It’s not the worlds most important thing, and your readers will never know, but there’s no getting away from the fact that the basic Wordpress admin screens are well, dull.

In addition to this, as I currently run 3 blogs, I like to have some visual cue as to which blog I’m working on, so I don’t confuse my readers with a wildly off-topic post (though I doubt anyone would notice on Thermal!).
Just like the themes that you can use to change the outward appearance of your blog, there are themes that can change the Admin panel of your blog, and they come packaged as plugins, so they’re very easy to install.
For Blog-Op I use the Spotmilk theme from Ceprix.net

Very clean, and smooth, a pleasure on the eyes. Even better, it comes with the ability to carry out a minor edit to the php file to result in Blackmilk, which I use on Thermal:

I wouldn’t mind that as a front end theme….
For Autofocused I use the Tiger admin theme, which is very different in looks, but equally easy on the eye.

I used to use it on Thermal, but a small bug results in the ‘Code’ window of the Visual editor being reduced to half-size. If you never use the Visual editor it shouldn’t be an issue.
So, hardly life changing, but you spend a lot of time there, you may as well have something nice to look at. Does anyone know of any other admin themes available?





10 users commented in " Freshen Up Your WordPress Admin Theme "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackYou can find a comprehensive list of admin themes for Wordpress here: http://bloganbieter.de/2007/03/17/wordpress-admin-themes-roundup/
The bets is to use default. Those themes are not optimized and makes wordpress slow.
I’m using NiceAdmin by Douglas Karr
http://www.douglaskarr.com/projects/niceadmin along with Admin Advanced Drop Menus which is also available in several other flavours from Yellow Swordfish:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2j3qao
(Sorry, I had to use TinyURL, link was too long)
Thanks for the links guys, I’ll check them out.
Really Ashish? I’ve not noticed any discernible speed difference with them - I’ll have to do some comparisons.
@Chris: Yeah I experienced it. Test it and you will know. If you find something which doesnt slow down do share it with us
Guess I will have to check these out as well. I do use the Admin Dropdown Menu plugin and it is such a nice feature to add that it should be in Wordpress by default.
Does these work in IE too . because i have tried the tiger one and it doesnt work in IE
Hey Ashish: I’ve just spent some time, clearing my cache, reloading, switching off the plugin and repeating etc. and to my eyes it’s just as fast. Have you tried the most recent version of Spotmilk (2.4)? It’s really good.
K, I’ve been meaning to try that, you’re right it sounds like a great idea.
Madhur: Use Firefox
Spotmilk does for me, I’ll have to try Tiger, I’m not sure.
I use the Spotmix theme on the Gospel. It’s rather easy on the eye (as you said). I use it with drop down menus though.
Must get round to installing the drop-downs.
I think I prefer blackmilk of the two, but either is a massive improvement over the default.
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