Review: Fluency Admin for Wordpress 2.5
For those of you who haven’t updated to Wordpress 2.5, there have been some changes, particularly with the administration interface. I don’t find this new design to be particularly challenging to use, compared to the old design, but I don’t find it to be very attractive. For some people, that rusty orange color is just what was needed to spice up the design but for me, I just don’t like it. The new design looks chunky and uncoordinated. Call me fussy, but I prefer my blogging workspace to be neat and clean.
Cue in Dean J. Robinson’s Fluency Admin, a plugin that you can install to create an attractive, clean, administration area. At the time of writing, the latest release is version 1.1. It is a gray and white theme with blue links and makes use of both horizontal and vertical menus. It is dark, conservative, and doesn’t stand out on my monitor at work. The plugin is actively updated and the author continuously addresses issues that appear in the support forums - a promising sign that this plugin will continue to improve rather than be abandoned.
The layout is generally a 2 column theme - left navigation featuring the main categories (Dashboard, Write, Manage, etc.), the main column containing the content of the page. However, there is occasionally a third column that contains page-specific options. This 3 column layout makes certain elements, such as the writing area, wide enough but not too wide. 1 Even having just 1 extra column helps reduce stretched out tables, such as in Manage > Pages, or Settings > Misc where the colored backgrounds start turning into horizontal stripes.
What’s this, Wordpress? Do. Not. Like.
One element that I particularly like is that the options on the main navigation are given the same amount of importance. I found it odd that Settings, Plugins, and Users are displayed in a smaller font in the official release. While I use Write, Manage, Design, and Comments far more, I find that I semi-frequently go into Settings and Plugins. Splitting up the main navigation menu by space and font size is confusing, Wordpress!
A couple other minor things I like in Fluency are:
- The Comments counter is a simple oval, not a talk bubble that takes up space. It’s a small detail but it ends up pushing the main content down about 50 pixels, even when there aren’t any comments. Sure, it balances out the spacing around the title, but Fluency Admin fixes that by pushing it into the upper bar, right up there with the Howdy and Logout. Compact.
- The section titles stand out. Both the official Wordpress theme and Fluency Admin’s section titles are a gray color, but Fluency Admin’s stands out more by having a solid color background around it (even though it’s gray too). With all the light, bright colors in the official Wordpress theme, a weak gray section title doesn’t stand out. It’s not that big of a deal, but the 2.0 theme at least had a bright blue underline to help make it stand out.
Issues I’ve Noticed
Originally, I had a list of issues, but after hopping over to the Fluency Admin site to see if they were known, I found that there was a new version to install. To my happy surprise, found that most of the issues were fixed! Goes to show how dedicated Mr. Robinson is in maintaining his plugin.
“Preview” doesn’t really look like a button to me.
I guess my only main critique would be that the Preview This Post and Save/Publish areas are not very distinguishable from the rest of the right navigation. That may be the one thing I like more in the official Wordpress theme (except the colors…I still don’t like the colors). I’m all for the gray theme but the Preview text looks like a regular old link to me, not a button. When I first started using Fluency Admin, I couldn’t find the Preview option because I first looked for a button (like the Save, Publish, and Delete buttons) and then a blue link.
A couple minor things are:
- When you’re on the Comments page, the location arrow tip gets buried by the oval. I’m guessing that the position is either off by 2-3 pixels or that this is actually part of the design. Maybe a poke the bubble kind of thing.
- The horizontal submenus are no longer fixed and now scroll with the rest of the page. I kind of like them in the old version because then all my important menus were immediately available. It’s not a big deal though.
Final Thoughts
Fluency Admin is a refreshing alternative to the horizontal style favored by Wordpress. While the gray and white color scheme may be too bland for some people, the better organization makes up for it. I highly recommend it if you’ve got mixed feelings about the standard admin theme.
To download Fluency Admin or to view more screenshots, go to Fluency Admin @ deanjrobinson.com.
- I realize that I can resize my browser window to make things smaller but why should I? [↩]
Related Posts
Comments
Wasn’t too thrilled about the new dashboard look either. I might try this.
@Ryan: Neither do it…I kind of wish they had given users options to use the new one or the old one. I don’t find it left aligned too much (my own site has that kind of thing) but I find it too wide.
@Nagato: I hope you do! All major flaws have since been worked out, as far as I can tell. There are other themes out there but I think this one is the nicest.
WP hates me and won’t let me convert without breaking the entire site :(
Fluency is my choice of admin theme…. based on Tiger which I adored pre 2.5
Robinson has always been good with updates for his themes and plugins, and 1.1 is a real step up from 1.0 fixing the big problems of converting from 2.5RC1 to 2.5…
The left allign of the old admin yet the top section being liquid put me off… it looks garish on my widescreen, Also, i love the grey tones, I am barely distracted as I blog, and it is barely noticeable when I am in class or something.
I also liked Tiger too, prior to 2.5. I keep hoping that it will be updated but so far, I haven’t seen any signs.
@Caitlin
Thing is, I couldn’t even get the site to revert to 2.5 in the first place, let alone try out the plugin.
Had a go once again with a test site, and it still broke lawl. Oh well.
Personally, I don’t like the default dashboard, it is much to “left aligned”, but I can deal with it for now. I like the clean interface of Fluency, and the color scheme isn’t bad, since well.. pen and paper is much more bland :)