Ever wanted to customize the look and feel of the WordPress admin, but weren’t sure where to start? Noel Tock is working on a new book that will give you all the information you need to make a fully custom admin panel for your site.
Noel has written quite a bit on WordPress and other platforms, so it’s no surprise he’s taking on this topic, since it’s something that many people would love to learn about, but there are few resources for it available.
Noel shares the following outline in his post about the book:
- Introduction
- Destroy – The book kicks off with a chapter that tackles the overwhelming UI that is presented to the end-user as they log in for the first time. There will be a number of easy wins in this chapter, hopefully resulting in fewer support tickets and a less intimidating experience for your clients.
- Rebuild – Writing this next part has been a lot of fun (and I’m also assuming it will be most useful to you). Beyond what you already know with regards to custom post types, this chapter will delve into creating your own interfaces within WP-Admin, discussing various design patterns as well as the general ins and outs of customizing it for specific needs or user types. It will focus heavily on getting your end-users to become happier and more productive.
- Conquer – At this point, we’ll be breaking out of WP-Admin and discussing the various methods one can use to create entirely new interfaces for WordPress. Beyond the back-end code, we’ll also talk about front-end best practices and how you can get the most out of your user experience there too. This will be more product focused, so you can also expect some case studies.
- Summary
- Resources – In addition, there’s some bonus content I’m looking to throw in there to really help this make for a more practical book. Specifically a plugin that implements the code we discuss, as well as video interviews with people that have done similar work.
With WordPress becoming more popular as a tool for sites other than blogs, this topic is one that I believe will be more important as the variety of applications increases.
While the admin has made strides in becoming less blog-focused, there are still many things that could be done and this book will assist those of us who aren’t extremely familiar with the codebase in making the modifications we’d like to to ensure our site functions exactly how we’d like it to.
Launch date is still a few weeks off according to Noel, but the book will be distributed DRM free in .pdf, .epub & .mobi formats.
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