A few weeks ago I posted a list of 30 improvements I’d like to see in WordPress 2.6. Item number one? Customizable color schemes – possibly with COLOURlovers integration. Two weeks later, I’ve found a plugin that hits the nail on the head. The Admin CSS Designer Tool is an amazing new plugin that introduces the ability to change your site’s admin colors with built-in COLOURlovers functionality. Looking at the video demo on Ozh’s blog, it looks like a pretty functional plugin. Here’s what we think.
At first glance, the Admin CSS Designer Tool is an awesome plugin. Installation is quick and simple with hardly any customization needed. Each user can choose his or her own color scheme on their edit profile page.
Packaged with this plugin are ten pre-defined palettes from ColourLovers.com. You can instantly preview what the admin will look like with the new color scheme or delete ugly ones off the list.
The best part about this plugin is its custom color scheme feature. After selecting the ‘Random CSS’ option and saving your settings, you’re presented with a little pop-up window with the current color scheme. From here you can drag and drop the palette’s colors to reorder them. If you don’t like a particular set you can load a new one. Individual swatches can also be manually replaced with a color picker or hexadecimal value. All of this snazzy re-decorating is done with the help of COLOURlover’s new developer API. If you find a combination of colors you like, you can save the palette as a CSS stylesheet for later or current use.
Overall, it’s a pretty impressive plugin. It’s extremely simple to use and has plenty of features to suit most users.
Pros:
-Easy Installation, no configuration required
-Feature-rich
-COLOURlovers integration
-Ability to create your own color sets
-Drag-and-drop swatch reordering
-Lets you save a particular palette as a stylesheet for later use
Cons:
-Hard to find good color combinations, better off creating your own
-Unable to set colors for specific areas of the admin (eg. links, header background)
Ozh’s Admin CSS Designer Tool is a free download available from his blog.
Post Revisions:
- 6 August, 2010 @ 4:07 [Current Revision] by dan philibin
- 5 August, 2010 @ 5:50 by Ryan Imel
- 13 May, 2008 @ 6:00 by Ryan Imel
[...] Review written at WPCandy [...]
Thanks for your kind review
[...] The idea was great, lets hope WordPress developers will consider this feature. As of now, Dan has blogged about a plugin which has ability to change your site’s admin colors with built-in COLOURlovers [...]
@Ozh no problem man, thanks for the awesome plugin!
And if you are having trouble deciding which colors to choose, check out http://scott-thomason.org/color-palettes
This plugin looks pretty awesome, I commented on Ozh’s original post when this was being developed, talking about how it might be used to quickly provide alternate colour schemes of a website for a client, so I reckon I’m going to have a look at the code and see if I can hack it to do that.
Nice review.
[...] COLOURlovers Admin CSS Designer Tool (tags: WordPress plugin color design CSS theme) [...]
Maybe you should encourage anyone who finds a good ColourLovers palette that works in WordPress to tag it ‘ozh-wordpressadmincolors’ or something similar to make it easy to find nice compatible palettes.
[...] Ozh decided to mix in COLOURlovers integration with this plugin. It uses COLOURlovers.com’s new API to let you scan through palettes and pick a good color scheme for your blog. The Admin CSS Designer Tool also allows you to use a standard color picker to choose your own colors or randomize the selection. Read our full review [...]
Keep working ,great job!