Kamila Thompson When your agency hands off a new WordPress site, the client starts logging into WP-Admin. WordPress ships that screen the same way for everybody, so unless you change it, what you delivered is the dashboard built for developers. A WordPress client dashboard is what WP-Admin looks like once you have set what each person can reach, cleared away what they do not need, and put branding on it.
Doing that gets you: a client who can find the job they logged in to do, a client who cannot reach the settings that break a site, and a handover that looks finished. Below is how to set one up, in the order that works. Ask what the client will be doing, set their role, clear and brand their screens, then keep the result as the starting point for your next build.
Ask what the client will be doing on the site
Asking what the client will be doing on the site gives you the list everything else is built from. For most clients it comes to three or four jobs: publish a post, change some copy, upload images, check orders. Ask the people who will be logging in.
That list tells you which role each person needs and which links belong on their first screen. It also stops you removing something they turn out to use, which makes their job harder and puts them back in your inbox.
Set the right role for each person
Setting the right role for each person is how you control what they can reach. WordPress comes with five roles built in, and one of them covers most clients with no extra work.
- Administrator can do everything, including installing plugins, switching themes and editing site settings.
- Editor can write, edit, publish and delete any post or page, and manage media and comments.
- Author can publish and manage only their own posts.
- Contributor can write posts but cannot publish them.
- Subscriber can manage their own profile and nothing else.
Editor is the one most clients need. It covers a typical content list while keeping the person out of plugins, themes and settings, which are places where a wrong click takes a site down.
When Editor does not cover something a client has to do, such as handling WooCommerce orders, add that permission to a copy of Editor instead of taking permissions away from Administrator. PublishPress Capabilities and User Role Editor both do this. Building up from Editor means the only permissions switched on are ones you chose, while stripping down from Administrator means remembering everything you meant to remove.
You will also see advice about hiding menus from clients. Hiding tidies the screen and it is not a permission, because the page behind a hidden menu still loads for anyone who has the URL. Use roles for what people are allowed to do and menu hiding for what they have to look at.
Clear the dashboard and brand the login screen
Clearing the dashboard and branding the login screen fixes the two screens a client sees most.
The dashboard is what loads straight after login, and WordPress fills it with a news feed, an activity panel and whatever your plugins have added. None of it relates to the list you wrote, so the client scans past all of it every time. Clear it and put up one panel with links to their three or four jobs and a line saying how to reach you, so they land where they are going. White Label CMS does this without any code. Hide plugin update and licence notices from non-admin roles while you are there, because a client who sees one either ignores it or emails you about work you already handle.
The login screen is about how finished the work looks. A client seeing a default WordPress logo every week is being reminded whose software it is rather than whose site it is. White Label CMS covers the login logo and background, the admin bar, the menus and the footer, and Branda does the same while also rebranding system emails.
Save it as the starting point for your next build
Saving it as the starting point for your next build is what stops this being a job you redo constantly. What each client needs to do varies from site to site. The setup around it mostly does not, because the branding, the cleared widgets, the hidden notices and the standard Editor role are the same on every site you deliver.
Set those up once on an install you keep, and clone that install for new builds. The part that genuinely varies, which is usually one custom role and the links on the welcome panel, is then the only piece you build fresh each time.
Frequently asked questions
Agency hosting built for a portfolio
Liquid Web’s managed WordPress hosting is built for agencies running client sites in volume, with staging environments for building and testing your base install before it goes near a client.
We build WordPress software too. LearnDash, Kadence, Give and The Events Calendar are Nexcess products, so the people you reach when a client site misbehaves know both the hosting and the plugins on it.