a site i am currently deploying on WordPress will have many of the users actually accessing the admin area of the site. as such, i wanted to modify the default dashboard, clean up a few things and add some messaging to the users – a “welcome to the admin area” if you will. i looked for a plugin to do this for a bit, but didn’t find anything that i was satisfied with so i checked out the codex and it was no huge surprise when i found most of what i needed there.
First i wanted to remove some of the default admin widgets – that was easily accomplished with the following code
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 | // Create the function to use in the action hook function example_remove_dashboard_widgets() { // Globalize the metaboxes array, this holds all the widgets for wp-admin global $wp_meta_boxes; // Remove the incomming links widget unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_incoming_links']); // Remove right now unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_right_now']); unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_primary']); unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_secondary']); } // Hoook into the 'wp_dashboard_setup' action to register our function add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'example_remove_dashboard_widgets' ); |
check out the codex link above to see how to view each widget’s call.
next i wanted to create a widget that welcomed our users to the dashboard – again pretty straight forward – the code below took care of it.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | // Create the function to output the contents of our Dashboard Widget function example_dashboard_widget_function() { // Display whatever it is you want to show echo "Hello World, I'm a great Dashboard Widget"; } // Create the function use in the action hook function example_add_dashboard_widgets() { wp_add_dashboard_widget('example_dashboard_widget', 'Example Dashboard Widget', 'example_dashboard_widget_function'); } // Hoook into the 'wp_dashboard_setup' action to register our other functions add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'example_add_dashboard_widgets' ); |
I added these to my theme’s functions.php file – but you could create a php file with these functions in it and upload it to the plugins directory and get the same results.
Got a better way of doing this? Leave a comment!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This is great! Makes it easy to make the client feel like they’re getting something more than an off-the-shelf CMS.
Just wanted to say a quick “Thank you” for the tutorial! Cool stuff…
Thanks for posting!
Worked Great.