The late March 2008 release of WordPress 2.5 brought along an administrator area design overhaul by Happy Cog. They took feedback from the entire WordPress community and set out to create a better user experience. Overall, it was a much-needed overhaul and Happy Cog did an amazing job. So this post isn’t about plugins to change or improve the admin or fix broken features. Here are four alternative WordPress admin themes that are compatible with version 2.5.
Admin themes are tough to make. It’s almost impossible to touch anything but the CSS so the theme isn’t broken by future upgrades. There were some nice themes out there pre-2.5, but most of them broke with the 2.5 admin re-design. The following four themes were created entirely from scratch and use nothing but some tricky CSS mastery and images.
Leopard Admin
Teddy Hwang created the Leopard Admin back in March, shortly before the release of Happy Cog’s new admin interface. Unfortunately, just a few weeks later he managed to preview the new interface and realized that Leopard Admin may break with the new installation. Teddy decided to keep Leopard Admin alive and helped it become one of the few admin themes to survive the latest and greatest WordPress upgrade.
Most of the original admin design is retained inside a frame – yes, a frame – in the center of the page. The links have been moved to the sidebar and given OS X-esque icons. Besides the navigation and header, nothing else has changed. The rest of the page is always contained in that center frame.
Download the Leopard Admin theme
Fluency Admin
Dean Robinson, author of the Fluency Admin theme, decided that the new WordPress admin interface just wasn’t what he was looking for. He was a huge fan of Steve Smith’s Tiger Admin theme – as were we – but when he saw it broke with version 2.5, he decided to go off and create his own clean theme. The result? The amazing Fluency Admin theme.
Fluency sports a subtle gray color scheme and new typography. Also, similar to the Leopard Admin theme, it has main sidebar navigation and lists subpages along the top. Images are few – if any – but the Fluency theme definitely displays a sense of professionalism throughout its pages.
Download the Fluency Admin theme
Stylish Blue
The Stylish Blue theme is more of a color scheme than a full-blown theme like the previous two were. It keeps the same default admin structure but adds a dark blue color scheme into the mix, making it look very professional.
Stylish Blue has no options page, and though it installs as a plugin, you can easily activate and deactivate it for individual users via the Edit Profile page, where it is listed as another available color scheme. While there aren’t any huge structural changes, the Stylish Blue theme certainly ups the coolness factor by a few.
Download the Stylish Blue theme
Mobile Admin
The Mobile Admin theme is the best-looking and most functional mobile admin theme we found. While it can be used on any mobile phone, its focus is the iPhone and iPod Touch. This theme retains the complete functionality of the admin in a visually scaled down version.
At first you are greeted with the WordPress dashboard, which features incoming links, recent posts, blog stats, and comments. The write panel features most of the standard features including auto-save and support for tagging, and posts can be managed like in the default admin. Comments can be easily moderated, profiles can be edited, and almost every admin plugin is supported. Of course, you can always switch back to the default theme if you want.
Download the Mobile Admin theme
Conclusion
Customizable color schemes are an awesome addition to WordPress 2.5, and you can be assured that another large design overhaul won’t be applied again any time soon. The four themes you just read about are great examples of what can be done without touching anything but the CSS. I hope that we see many more admin themes in the future.
Post Revisions:
- 6 August, 2010 @ 3:59 [Current Revision] by dan philibin
- 5 August, 2010 @ 5:52 by Ryan Imel
- 23 June, 2008 @ 6:00 by Ryan Imel
Posted June 23, 2008
dinu said:
Nice collection .. but the thing is I am happy with current theme !! will change only when there is something really better than this one
on June 23, 2008 at 6:50 am
Mike Robinson said:
Fluency is awesome, much better than the default 2.5.
on June 23, 2008 at 7:06 am
johno said:
The Mobile Admin theme looks great. Not an easy task to squeeze all that functionality into such a small space. Applause, and thanks for pointing this out.
on June 23, 2008 at 8:10 am
Frank said:
and a further: Adminimize
on June 23, 2008 at 8:24 am
Josh said:
It’s great that 2.5 makes it alot easier to customize the admin now over previous versions.
I was using fluencyadmin for a while on my personal blog but have since switched back to the default admin using planetozh plugin for changing the colors.
on June 23, 2008 at 1:52 pm
flisterz said:
leopard admin looks neat. gotta try mobile admin too. thanks!
on June 24, 2008 at 1:12 am
Marcus said:
Fluency is also my favourite. Maybe a menu bar is better on the left side than the standard in 2.5 now.
on June 24, 2008 at 2:47 am
Corey Freeman said:
Thanks for the awesome themes. I use leopard admin and since I’m on a MAC it makes using WP feel a lot more natural.
on June 24, 2008 at 12:09 pm
David Myers said:
Leopard Admin looks awesome. Thanks for the links!
on June 25, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Tom - StandOutBlogger.com said:
nice themes. I didn’t know you could get new admin themes.
on June 28, 2008 at 12:51 am
jbj said:
Really love Leopard admin, and even more the iPhone theme. Thanks for sharing =)
on July 1, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Deca said:
Wow, it’s great themes
on July 5, 2008 at 1:40 am
Yonghwee said:
I kinda like the default admin theme for WordPress 2.5 but these are pretty awesome!
on July 12, 2008 at 6:54 am
Huey said:
I use Fluency Admin and the plugin is one in all
on July 26, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Paul said:
The Mobile Theme causes a fatal error in 2.6… and from what I hear it was in 2.5 as well.
on September 15, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Jamiel Sharief said:
Excellent, thanks for putting this together. Any other ones kicking around?
on January 31, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Loy said:
How’s the speed on this thing? Does it slow down your install?
on July 29, 2010 at 11:06 pm