This blog is about 8 months old now and i’ve just noticed (bad on me) that i’ve never posted anything regarding the backend of WordPress, in fact there’s very few articles around about the most important part of your blog, the backend.It’s pretty good to read about themes and plugins and some of the cool features that appears on the frontend of your blog but behind it all is the most important part, the part where you get to manage your posts, comments, write a post, read the latest happenings in the WordPress community (dashboard),change your themes, active/deactivate plugins,add a link in your blogroll and the list goes on and on.

So here is my attempt on bringing to light some features, themes and plugins that are geared towards the WordPress backend.

Admin Themes

Did you know that you can actually apply a theme and change the appearance of your admin panel? If you didn’t know that than well….now you know, and if you knew all along, good for you, pet yourself on the back and eat a cookie.

WP Tiger Administration, this theme was of the first to pop up and it’s still regarded by some as one of the best.

afd wordpress2 admin theme, the afd theme comes as a plugin, just upload and activate and voila..experience a change of theme.

Js Style SpotMilk Admin is base on SpotMilk Admin,with a few cosmetic changes.

Planet x7 Admin Theme, i didn’t understand a word on the site since it’s not in english, but there’s an admin theme there and if you do happen to know what it means please let me know!.

WP Barunio Administration, This Wordpress plugin changes the layout and visual design of the default Wordpress administration area. In addition to changes in the color scheme, it modifies the layout so that submenus are placed on the left side of the page, and is well-stuied to the creation of nested submenus created with the Custom Admin Menu plugin.

Some other Admin Themes:

WordPress admin themer

Randy Walker Theme

WordTunes

Earthtones Admin Theme, the site was down when i was posting this, but i do remember it having a beautiful earth tone theme, the site should be back up soon.

SpotMilk is an admin theme for WordPress 2.1 & 2.2, which is originally inspired by Spotlight on Mac OS X Tiger and the Milk theme by Max Rudberg.

There was also a Digg Styled admin theme but the author didn’t release it to the public because he wanted to respect the designers of digg even if it was to be used just for the admin panel of WordPress.

WordPress Plugins to Pimp your Admin Panel

Admin Drop Down Menu – The plugin concept itself is rather simple :

1. It creates a new menu containing all the wanted links (nothing more than a big boring bunch of intricated

’s and
• ’s)
  2. A one liner javascript tickles the DOM and replaces the content of the existing admin menu :
  document.getElementById(’adminmenu’).innerHTML=[lots of stuff]

  
  Diagnosis – Diagnosis adds a subpage to the dashboard where the main administrator of the Wordpress installation can view technical data about the server in an easy manner along with a suitable explanation. Most fields also have a link to an appropriate Wikipedia article.

  Wordpress Organizer – This plugin help the wordpress users to manage the files uploaded to their blog. These are some the feature of this plugin:

  * View all files uploaded in you wp-content/uploads directory and all the sub directories or the directory you have set to store your uploads

  * Copy / Rename / Delete files in the uploads directory

  * Create / Rename / Delete directories

  * Upload files to the uploads directory

  * Resize image files on your uploads directory

  * Supports mutiple users and permissions

  * Changes the filenames automatically in your post when you change the filenames in your upload directory

  * Changes the attachment post to maintain the post cross links

  * Supports roles and you can set permission based on each user what can do with this plugin.

  Clutter Free – Clutter Free is a plugin that lets you hide portions of the WordPress posting interface that you rarely (or never) use. Instead of being minimized (and still taking up room), they’ll be completely invisible.

  Fix Database – Will check all the tables within your WordPress database and fix it if it need fixing.

  
  WP-DBManager 2.20 – Manages your Wordpress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

  KIN – KIN is just a simple notepad for jotting down notes and ideas. Quick, useful and easy to use.

  Mass Post Manager – This plugin allow to do the following things:

  * Delete all posts and/or comments in selected category
  * Move all posts from one category to another

  Post2Page – Post2Page allows you to take existing posts that you have and convert them into pages. It also remembers the previous permalink that you had while it was a post so that sites linking to your posts are able to find it still.

  Redirection – Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.

  WP-Table – This plugin creates and manages tables for wordpress. So you can post i.e. sport results in a fixed table format. You don’t need to enter tables anymore in the plain text mode and the WYSIWYG editor didn’t damage the table layout. The table layout can be changed via a css file and you can import a csv file as table.

  Search and Replace – This is a plugin for Wordpress to allow you to search and replace text across all your posts.

  Ajax Live Spell Checker – Well..it’s Ajax and it’s a Spell Checker

  There will be a Part 2 in the coming weeks, so keep a lookout for that

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  2. Wordpress Plugin – WP-Table
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  4. 50+ Tools For The WordPress Admin compiled by Sean P. Aune
  5. WordPress 2.4 Admin Panel Preview – Screenshot and Video