So why use Bootstrap? With Bootstrap, you know exactly what you’re getting. It’s a mobile-first framework that is relatively easy to customize, with pre-built design patterns and a vast library of components and widgets. More importantly, your Bootstrap build will be consistent across all screen sizes, devices, and browsers. It makes sense to use something that you know will work well when building the dashboard or admin panel of your web application.

The free Bootstrap admin and dashboard templates below have been pre-built as complete solutions, allowing you to rapidly create the front-end dashboard of your application. They include all of Bootstrap’s widgets and many additional addons, plugins, and features for charts, graphs, calendars, file managers, and more—everything you need to build powerful, professional, and responsive dashboards.

You might also like our collection of Bootstrap UI kits and Bootstrap templates.

The post 25 Free Bootstrap Dashboard & Admin Templates for 2024 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

No matter what kind of tweaks you’re looking to make, there is most likely a WordPress plugin available to make it a reality. Let’s explore 10 WordPress plugins you can use to personalize the Dashboard to meet your needs.

White Label CMS

A stock installation of WordPress doesn’t feel very personal. That’s why White Label CMS exists. It allows you to integrate your brand into various areas of the back end.

It starts with a custom login page, then moves on to the admin header and footer areas. But it doesn’t stop there – you can also choose which admin menus to display, and create a completely custom dashboard. As a bonus, it also works with page builders such as Beaver Builder and Elementor.

Remove Dashboard Access

Remove Dashboard Access offers a solution for those who want to keep certain user roles from accessing all or parts of the back end. This is great for membership sites, where users typically have a front-end profile (optional back-end profile access is possible).

In addition, the plugin lets you redirect users to a custom URL and display an optional message on the login screen.

Widget Disable

Widget Disable works on both the front and back ends of your WordPress website. It allows administrators to easily turn off access to specific widgets.

With regards to the dashboard, it’s a great way to remove clutter for your site’s users. Too often, plugins litter the screen with widgets that are little more than advertisements. Widget Disable helps to make for a cleaner back-end experience.

Catch IDs

There are times when you need to access the ID of a particular post, page, category, or user. Catch IDs is a simple plugin that makes this information readily available.

Once installed and activated, the ID number is displayed within the various admin content and user listings. Oh, and it also works for media attachments!

Admin Columns

Admin Columns is a commercial plugin (with a free version) that enables to you add custom columns to page /post listings and more.

There are over 160 columns to choose from. For example, you can easily add a featured image column to the post listing. Not only can you display various columns, but you can also sort and filter posts by them as well. It works with all content types and can integrate with lots of plugins, including Advanced Custom Fields and WooCommerce.

Simple History

Simple History doesn’t add some major functionality to the WordPress dashboard. But it sure is helpful. A widget is added to the dashboard home page that shows you which users recently added or updated posts when a widget has been added or removed or even uploaded an image to the Media Gallery.

It also tracks things like plugin activations, user profile updates, logins, and more. Very useful for administrators who want to stay on top of whom is doing what.

Admin Menu Editor Pro

While somewhat similar to Adminimize, Admin Menu Editor Pro does have some unique features worth checking out. For instance, not only can you hide dashboard menu items in general or by user role, you can create your own items as well.

Those custom menu items can point to any internal or external URL. The plugin also lets you move individual items to different submenus, change titles and even icons. A free version is also available.

Custom Dashboard Widgets

The WordPress dashboard can get a little cluttered. Custom Dashboard Widgets helps alleviate some of that clutter by allowing you to replace all the standard home page widgets with simpler versions.

Consisting of a label and a FontAwesome icon, each widget can be displayed or hidden based on a user’s role. You can also add your own custom links as well.

Ultimate Dashboard Pro

Ultimate Dashboard Pro lets you take control of the WordPress dashboard homepage. You can easily disable any and all default widgets, as well as those from third parties.

Create your own simplified widgets with either text-only or icon-based options. The plugin is compatible with WordPress Multisite. A free version is also available.

Nested Pages

A seemingly ignored part of WordPress is the cumbersome approach to managing large amounts of pages or posts. Nested Pages is a plugin that aims to fix this by turning listings into interactive tree-style menus.

It also allows you to add pages in bulk, right from within the page listing. The slick drag-and-drop interface helps to make repositioning content less stressful. A native WordPress menu is also created and updated to match your nested structure.

Make it Your Dashboard

The main idea behind tweaking the WordPress administration area is to improve your workflow. By adding helpful information and streamlining what gets displayed (and to whom it’s displayed), we’re making site management that much easier.

The plugins above feature creative and practical ideas for lessening the learning curve for new users and saving administrators loads of time.

If these plugins don’t help, you could try these 20 Snippets & Hacks to Help Make WordPress Easier for Your Clients.

The post 10 Free Plugins for Customizing the WordPress Dashboard appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

However, times have changed. The admin dashboards we see nowadays are beautiful, as this collection demonstrates. The rise in popularity of mobile apps and the Bootstrap framework has contributed to the stunning dashboard UI designs we’ve seen in recent years.

These designs are no longer just functional but visually appealing, intuitive, and user-friendly. The clean and modern design of admin dashboards has become an essential aspect of any web application, and their aesthetics have become just as important as their functionality.

This collection showcases some of the most beautiful and well-designed admin dashboards that demonstrate how far the design process has come. So, whether you’re a web developer or a designer, take a look at these inspiring examples and see how you can create a user-friendly and visually stunning admin dashboard that will elevate your web application to the next level.

The post 20 Beautifully Designed Admin Dashboards for Inspiration appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

If you’re looking for HTML and CSS dashboard templates, you might like to take a look at these Bootstrap-powered Dashboard templates. Or, if you’re looking for some admin panel design inspiration, try this post. But if you’re looking for dashboard templates in PSD or Sketch formats, then stick around, this is the collection for you!

All of the below dashboard templates are free to download and use, and are available in Photoshop or Sketch formats. Hopefully, they will give you some fresh ideas for your own designs.

The post 20 Free Admin Dashboard UI Templates for Photoshop & Sketch appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

In this post, we discuss some of the key ideas that data visualization experts have shared about dashboards, in the hope that it’ll help you spot a good dashboard from a bad one. And if you build dashboards, the guidelines here will help you communicate more powerfully using dashboards.

Stephen Few’s Definition of a Dashboard

Let’s begin by defining what a dashboard is. Stephen Few, the leading expert on information dashboards, defines a dashboard as follows:

“A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.” – Stephen Few, Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data.

Now, that’s a mouthful. Let’s distil it to the most important words:

• Visual display – This doesn’t mean that all dashboards need to have charts. A dashboard can be as effective with just text information in the form of KPIs. However, all dashboards are viewed by people, and a good understanding of human visual perception is important when building dashboards.
• Most important information – Dashboards that track mundane, useless information are doomed even before anyone views them. All dashboards plot information that the viewer cares about.
• Objectives – Every dashboard has an objective. Whether it’s to inform a viewer, or to get them to take an action, or to initiate an automated action in another application, there is an objective.
• Single screen – This is debatable in today’s mobile-first world, where the screen sizes vary from small smartphones, to large wall-mounted displays. Still, the idea of presenting information in a concise manner holds true.
• At a glance – A dashboard shouldn’t make the viewer jump through hoops to understand what it has to say. It needs to present information plainly, and invite the viewer to explore further if they like.

Here’s a dashboard created by Stephen Few, which stands as a great example of what an effective dashboard looks like:

Image source: PerceptualEdge.com.

Now, let’s get down to the process of building an effective dashboard. Let’s begin by discussing what are the three types of dashboards.

Dashboards for Different Audiences

One way to classify dashboards is by the audience it’s meant for. Accordingly, dashboards can be classified into three types:

• Executive Dashboards – Also called ‘Strategic Dashboards’, These dashboards are viewed by the senior management in an organization. Their objective is to inform executives of how a company is tracking against its strategic goals. They answer the question ‘How are we doing as an organization?’ It’s common for these dashboards to have the most important KPI metrics alongside a few charts with historic data to give context to the KPIs. Based on what the KPI numbers are, executives may
  want to drill down to gather more details about the situation. Because of the hierarchy of data, it’s important for these dashboards to follow Ben Shneiderman’s Infomation-Seeking Mantra – “Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand.”
• Analytical Dashboards – Analytical dashboards are used by Business Analysts who focus on gaining insight from data. The analyst looks at historical data to spot trends, and reasons for fluctuations in performance. They also look to predict future performance based on a variety of internal and external factors. The analyst viewing these dashboards asks the question ‘How can we meet and exceed organizational goals?’ Analysts using these dashboards are armed with specialized training, and accordingly, analytical dashboards should contain advanced interactive features that enable the analysts to get more value out of the data. It follows that these dashboards aren’t used by all employees.
• Operational Dashboards – These dashboards are used by line-of-business managers, and the workforce on the frontline. It helps employees of a particular department be aware of goals for the team and for the company at large. It answers the question ‘Are we tracking our department goals for today?’ Operational dashboards contain only a subset of a company’s data that is relevant to the job at hand. Because of how highly focussed these dashboards are, they often contain low latency and even real-time data. Because of their importance to complete day-to-day tasks, operational dashboards should have the ability to drill down to the most minute level of detail.

Dashboards for Different Departments

Since a dashboard should contain the ‘most important information’ it’s important to define what the most important information is, for a particular department. Here are some metrics that are important to specific departments:

• Manufacturing – Units manufactured, units by product type, cost per unit, projected orders, plant waste.
• Sales – Leads, deals won, deals lost, average deal value, average deal time, sales by person, sales by region, sales by product.
• Marketing – Awareness, visits, downloads, leads, cost per lead, customer acquisition costs, bounce rate.
• Support – Total tickets, open tickets, average turn around time (TAT) , customer satisfaction (C-SAT), tickets resolved within SLA, tickets closed per person, % of issues resolved in first response.
• HR – Attrition rate, interview closure rate, average time to hire, open positions by department, payroll breakdown.

These metrics serve as a guideline of what could be most important to each department. However, before building any dashboard, it’s necessary to take the time time to understand what matters to the viewer of your dashboard.

Now that we know what a dashboard is, the types of dashboards, and what metrics they contain, let’s look at one of the most important design principles that can make or break a dashboard.

Data-Ink Ratio

There are many principles to follow when creating dashboards, but if there’s one that stands out among the rest, it’s the principle of data-ink ratio

Data-Ink ratio is a concept introduced by Edward Tufte, one of the earliest experts in the field of data visualization. In his 1983 book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, he says “A large share of ink on a graphic should present data-information, the ink changing as the data change. Data-ink is the non-erasable core of a graphic, the non-redundant ink arranged in response to variation in the numbers represented.”

Below is an example of the same data represented with two charts – one with low data-ink ratio, and the other with a high ratio. You’ll notice that the one with a high data-ink ratio is a lot more appealing, and communicates the story behind the data more clearly.

Image source: JesseFagan.com

With dashboards, just as with websites, less is more.

Armed with this insight, you’re now ready to go out and build effective dashboards that solve problems, rather than confuse viewers.

Do you build information dashboards frequently? Which of these ideas will have the biggest impact on your dashboards?

The post What You Need to Know About Designing Information Dashboards appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

In this article I want to look into various styles and ideas for creating administration dashboard pages. These are typical website layouts built using HTML5/CSS3/JS. Except users will not ever see these designs because the admin CP is only needed for website settings, templates, or updating posts/pages. But there are still lots of exceptional designs for admin dashboards and I hope to showcase a number of trends in this article.

Tabbed Navigation

Utilizing tab buttons for page navigation has been a common trend for years. The reason it works so well in dashboard pages is because you often need to organize a lot of similar tools under the same umbrella. Using both horizontal and vertical tab menus can offer related sub-menu positions for including tons of links.

Any form of tabbed link design can work for a navbar. You do not need to handle the typical rounded corners and button interface design. More often it helps to make very simple tabs which behave as links, also using background images for icon artwork. This helps users to determine which links go to which section of the administration panel. Tabbed designs also offer a very flashy interface, using big text and bold letters will help the links stand out among other text.

I can’t make the claim that every control panel navigation should be using tabs. If we look at WordPress’ dashboard it certainly looks more like blocks of list items compared to a tabbed navbar. And WordPress is an extremely popular CMS which goes to show any navigation can work. A good strategy is to plan out a sitemap of links and then follow those ideas to a core group of link items.

Toolbar Icons

I had briefly mentioned icons earlier but I think this design trend is important even outside of navigation. Icons are a picture symbolising the content of a link or some page information. Text requires more time for the brain to read and process what it all means, but pictures are clear and concise. I think icons should be included as interface elements on buttons, tables, headers, input fields, and really any potentially confusing areas on the page.

Modern designers have a much easier time building these interfaces because of the many freebie icon releases to be found online. There are so many collections built using various themes, techniques, and design styles, that you should have no problem locating a set for your admin interface. You can determine good icon placements by scanning the page for content which seems overbearing and might benefit from visual graphics.

Popover Hover Menus

There will not always be enough space on the page to include all the inputs and details you need. Sometimes a good way of handling this problem is to initially hide some features, and then display them later using a popup menu. This could be triggered on hover or by clicking a button/link on the page.

You may also include popover menus for hidden input fields related to some data on the page. Administrators are often busy editing pages or adding new content into the website. This requires a lot of work and patience to put everything together. Obviously a popup block may contain a lot of data – even including modal windows using a lightbox or shadowbox effect.

I really like the example above labeled Mango Admin. You can hover the messages link block and it’ll display some of the messages within the inbox. This trend could be expanded for new posts, drafts, user comments, and tons of other queue systems. Any typical CMS generally requires some content management to keep everything running smoothly. By reorganizing some of this content to appear hidden on the page, it can alleviate room for a more relaxed interface.

Content Display Styles

All the various administration panels do share one thing in common – their purpose is to display information. We may also use the word “content” which can include tables, lists, buttons, graphs, really anything. The entire layout is generally focused to encapsulate this content where is it easy to read and easy to edit.

I like the small icons you can see in the table which would appear to be quick access buttons. You may quickly add, edit, or delete content from within a row of the table. And the icons are colored so you will be able to tell from a distance what they do. Of course, this is just one simple example but trends like these are hard to find. Always keep thinking of new ideas or techniques which would make your administration powers easier and simplified.

It is notable that not all administration interfaces will have graphs and charts and statistics. Sometimes you will just be dealing with straight information. And even though this may seem boring, you have to think about how you will be interacting with all this data. Then you will be looking at the challenge from a user’s perception. No matter how many ideas you try out they are all worth it, because nobody has the perfect design UI and there are always new trends on the horizon.

Showcase Gallery

All of the trends listed in this article provide a nice starting point for designers. But I think you can learn a lot by studying other common examples for admin dashboards. There is a small collection of beautifully design admin dashboard designs here. You will notice some of the trends I have noted, plus you will probably discover some fresh ideas to use in your own designs.

The post Exploring the Current User Experience Trends for Admin Dashboards appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

phpMyAdmin started as a humble project with modest aspirations. Inspired by Peter Kuppelwieser’s MySQL-Webadmin, Tobias Ratschiller began work on phpMyAdmin in 1998, but later abandoned the already popular project in 2000 due to lack of time. It was eventually Olivier Müller, Marc Delisle and Loïc Chapeaux that in 2001 eventually registered phpMyAdmin at SourceForge, and development has never looked back.

Today, with over 200,000 direct downloads per month, it has evolved into a gigantic concept in its own right — the number of lines of code has risen from 13,496 to 508,761, made possible by over 650 contributors from across the globe, translated into 72 languages, and the total cost of it all coming in at the relatively cheap total of $7,485,316.

Happy Birthday phpMyAdmin. All the best for the next 15!

The post phpMyAdmin Turns 15 Years Old This Week! appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.