How to Customize WordPress Back End (And Why You’d Want to)

As most of you may know, themes are an inherent part of WordPress. They enable you to customize your website’s front end easily, and there’s a theme for almost every style of design. However, what if you want to customize WordPress back end?

As it happens, there are themes for the WordPress back end as well, albeit not as well known as their front end siblings. Also (and somewhat confusingly), they come in the form of plugins – we’ll explain how this works later.

In this article, we’ll discuss why you’d want to customize WordPress back end, present several plugins you can use to do so, then finally how to go about it. Let’s get started!

Why you would want to customize WordPress back end

The benefits of customizing the front end of your website are self-evident, but not so much when it comes to your back end. Because it’s not a front and center element of your site, it’s often neglected. However, customizing your back end brings a whole host of benefits, including:

• Increased usability by re-arranging sections, adding or disabling them as necessary.
• Reinforcement of your brand’s image among your team.

Also, it arguably feels better to use an attractive back end – WordPress’ default dashboard can be a bit drab, and simple makeover can help enhance the user’s experience.

All things considered, overhauling the style of your WordPress back end isn’t strictly necessary – but considering how easy it is to do and the benefits you stand to gain, it’s worth the effort.

Two plugins to customize WordPress back end

WordPress doesn’t include back end theme functionality by default, so we need to rely on plugins to achieve our end goal. We’ve selected three of the most high-quality back end theme plugins available, and later on we’ll take one of them and show you how to use it.

1. Flatty

Flatty – Flat Admin Theme

Author(s): michelemarri

Current Version: 2.0.0

Last Updated: June 15, 2017

flatty-flat-admin-theme.2.0.0.zip

90%Ratings 700+Installs WP 4.0+Requires

If you happen to like the default style of WordPress’ dashboard, consider using Flatty. This plugin doesn’t introduce any major style overhauls – instead, it enables you to tweak it with a handful of branding features.

2. WPShapere (premium)

Out of all the plugins in this list, WPShapere provides you with the most advanced customization options. This is definitely the tool to pick if you’re looking for a total dashboard overhaul.

Conclusion

What benefits will you hope to get from changing the look of WordPress’ back end? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!