TIW Dashboard – Admin customizer
TIW Dashboard – Admin customizer
Description
TIW Dashboard gives the WordPress admin a new coat of paint: a dark sidebar, white content cards with soft shadows, coral accents and the Inter Tight typeface bundled inside the plugin. The new look applies as soon as you activate the plugin, and everything else can be switched on or off from the TIW Dashboard menu in the sidebar.
The features below are free and ready to use. Items marked Pro are part of TIW Dashboard Pro, sold separately.
What you get for free
- A complete admin restyle: dark sidebar with a clear current-item pill, rounded cards and forms, restyled list tables, tabs, notices and buttons, plus a tidier toolbar.
- The Inter Tight font family, bundled with the plugin and served locally. Nothing is loaded from Google or any other service.
- A notices chip: admin notices gather in a small corner badge with a counter, so they stop pushing your content down the page. You pick which notice types it collects, or turn it off entirely.
- Avatar tools: let users upload their own profile picture, set a site-wide default avatar, and show tidy initials tiles for anyone without a photo.
- Site identity shortcuts: Site Title, Tagline and Site Icon right at the top of the Appearance tab, saving to WordPress’ own settings.
- Hide core dashboard widgets: remove Site Health, At a Glance, Activity, Quick Draft or Events & News with a checklist.
- Smaller touches: hide the WordPress logo menu, hide Screen Options or the Help tab, skip jQuery Migrate on the front end, and a classic editor switch.
- A clean uninstall: deactivate or remove the plugin and your admin goes back to normal. On uninstall it deletes its own option and nothing else.
Going further with Pro
TIW Dashboard Pro unlocks, among other things:
- The Modern layout: a slim header bar with pill navigation, spotlight search (Cmd or Ctrl+K) and a user card.
- Quick Dock: your own floating shortcut bar with up to 8 links and 22 icons.
- A front-end toolbar for logged-in visitors, in the same style.
- A login page makeover with split-screen layout, custom logo and text sizes.
- Nine dashboard widgets: daily overview, analytics, visitors, activity, content, site health, site information, notes and a to-do list.
- Accent colors and the TIW admin color scheme, custom CSS, and custom admin footer text.
- A notification center in one bell: updates, site health, pending comments and admin notices with per-item actions and mute options.
- A font library of 40 Google families, downloaded once by your server and then served locally from your uploads folder.
- Menu Editor, Security hardening switches and White Label tools.
Interested in the extras? Upgrade to TIW Dashboard Pro.
Privacy
The free plugin collects nothing, tracks nothing, and makes no external requests. Everything it needs is bundled. If you later use the font library in Pro, your server downloads the chosen font files from Google once and serves them locally from then on.
Requirements
WordPress 6.4 or higher and PHP 7.4 or higher. On older WordPress versions the plugin will not activate, and it tells you why instead of breaking anything.
External services
None. The free plugin makes no external network requests at all: no analytics, no tracking pixels, no license checks, no font or asset CDNs. Everything it loads comes from your own site.
For transparency, if you later upgrade with the TIW Dashboard Pro add-on, the pro plugin connects to two external services, and its readme documents them in the same detail:
- Freemius, used for checkout, license validation, account management and updates. It receives the license key, site URL, admin email and basic environment details, and only on license actions and update checks.
- Google Fonts, used only when you pick a non-default admin font: the font files are downloaded once and then served locally from your own site.
Both stay inactive as long as you only run the free plugin.
Installation
- Go to Plugins, Add New and search for TIW Dashboard, or upload the ZIP through Add New, Upload Plugin.
- Activate the plugin.
- Open the TIW Dashboard menu in the sidebar and pick what you want to use.
Screenshots
(PRO) The redesigned admin dashboard: site overview, visitors, analytics, notes and a to-do list in one screen.
(PRO) The Appearance tab: site identity, Default or Modern layout, accent color, color scheme and typography.
(PRO) The Menu & Toolbar tab: hide the front-end toolbar, notification center, custom toolbar logo and menu editor.
(PRO) The Dock tab: a floating quick dock with your own shortcut items and drag-and-drop ordering.
(PRO) The Brand & Login tab: a custom login screen with split-screen layout, logo and background.
(PRO) The Security tab: redirection, user security, header hardening, feeds, REST API locking and archives.
Faq
Anything from WordPress 6.4 up to the current release. On older versions the plugin refuses to activate and shows a short notice explaining why.
No. The restyle is a single stylesheet plus a few small scripts that only load where they are used. The font is bundled locally, so there are no extra requests at runtime.
Yes. Deactivate the plugin and your admin looks exactly as before. It does not change your content or add database tables.
That is the custom notice feature, on by default so you can see what it does. You can choose which notice types it collects, or switch it off under TIW Dashboard, Advanced, Productivity.
The free version always keeps the default color: the whole new admin look uses the default accent out of the box. Swapping to a different accent preset or picking a fully custom color is part of TIW Dashboard Pro.
No. It makes no external requests and contains no license or tracking code at all. If you buy Pro, license activation and updates then run through Freemius, our merchant of record, and you can see exactly what is stored on the Account screen.
Reviews
Changelog
1.0.0
- First public release.