People expect to find options in the area where the feature is presented.Īs WordPress develops, expect to see such changes. Personally, I would group the settings for each option such as Writing, Reading, and Discussion on their appropriate main screen such as Posts and Pages, Appearance for “Reading” options, and Comments for Discussion settings. I’ve had clients and students look for a way to publish under Settings > Writing or Reading, and getting lost under Settings > Discussion to find their site’s comments. For example, under Settings you will find General, Writing, Reading, and Discussion, among others. I’m waiting for it to be called “Customization” soon as that is where the trend is going. Posts and Pages were divided into separate screens, Options became Tools and Settings, and Presentation morphed into Themes then Appearance. WordPress clearly had to improve the interface as the content management system became more and more complex and intricate.
It was clean, minimalistic, and easy to use. If you wished to publish, you clicked Write and chose between publishing a post or Page by WordPress version 1.5. We had Dashboard, Write, Manage, Links, Presentation (Themes/Appearance), Plugins (only on self-hosted or managed versions of WordPress), Users, and Options. Things were very simple, and I miss that simplicity. Today, these are called the Administration Screens, not far from the original.Įach panel or screen represented a collection of options and features in WordPress.
The overall interface was called the Administration Panels. In 2004, a small team that included me and early WordPress developers started naming all the interface elements in WordPress. They are doing it again on with a “new and improved” interface and via their Jetpack WordPress Plugin with the new “one stop united Dashboard” feature.Ī little history is needed in today’s tutorial on the naming of the WordPress interface, the backend, administration screens/panels, dashboard, codey-hacky part of WordPress.
One of the greatest challenges I have in teaching WordPress to clients, students, and in workshops and online courses like Lorelle’s WordPress School is the fact that WordPress keeps changing the interface and the names of the various interface bits and pieces.