The WordPress Dashboard is the workhorse of the CMS, providing that basic functionality you need to build your site. It lets you create posts, play around with plugins, monitor comments and a whole lot more. Yet there are many functions that go beyond the basics that you might not have noticed or taken advantage of. I’ve highlighted 10 of the best elements and functions offered via the dashboard that many users don’t even know exist, and that can be useful in saving time, improving efficiency, and making your content stand out.
Zen mode
If you’re serious about writing, then it pays to limit distractions; you don’t want to spot a Facebook notification and end up doing a questionaire to find out what kind of tree you are. With Zen mode, the editor in your edit post or page screen will expand to full screen and leave only the essentials in view, like basic tools and the entry content itself. Give it a try; just click on the fullscreen mode icon:
Revision Preview and Rollback
“Measure twice, cut once” as the old adage goes, but in this fast-moving world sometimes it’s better to start with a cut and then just keep cutting. Thankfully, A function added in WordPress 3.6 allows you to see the changes that have been made to a post or page, with a direct comparison to the current version so you can see exactly where they occurred. This can be useful to see where you or your colleagues have been making their revisions, or to rollback your changes to an earlier version if you’ve had a sudden epiphany and think your first draft knocked it out of the park. To see your revisions, cast your eyes on the “Publish” block in the sidebar that you can see when you are on the Edit Post or Edit Page screen:
The “Screen Options” tab
The screen options tab is often forgotten, hiding away at the top of the screen where nobody wants to click it. But it’s got a few useful features to its name, most importantly, it’s responsible for controlling what dashboard elements are visible by default. In your basic WordPress installation several of the more complex (read: useful) fields are hidden to protect people new to WordPress being overwhelmed by complex, hard to understand settings. Yet there are some hidden elements that can be very useful:
- a field for adding CSS classes to a menu position
- a block to control whether commenting is allowed on in entries and on subpages
- Relevant additional entry info and tag lists
oEmbed
This function I covered a bit more in-depth in my previous article, which you can find here. It allows for near-instant insertion of external interactive elements from supported services, like videos, images and the like, in your posts or pages in real-time.
Gravatar
Sometimes after installing WordPress you may find that your user(s) are already sporting a sleek, impressive avatar image instead of the standard blank WordPress avatar. This comes from the built-in support for the Gravatar service that associates avatars with e-mail addresses. Gravatar is a service provided by Automatic, who are also ultimately responsible for WordPress development along with the dedicated community that contribute. It’s a wildly popular service and easy to implement, so it’s worth creating an account with them to save yourself some hasslbe.
Widgets in the theme customizer
Managing widgets at the theme customizer level was implemented a few short months ago with the release of WordPress 3.9. When building content, a user can get a real-time preview of widgets as they are added or modified, and track their impact on subpages for a unique page layout.
Post Scheduling
By default, WordPress publishes an entry shortly after clicking a “Publish” button; how fast depends on the phases of the moon and the roll of the dice from the WordPress gods, but it’s usually instant. However, if you’re looking to publish your posts at peak time for maximum exposure, then the post scheduling options in WordPress have you covered. With it, you can set an exact date and time for the post to be made available to your target user group, or the public at large. This is also useful if you’re heading out on holiday but have some content prepared to keep the site updated; instead of dumping it all on the day you depart you can stagger publication across your entire holiday, like you were there the whole time.
Built-in gallery
Gallery plugins are a hot commodity; in this era of duckface, selfies and cameras on every device under the sun there are more images than ever that need sorting and displaying. Sometimes, these plugins are complex or come at a premium, and provide functionality far beyond the average user’s requirements. Thankfully, WordPress does in fact include a gallery function as standard in the form of a gallery shortcode, perfect for people who just want to display a few images. For more advanced users, they can install the aforementioned complex plugins and take advantage of the additional features they bring. The most important benefit of using the built-in gallery shortcode, if you’ll permit me to get slightly technical, is that is that while exporting data, our gallery opens only after data importing is complete, which is impossible with Gallery plugins without some additional export and import plugin data.
Import/Export data
WordPress enables the importing and exporting of entries, comments, media and taxonomy, allowing you to quickly move your important data between installations; you may have noticed that our recent themes with a page-based design use the data-import to instantly build a frontpage and other content that matches our demo version of the theme. As well as moving data between WordPress installations, you can also import posts and more from external systems and data types, such as Blogger. Unfortunately, you can’t import or export plugin and widget data this way, so you’ll still have to configure these elements manually.
Code editor
Messing with code is a tricky business, and lot of people, quite rightly, think that having a code editor available in WordPress can be a security liability. Still, if you’re not a fan of the ancient FTP connection, then you can still edit the theme and plugin files with the features of the code editor.