WordPress Event Ticketing

Let's be fair: the WordPress dashboard is functional though not exactly "client" friendly. Luckily, there are ways you can change that.

Roles

One of the first things you'll need to decide on is which role to give to your client. Full admin or maybe a custom role? Usually, I'd recommend giving the client full admin rights and make it clear in the contracts that if they break anything by editing something it's not covered in the cost. There are certainly cases where providing them lesser access will suffice. Remember though if you give a client a role that doesn't have full rights they may feel tied to you and you'll definitely be tied to them which isn't usually a good thing.

Plugins to Brand and Customize the WP Admin

There are a wide array of plugins to customize and modify the WordPress admin, area some of these include:

Ultimate Branding - WPMU DEV

Ultimate Branding by WPMU DEV allows you modify and customize the WordPress admin and the WordPress login screen. While the admin screen options are reasonably simplistic simply adding a login image and a background. This means it's still very obvious to anyone who knows WordPress what platform you're using, if this is important to you, you'd want to find another plugin to handle the login screen customization.

Despite the above it does excel when it comes to branding the WordPress dashboard. Not only does it work perfectly with single site installs of WordPress it always works perfectly with Multisite which most other branding plugins don't. This is definitely a plus point if you want to brand your multisite network.

Out the box you can:

• Create a custom admin bar
• Customize the Email From information.
• Customize and modify the help content. Perfect for clients!
• Modify or remove all WordPress branding.
• Add Help Buttons

And much much more. Overall the WPMU DEV Ultimate Branding plugin is one of the strongest competitors when it comes to modifying your WordPress admin with an out the box plugin. Utilizing the plugin, you can easily add custom help content for clients and remove unnecessary distractions such as the main WordPress admin meta boxes.

White Label Branding For WordPress

White Label Branding for WordPress is a WordPress plugin available on CodeCanyon that allows you to modify the WordPress admin area. Just like WPMU DEV's Ultimate Branding. White Label Branding is packed with features! Including:

• Create Custom Dashboard Metaboxes
• Hide WordPress notification messages/nag notices
• Visual CSS Editor to modify the entire WordPress admin including login and password reset screens

Plus much more. One thing it does have over WPMU DEV's Ultimate Branding is the Role and Capability Manager. This allows you to create and map different capabilities to different user roles within your WordPress site. This is perfect if you have a client that you'd like to have most of the access, but not all. For example restricting their access to the Editor for plugins/themes, so they don't try and modify a plugin or theme within the admin itself.

Unlike WPMU DEV's Ultimate Branding though licensing is per site (which is a CodeCanyon restriction) this means it's one of the most expensive options available if you have 10-20 clients who you want to use the plugin for.

AG Custom Admin

AG Custom Admin is a free plugin for modifying the WordPress admin and applying custom colors with built in admin themes. Use the theme as you see fit, but be warned they are rather garish and clashing!

This free plugin isn't as feature packed as the two premium options we've explored above but it still has plenty of features though for most including:

• Admin Bar - Modify or add admin menu bar items
• Admin Menu - change and remove existing admin menu items and add custom colors
• Admin Panel Options - Change, edit and add dashboard widgets, help and screen options, WordPress logos

And more! Considering the plugin is entirely free it's a great proposition and along with one of the free role editor plugins available you'd have closer capabilities to the premium versions. AG Custom Admin also have a premium version called Cusmin which you can check out here.

User Role Editor Plugins

Just like with branding the actual WordPress dashboard there are plenty of plugins for editing roles, adding roles and deleting roles. The best one though by a far way has to be User Role Editor. User Role Editor is a free WordPress plugin with over 400,000 active installs! While it may look complex on initial installation, it's easy to use, straightforward and does everything you'd need from a user role editing plugin including mapping capabilities, adding new roles, changing user roles, deleting roles and modifying existing roles.

Hiding You Use WordPress

If the purpose of you modifying the WordPress admin area is to hide you use WordPress or you decide to use one of those other plugins that claim to completely hide all WordPress references - don't bother.
Simple as that.

There is no point in using plugins for this purpose, anyone who knows WordPress will know what you've used and if someone really wants to hack you, they will. Sure, while moving your WordPress login URL from /wp-login.php to something else may help with automated bot attacks it won't help at all with a real attacker. You're much better off making sure your themes and plugins are up to date, and strong passwords are used.

Conclusion

Modifying the WordPress admin for your clients with useful help information and useful admin menu items can be of great assistance, especially if they aren't familiar with WordPress and how it works. But don't go overboard and use such plugins when they aren't needed. If your client knows WordPress inside and out and is expecting it to be the default WordPres admin, using such plugins could actually be more of a hindrance than a help. Have you customized your WordPress admins for clients? Maybe you've custom coded new admin themes or a slick rest API based system? Let us know in the comments below.