Widgetized Admin Dashboard
April 2, 2008
Widgetized Admin Dashboard is a Wordpress Plugin for 2.5+ that lets you edit the Wordpress Dashboard in the Design > Widgets area.
It also removes the Wordpress Developer News and WP Planet News that many consider to be “Dashboard Spam” and lets you see exactly what you want to see on your dashboard.
With Widgetized Admin Dashboard, you can now edit your dashboard just like you edit sidebars!
Current Version: 1.6 (May 30, 2008)
Download: Download Widgetized Admin Dashboard Here (Via the WP Extend SVN)
Wordpress Compatibility: Tested on 2.5
History:
Well, for a long time, I’ve been trying to find a way to create a dashboard with content that I can control. I even went as far as creating a completely new dashboard that utilized Widgets in 2.3.x, but it was never good enough to release. (Read: There were tons of bugs)
But, with the release of 2.5, the WP Dashboard saw a great upgrade to “widgets” - except for the fact that you couldn’t move them, change their size, or really do much at all. So really the only upgrade was that now you didn’t have to wait on the Developer and Planet news to load before you could click a link. Good progress, but why not go that one step further and let people edit the widgets like they can with sidebar widgets? The code is already there!
So I started coding my widgetized dashboard from the ground up, utilizing 2.5’s new dashboard, and now have a viable, editable, quality dashboard. I stocked it with RSS feeds that I frequent, and now I’m good to go.
Installation Instructions:
- Upload
- Activate
- Go to Design > Widgets and choose the “WordPress Dashboard” sidebar option from the drop down
- Add widgets to your heart’s content!
When you select “Wordpress Dashboard” 4 new widgets will show up at the bottom of the widget list, all starting with “Dashboard: ”
3 are the same admin widgets that come with WP - Recent Comments, Incoming Links, and Plugins.
The fourth, RSS, is a modified version of the sidebar RSS widget - it does the same thing, but includes some new options, like height, width, and a drop down that includes some popular RSS feeds from blogs about Wordpress.
Known Bugs:
None
Because this plugin/widget is provided free of charge, I simply ask you to link back to Pressography.com in a post on your blog, or from one of your sites. It doesn't need to be anything fancy - just a note saying that you're using it, and whether or not you like it. However, there is no requirement that you do this, you're free to use the plugin regardless.
Duoremix on 
Li-An on 
Jeremy on 
Primal Sneeze on 
Jason on 
drsuccess
Scot
Alistair Stewart
@Iva - When you’re editing the Dashboard Widgets, choose an RSS feed, and in the dropdown, you can choose from the various standard RSS feeds
Been looking for something like this. Firestats led me here at last. Much appreciated.
How can I get the WP Planet news back? I don’t mind them being on the bottom of the page.
@Scot -
I’ll look into it - the problem is that the plugin uses the Widget code from WP, so I’ll have to do some serious workarounds to get it to work for multiple authors
@Jason - I am using widgetized dashboard plugin for a multi-author blog. All authors have access to their dashboard area and I’ve enabled ‘edit dashboard’ for the author role so that they can change their RSS feeds on widgets. At first I thought I had a great solution for authors to edit their own widgets, but it turns out that if one author edits a widget it applies site-wide. Any idea if this can be modified for future use in this kind of environment?
Cheers
@Scot -
I don’t do anything with wpmu, have they upgraded it to the WP 2.5 admin area yet? If not, then this plugin won’t work for it. If so, then give it a try
Has anyone successfully gotten this to work on wpmu? If so, willing to share?
Thanks
@Scot -
Which plugin? I’ll find some time to download it and see if I can spot the problem.
@Jason - So, I deactivated all my other plugins and tested yours as I reactivated them 1 by 1. The hanging appears to have been caused by a conflict with another I have running. But I still get the redirect, although after a few tests of editing sidebar widgets, saving them and going back to the dashboard the widgets seem to be staying put. If it’s just the redirect I can live with it…using a PC with Firefox.
Thx
@Jason - Tried the new version but still having trouble in FF. The redirect on ‘edit’ of sidebar widgets is still happening. When I get to dashboard widgets, it seems to take the addition of new widgets OK. But now when I save something is causing my browser to hang. I sometimes get an error message saying a script needs debugging. Not sure what’s wrong.
Thx
Ok, the bug squishing is finished! (Well, mostly)
* The dashboard should show up on /wp-admin/ and /wp-admin/index.php
* The widgets should stay, even after saving the other sidebars
* The widget count should display only the # of sidebar widgets, not the admin widgets
I’m looking into which hooks Viper’s plugin uses, to see if I can get my dash to work with the widgets that were written for his, too
@Jason - I am using a Mac and I’ve found the same issue in Safari. When I try to edit sidebar widgets, it redirects me to the dashboard widget panel. What I’ve also found, however, is that if I don’t actually edit/save the sidebar widget during this process, the dashboard widgets stay intact. If I make any changes, and then save them, my dashboard widgets disappear.
Hope this helps….
Thx
@Scot - Thanks for the confirmation on the disappearance bug, I’ll have to update my FF version and try reproducing it then. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find it after that
I’ll also check out what’s going on with the disappearing settings. Hopefully that’s in my code, not the functionality I’m using from the WP core…
Jason
Nice plugin, but I’m having a few problems.
I’m using WP 2.5.1 in Firefox and notice the widgets will not appear unless at wp-admin/index.php (as noted above).
Also, when I log out, the widgets disappear. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern as I have logged in and out a few times under different users and at some point the widgets created (RSS feeds) always disappear. Troublesome as this is a nice plugin for multi-author blogs. Hopefully someone can find the bug.
Cheers
@Jason & awarner20
WPMU hasn’t upgraded its files to WP2.5 yet. It’s still running on the 2.3 files, so no, this plugin would not work for that until WPMU upgrades to have the 2.5 files.
@awarner20
Unfortunately, I haven’t done anything with WPMU yet. Does 1.5.1 match up with WP 2.5.1?
I’d imagine the WPMU admin files are different from WP, this plugin does check for filenames in some places, to turn on/off the widgets as needed. That could be the problem?
@ Jason,
I have just learned of your plugin and it works great in my main site running WP 2.5.1. I’m trying to get this to work on my install on WPMU 1.5.1 (that’s WordPress Multi-User). My goal is to drop this into the mu-plugins folder and then configure the widgets I want all of my blog owners to see.
I’ve tried putting this into the mu-plugins folder with no success.
Do you have any experience with MU and how I might get this plugin to work?
@Jason
I have the latest version of WP and the only other plugin that would affect the dashboard would be my Counterize II plugin (old version: 2.04) since it adds the submenu that says “Dashboard” and “Counterize”
@Maria - I’ll see what I can do to allow the other widgets to be resized, but I can’t re-create the bug where the widgets only appear if the page is /index.php, mine display all the time. Could you give me some more details? IE - what WP version, do you have any other plugins installed that affect the widgets or dashboard, etc?
1. I really dislike this having to register in order to comment thing.
2. I like the concept of being able to customize the dashboard a little since I wasn’t too big a fan on how WP rearranged the items in 2.5
3. Only the RSS blogs can be resized, but how about the others? That would be nice too.
4. Bug: The widgets only appear when I’m in /wp-admin/index.php and not just /wp-admin/ It’s really inconvenient because when I log in, it’s goes to /wp-admin/ and it would render this plugin useless to me.
@FabriceV -
Thanks for your remarks. Here are some answers for you:
- I’m working on registering it on the WP site, but it’s going slowly because I’m really busy, and I’ve never used subversion before.
- It doesn’t deal with other “dashboard widgets” because it is built to use the Wordpress Widget GUI - not a custom coded GUI. Any widget that is built for the standard Wordpress Widget area should work. To enable it to work with other dashboard widgets, I’d have to re-code most (if not all) of them, and I don’t have that kind of time
- I’ll look into fixing the # of widgets display, there’s probably a filter or something I can hook into and change it
- There’s not much I can do on the Widgets GUI page, without some massive Javascript additions, or re-coding. I’m really hoping that the WP team gets wind of the fact that they can so easily add actual widget functionality on the dashboard and do it.
- When I get time, I’ll look into how I might add roles to the list. Again, since I’m using the WP Widgets page, it won’t be easy, if possible at all (without huge changes)
- I’ll look into Viper007’s plugin, thanks for the link.
Honestly, I made this plugin to be a quick and lightweight plugin to let people add RSS feeds and such to their dashboard without much effort. I might expand on the functionality down the road, but for right now, it works for what it was created for.
I’m really hoping that the WP team will catch wind of this plugin and make the Dashboard Widgets completely integrated and editable in the WP core. The ability is there, they just have to suck it up and allow us to remove the WP Planet and Dev News if we want to
Sorry to disturb.
Looking at the WP plug site and reading the history of DWM, ViperOO7 has apparently resolved part of the bugs described her.
- the false count widget number problem.
- the dashboard per role (partially).
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dashboard-widget-manager/other_notes/
I am new to WP and I have tested locally all the dashboard widgets and manager.
Yours is very interesting because it uses the default GUI.
The remarks:
- Not registered to WP site.
- Not able to deal with other dashboard widget plugins: They are not taken into account. So if I decide to install them, they appear twice, if I remove them, they appear once rather than be removed.
- Possibly relates only to WP. The dashboard header counts the total number of widgets used (into the dashboard and the sidebar) rather than those of the sole sidebar.
Improvement
- Take into account other dashboard widget plugin.
- Spare the list into two consecutive ones: site widgets, dashboard widgets, so that user can understand more easily the widgets functionalities.
- Take into account WP roles to display a different dashboard per role (e.g doesn’t matter to display pending review or WP plugin list to author)
Finally, the Dashboard Widget Manager (DWM) from Viper007 (who have also created dashboard widget plugins) hasn’t got problems to deal with default and additional dashboard widgets that appears correctly into the list. You could either look at his code or collaborate because your plugins are very closed. The major difference is that DWM creates its own page to manage dashboard widgets.
http://www.viper007bond.com/wordpress-plugins/dashboard-widget-manager/
regards.
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Widgetized Admin Dashboard…
idgetized Admin Dashboard is a Wordpress Plugin for 2.5+ that lets you edit the Wordpress Dashboard in the Design > Widgets area.
It also removes the Wordpress Developer News and WP Planet News that many consider to be “Dashboard Spam” and lets yo…