The CMS dashboard that helps manage content, systematically

How we designed and built a clear, useful and comprehensive interface for the people who actually write and edit websites.

Open-source content-management systems have evolved hugely since 2003, the year in which Google acquired Pyra Labs and Matt Mullenweg forked b2. And, generally speaking, the work of content creators and editors using this software has got steadily easier as it has become more functional and powerful.

Yet on every open-source CMS we’ve tried as designers and developers at Yes we work, the dashboard — the interface presented when a user first logs in to write or edit — seems to have missed the progress boat. They tend to be either:

• too basic, providing no more than a rudimentary set of article lists and recent content snippets;
• too obsessed with traffic and analytics – information that’s more important for marketing / sales / SEO analysts than for the editorial team;
• too technical, showing server configuration information, or technical settings (like the current theme choice) that’s irrelevant or off-putting for editorial users;
• cluttered by information that’s irrelevant to the site in question, such as the latest news about the CMS itself.

No CMS dashboard we’ve seen gives you an immediate and compelling sense of recent activity and of how the content is evolving; of whether there are any content-related issues that might need addressing urgently; or — on sites with multiple contributors — of what’s happened since you last logged in, and what you might need to look at first.

Neither do the dashboards we’ve seen adapt properly and intelligently to the the permissions and the needs of the current user.

At Yes we work, when we realised we were habitually telling our clients to ‘just ignore the screen you see when you first log in’, we decided to do something about it.

So we designed and built Fabrica Dashboard.

It’s a WordPress plugin, because that’s the CMS we most commonly build with and extend, but the ideas it implements could be adapted for other platforms.

Fabrica Dashboard gives instant insights into:

• How many published items, authors, users, media files, comments, commenters and repeat commenters make up a site.
• Recent activity: what’s been going on since the user’s last session, with a filterable list of content additions and edits, showing who did them and when.
• Content and media breakdowns: The split between posts, pages and custom content types; between published, in draft, scheduled or trashed items; how many uploads you have, their file types, and how much disk space they take up.
• Urgent tasks: it also gives a sense of what you need to read, reply to, edit, publish, or delete in order to keep the site updated, and can alert admin users to possible security issues or suspicious activity.

It requires no configuration and adapts to the permission level of the current user, allowing content creators and editors to get at-a-glance answers to the following questions:

How big is my site? What’s changed since my last login?

The Editorial Overview widget presents top-line counts of publications and users help you to keep track of your site’s growth from one login to the next.

If you co-write with other people, or have editorial/administrative responsibility for a team, this helps you keep up to date with what everyone else is working on.

What makes up my site?

The Content Breakdown widget shows what content types a site is made of, what’s scheduled, what’s still in draft, and what has been trashed — allowing you to quickly spot what needs attention. A toggle lets you focus on just your own content.

Who did what, when?

The Content Activity widget allows you to catch up on all the recent editorial activity on your site, across all content types; you can filter activity by post type, user or time period, and distinguish edits of existing content from new additions. You can then check individual changes with a direct link to the post’s Compare Revisions screen (which shows a diff for comparison).

What’s in my uploads folder?

The Media Breakdown widget helps you keep server space in check, spot outdated, unwanted and malicious file formats, and get early warning of any security issues with flags for any file formats not allowed by your WordPress configuration. You can toggle to only see your own uploads, linked through to the Media browser so you can find specific files more easily.

Are comment numbers growing? What’s happened since your last log-in?

The Discussion Overview widget shows a top-line count of comments, commenters and repeat commenters, so you can gauge whether discussion on your site is growing healthily, and see what actions you need to take to stay up to date with your audience.

Who has commented? Which comments need your attention?

The Comments Activity widget shows latest comments; it lets you toggle to see only replies to your own posts and comments, so you can keep your visitors engaged; or keep an eye on recent comments from across the whole site in the approval/spam queues.

Other key characteristics

Fabrica Dashboard…

• works with no configuration on any self-hosted WordPress site, though it is most powerful on multi-author sites, especially those which have custom post types and bespoke code;
• reflects existing site options and honours role permissions
• is fully compatible with all other Dashboard widgets for e-commerce, SEO, analytics, etc – these can be arranged alongside the Fabrica Dashboard widgets however you like;
• doesn’t create new database tables;
• has no dependencies beyond WordPress core;
• only ever calls home when checking for updates;
• doesn’t transfer any information about the site it’s on.

How to get it

Fabrica Dashboard can be purchased on the Fabrica website. It currently costs £10 for a single-site license and £100 for a multi-site license.