Remi's blog

Sweet Custom Dashboard

—

by

Remi
in ,

I love the ne splash screen since version 3 of WordPress: when you login for the first time to the administration after a core update, you have a nice page that gives you all the information about the update you just did. That’s why i created a small plugin to allow you to do nearly the same. In fact having a custom dashboard page is awesome.

It’s awesome just because you really customize the dashboard. It’s not only adding or removing metaboxes, it’s creating a whole custom page. For example if you are working in an agency, that would be great for you to be able to propose a custom dashboard that includes your contact information, or, better, a contact form, some screencasts or whatever. Well this is what this plugin is about. The thing is that we all have different needs, and my custom dashboard won’t be the same as yours. That’s the reason why this plugin is a starting point to do something personal.

To understand how i did this plugin, i wrote a tutorial on WPexplorer. You can follow step by step this tutorial to fully understand how it is constructed, and how to modify it. The good thing is that you are not limited to a single page. You can include many tabs on the first page that point to other sections. You can also provide a different dashboard page depending on the current user role… in fact you can do a lot of great things.

If you need some help in doing a custom dashboard or if you want to do it for you, just let me know!

Download Plugin

Read the Tutorial

, , ,

18 responses to “Sweet Custom Dashboard”

  1. Advait

    Hello,
    Nice Plugin :)
    But How can we activate other tabs ? Where can we add content to display in other tabs ?
    When I tried to create new page in plugin folder and registering page through the plugin file as you did for the main page. It’s not working.
    Can you please also add some info on how to add new pages or content to those tabs ?
    Thanks in advance.

    1. Rémi

      Hi, to add more it needs to be a bit modified because of the redirection, what you can do for example is to use a GET variable to display the desired content / page.

  2. acs04

    Bonjour Rémi

    j’ai traduit cet article en français. Me donnez-vous l’autorisation de publier ma version (je peux vous l’envoyer au préalable).

    Cordialement,

    Jean-Luc

    1. acs04

      L’article que j’ai traduit est celui paru ici : http://www.wpexplorer.com/how-to-WordPress-custom-dashboard/

    2. Rémi

      Hello Jean Luc, si vous citer les sources et faites un lien vers mon site et celui de WPexplorer alors pas de probleme.

  3. acs04

    Bonjour Rémi, j’ai publié la traduction avec un lien vers votre site ainsi que le lien vers l’article sur WPexplorer :

    http://www.acs04.fr/archives/2259/wordpress-creer-un-tableau-de-bord-reellement-personnalise

    1. Rémi

      Parfait!

  4. Ian Applegate

    Hi Remi

    Really great plugin. The redirection works for the admin user, but any of my other users are getting ‘Unauthorized Action’ when they click on dashboard, and it goes to index.php without the redirect to index.php?page=custom-dashboard – any ideas why?

    Thanks,

    Ian

    1. Ian Applegate

      Hey Remi – I realised this was a conflict with Advanced Access Manager plugin, not to worry :)

    2. Remi

      Great, thanks for the heads up

  5. Joff

    Hi Remi,

    Great plugin and easy to follow tutorial. I’d love to see the ability to have different custom dashboards based on user roles on the roadmap.

    I tired writing the code for it myself, but it’s a bit sketchy.

    Cheers!

  6. How to Create a Welcome Screen for Your Plugin : WPMayor

    […] Sweet Custom Dashboard – a Plugin based on the tutorial […]

  7. Andy

    Remi! You’re a STAR.

    Does this work on multisites? I’d like new site users to benefit from your great plugin

    1. Remi

      Hey Thanks! Yes it works on a multisite install, there will be just a few adjustments to do.

  8. miguelcortereal

    Hi Remi,

    As far as I can tell, the plugin is conflicting with a filter that I’m using on functions.php, to handle redirections for users login.

    This function is preety much what Codex has as example for login redirections.
    http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Filter_Reference/login_redirect

    ‘function my_login_redirect( $redirect_to, $request, $user ){
    //is there a user to check?
    global $user;
    if( isset( $user->roles ) && is_array( $user->roles ) ) {
    //check for admins
    if( in_array( “administrator”, $user->roles ) ) {
    // redirect them to the default place
    return $redirect_to;
    } else {
    return home_url();
    }
    }
    else {
    return $redirect_to;
    }
    }
    add_filter(“login_redirect”, “my_login_redirect”, 10, 3);’

    It seems that this function is fired after your plugin dashboard redirection, despite I’ve increased the priority from 10 to 100.

    What I want is:
    By default all users on login go to custom dashboard page, unless the redirection function send them else where, in my case their Buddypress profile pages if they are subscribed members.

    Subscribed members means that membership plugin from WPMU is handling their subscription.

    My redirection function works fine when Sweet Custom Dasboard is deactivated, everyone is redirected either to BP member profile or default WP dashboard, as SCD plugin is activated the redirection goes only to SCD page.

    Any thoughts on how to adapt the filter function or change the SCD plugin ?

    1. miguelcortereal

      I’ve already my issue resolved.

      There’s nothing wrong with the plugin nor it conflicts with any login_redirection filter function.

      The issue was in my function.

      Using Sweet Custom Dashboard plugin all the way and thanks a lot for your work Remi.

  9. old_blueyes

    hi remi, great plugin… can you please tell me how I can add WP Widgets to the custom dashboard?

    1. Remi

      Hey, this would require some specific code that goes beyond the scope of that post

Leave a Reply