they are following and more.
Peter’s Collaboration E-mails
Simple plugin to set up email notification when contributors submit content for review.
Peter’s Post Notes
This plugin adds a simple widget to the edit page, where it is possible to add notes to a post. This helps authors collaborate and share views on a post inside WordPress.
Menu Management
Menu Management Enhancer for WordPress
The WordPress 3.x menu management system is excellent, but it can be a bit cumbersome if you’re managing many menu items. The Menu Management Enhancer for WordPress aims to improve the menu management user experience. This is a plugin I personally use on WordPress business style websites.
MORE INFO / DEMO by codecanyon (premium plugin)
CMS Tree Page View
Adds a CMS-like tree overview of all your pages and custom posts to WordPress – much like the view often found in a page-focused CMS. Within this tree you can edit pages, view pages, add pages, search pages, and drag and drop pages to rearrange the order. I personally use this plugin on some site where I have many pages.
Admin Menu Tree Page View
This WordPress plugin adds all your pages to the admin menu, so all your pages will always be available within just one click, no matter where you are in the admin area. You can also add pages directly in the tree and you can quickly find your pages by using the search box.
Content editing
Visual Composer – Shortcode Plugin
Visual Composer will save you tons of time working on the site content. With this plugin you’ll be able to create complex layouts on individual pages in minutes! The layouts support responsive web design.
MORE INFO / DEMO by codecanyon (premium plugin)
Column Shortcodes
With Column Shortcodes you can adds shortcodes to easily create columns in your posts or pages. The plugin extends the editor and inserts an icon, that once cliked allows you to choose what kind of column to insert.
Custom Javascript Editor
Add custom Javascript to your site from an editor in the WordPress admin. Your code is stored and revisioned with a custom post type, so you can always go back to a previous working state.
Other useful plugins
Peter’s Login Redirect
This plugin allows you to redirect users to different locations after logging in and logging out. Define a set of redirect rules for specific users, users with specific roles, users with specific capabilities, and a blanket rule for all other users (logout redirects in this plugin support only this blanket rule). Also, set a redirect URL for post-registration. This is all managed in Settings > Login/logout redirects.
Lars is passionate about web design, web development, SEO, social media and loves to look into new technologies, techniques, tools etc. and to write articles for tripwire magazine readers.
Excelent post, many plugins i didn´t know. Let me also give a chance to this one:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/development-theme/
For developing a new theme or a “coming soon” state on your site, simple, but usefull.
Thank you for the article. Very interesting!
Great group of plugins. I love the way the column shortcodes displays options. It’s hard to describe what a one-sixth column looks like to users, which just comes down to trial and error. With Skematik – http://www.skematiktheme.com – we’ve grid to do a better job of it, but that UI is pretty good. Great article!