White Label CMS
If you’re a web developer building websites for clients using WordPress, you probably spend a bit of time explaining all the references to WordPress in their new dashboard. The login screen, the dashboard and all the admin menu items can be confusing. The White Label CMS plugin allows you to customise the entire client experience including the login screen, dashboard and admin menus.
Features
Branding
- Hide WordPress Logo and Links
- Add Admin Bar Logo with alt text and url
- Change or remove "Howdy" admin bar menu
- Replace admin footer text with your own logo, text and url
- Hide WP Version
- Add Side Menu Logo with alt text and url
- Can also replaceable with HTML
Login
- Change Background with image or colour
- Add Side Menu Logo with alt text and url
- Add your own logo
- Add custom css
- Hide Links
Dashboard and Menus
- Add Dashboard Icon and Title
- Hide Dashboard Panel
- Add a Custom Welcome Dashboard Panel and select the target user roles
- Add RSS Dashboard Panel
- Hide/Show admin menus to selected Admin users
- Hide/Show admin bar menus to selected Admin users
And much much more
- Hide Front-end Admin Bar
- Admin Settings (Hide Help Box and Screen Options)
- Hide all nag messages
- Add Custom CSS for Admin
- Add Custom Editor Stylesheet
Customise the Login Page
Why make your client login to the standard boring login page? White Label CMS allows to modify everything on the login page, add your own logos and background images, and even control the CSS if you wish.
Add Your Branding to the Header and Footer
You can add logo’s to the admin bar, menu and footer to give your client a better branded experience. Personalising the backend of WordPress will give your client the feeling that this is their website, not a generic website.
Customise the Dashboard
Are you tired of telling your clients to ignore everything on the Dashboard, but it’s confusing? Well, with White Label CMS you can clear everything from the dashboard and add in your own dashboard panel. You can even add your own RSS feed to the dashboard panel so you clients can be kept up to date which what you are doing with your business. Isn’t this more important than showing your clients where and when the next WordPress meet up is?
Control with Menus Appear for Your Client
We have created a new feature called the White Label CMS Admin which allows you had menus for other users. It’s very simple to setup and allows you to give clients admin access, but makes it harder for them to stumble across settings and mess up the site, meaning you have to fix it.
Setup a Site in Seconds Using the Wizard
Want to setup the site with just a few clicks, use the Wizard, to add your branding and your clients details and you will be up and running in seconds. White Label CMS is very powerful, but most of the time you want to just set up the basics and move onto your next task, the wizard allows you to do this.
No longer will you have to tell your clients to ignore the dashboard!
Credits
This plugin was inspired through both our own experiences / needs and these great articles: Cats who code, Smashing Magazine, Net Tutsplus, Craig Buckler and by our won hard working developers here at Video User Manuals.
What Would You Like To See In The Next Version?
We would love to hear how you are using the plugin, so please leave your comments below!
Feature Requests & Support
Got a feature request for WLCMS, let us know here. Got a support question, head on over to the support forums.
Remove Howdy. You could include alternatives, but for simplicity just provide the option to disable it.
Great plugin. I have used it with the Genesis framework and child themes by StudioPress. One issue is the logos are require to be saved in the Genesis framework images folder, rather than the child theme’s images directory. When the Genesis theme framework is updated it overwrites / removes the logo images. Is it possible to choose the image directory to overcome this issue? Many thanks.
Hi Nik,
We are aware of this issue and it will be fixed for the next version.
Thanks
I’m using White Label CMS on WP Multisite and have my client sites hosted there. It seems that when I launch a site and domain map the clients domain to my multisite install, the custom login logo no longer shows.
Its because the link is referencing the domain mapped url now. Problem is that the images are in folders on my multisite install.
Any ideas how to fix. thanks for a great plugin
The installation instruction call for logos are as follows:
“Header Logo: custom-logo.gif
Footer Logo: custom-logo.gif
Custom Login Logo: custom-login-logo.gif”
Why is the Header and Footer Logo, the same file name?
I would like to put my customer’s log in the header and on login and my logo in the footer.
Are these instructions a mistake? If not, how do I accomplish what I need to do?
Hi Ben,
A lot of people like to set it up with their company branding in the header and the footer, this is why it is the same file. However you can change it to be what ever you want, and have 2 different files if you like.
Thanks
Wow amazing plugin and we have added the video manuals.
One request, how do I setup all my clients CMS to use my logo in the footer but hosted on our website.
If we change/update logo we’d like it to change all sites.
We’ve tested using full URL to .png file and works in the browser but not in the settings.
Are we required to put logo in /images directory of theme?
Hi,
Glad you like the video manuals. I am sure you agree that it allows you as a web developer to have a very professional handover to your clients.
Yes, the png file must go into the images folder of your active theme.
We have had lots of feedback about this, and will be making this more flexible in future. Any more feedback would be greatly appreciated.
If I hide other dashboard panels, it makes the change for the Super Admin also. Also, I would like to hide some of the panels on site dashboards, but not all of the panels which I do not believe your plug-in does at the moment.
I would like to suggest that the Super Admin have the ability to choose to show or hide each of the panels individually on the dashboards of sites. Also, it’s not necessary but would be nice to be able to do the same for the Super Admin’ dashboard.
Hi,
Yes, we have had a few people requests for this. We will definitely consider this for the next version.
Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
There is a problem when trying to hide menus when WordPress is installed in French (and maybe other language). It’s not working.
Correct line 225 like this:
$f = create_function(‘&$v,$i’, ‘$v = __($v);’);
Hi,
Absolutely love the plugin, but I’m having issues with the custom images options (ie; logos). I place them in the images folder of the active theme as instructed in a .gif format. But I’m not able to see them even after I refresh or clear my cache.
Hello!
First I’d just like to say that your plug-in is great
It works pretty fine but I had to do a little tweaking so it would work perfectly on my website. This was what I did:
– I used the translate function (__();) on the remove_admin_menus() function in order for it to actually remove the menu items in any language.
– I created functions and admin options to hide New Page buttons and menu item and still show the already created pages (if Hide Pages is off).
– also created a function to hide Media Buttons from post creation page if Hide Media option is on.
– lastly I created function and admin option to hide Screen Options and Help from the top right corner.
I think that those options might come in handy for a lot of people! Mail me if you would like me to send you the source code.
Hi! I would love to have the code for hiding the screen options if you still have it!
Hi Keith,
Try adding the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:
Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Troy.
Also, you should consider disabling the Favorite Actions menu in the upper right of the admin. Or having the option to disable specific favorites. This menu still allow editors to create posts and check comments among other things even if the Posts and Comments menus have been disabled with WLCMS.
Great plug-in, the changes above get my vote too. Thanks.
Hi,
We have added the option to remove the favourites in the new version which we are currently beta testing. But you are correct it should remove those options from the favourites as well.
Thanks
Wondering if the new version of the plugin will be compatible with WordPress 3.1 version. Thanks.
Hey Mark,
All our plugins are updated as soon as possible after a new release of WP so yes the White Label CMS is compatible with 3.1
Enjoy!
Great plugin, with one obvious oversight.
Assuming the idea of white labeling is to remove WordPress branding, then the retention of WordPress urls in the address bar is a dead give away. Is there a way to customize the urls so that the wordpress references are replaced with a white label option?
Hi,
Thanks for the support. The wordpress urls are not a oversight. It is just something we don’t consider to be a priority. If you ever find something that does this, we would be interested to hear about it, but it is not part of our roadmap. Any other suggestions would be gratefully received.
Hi,
Many thanks for the great plugin!
One question… I used a 3rd party theme for my client and if I use this plugin the extra menu, for the setting of this theme, is not displayed.
Can I change this? The client is allowed to access this menu item.
Thanks!
Hi,
Thanks for the kind words. The plugin should no effect any menus other that the core WordPress menus. Are you sure the problem is with the plugin, have you tried uninstalling the plugin to see if the menu appears. The only thing I can think of is if that menu appears as part of the Appearance menu. If that is the case, then if you are trying to give your client editors access, then there is not much you can do about that.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for this incredibly useful plugin!
I don’t know if I’ve missed something though… I’m not sure how to allow a user with ‘editor’ privileges access to other plugins. eg. I use Nextgen gallery on several websites and would like the user to be able to manage the gallery themselves.
The ability to toggle specific plugins on and off would make white-label-cms perfect for my needs!
Is there any way to achieve this?
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the support.
Obviously it would be impossible for us to allow editors access to other plugins, but I believe it is possible in the Nextgen settings to allow editors access to Nextgen.
Thanks
Trying out this plugin and happy with it. One thing that really bugged me was that a Newsletter plugin I had installed for a client wouldn’t show up when logged in as Editor and I had assumed it was this plugin.
Reading the response to this similar problem here made me realise that the Newsletter plugin could be the issue so I checked and yes, it was set to show for Admin level only. I changed it to Editor and now that menu appears for my client.
Thanks!
Jen
Hi there,
I have to replace “template_directory” to “stylesheet_directory” so that images are fetched from the child themes instead. Hopefully you can include this fix in the next release.
Cheers
Ken
Hi Ken,
Yes we will definitely do that. Thanks for the heads up.
Cheers
Looking forward to an update here, so White Label works with child themes. Thanks for the quick fix. What a great tool! I’m surprised this small update hasn’t happened yet. Is there a more updated version of a plugin like this one I should be considering?
Hi Brett,
Thanks for the feedback. The new version, started to snowball with new features and got a little bit out of control, so we are scaling back and trying to keep it simple (the reason why WLCMS is popular to begin with). I will let you know, how it is progressing.
Thanks
Hi there,
This is a fantastic little plugin. Nicely done.
One thing I was wondering was how can this be integrated as a solution for those offering simple websites for their clients. What I mean is, lets say that I have a main website. From this main website I want to allow users to sign up and get wordpress so that they can create there own mini websites. I don’t want to go through the hassle of having to manually do this. Is there a plugin for this. will this plugin do this for me?
Thank-you for the great plugin
Hi,
Thanks for the kind words. Forgive me if I have misunderstood what you meant, but isn’t the functionality that you are asking for exactly what WordPress Multisite does?
Thanks
Really like this plugin. There is however one thing that annoys me: if you deactivate the plugin, and then activate it again, it forgets all your settings. I think it should remember everything, because (at least I do so) often you enabel/disable plugins when you’re developing.
Hi Pär,
Thanks for the idea, but I don’t think we will be implementing this because we think it is better to leave a clean database if the plugin is un-installed rather on the off chance you are turning the plugin on or off. Do you not find it annoying when you see your database is bloated with plugin meta information that you don’t use anymore.
Again, though if more people ask for this, we will consider it.
Thanks
I’m glad it clears out the database. I dislike it when there is all sorts of leftover junk, especially when I’m just trying something out to compare my options.
Thank you first for a fantastic Plugin!
How do you recommend someone test out possible issues with plugins and wordpress? I was disappointed when I found out all my settings were gone, when I just wanted to test. Can I move it out of the directory, then move it back in to disable and save settings? Please consider keeping the settings on deactivation or have an uninstall button like I’ve seen a number of plugins use now (or Delete Settings).
I agree about leaving a clean database, but I would love to see some way of importing our white label settings through some kind of XML jumpstart/boilerplate file so that deploying the plugin time & time again doesn’t require manually inputting the same settings time & time again.
Hey Tom,
There is an import/export feature coming very soon.
Hang in there.
Cheers,
Troy.
It would be awesome to be able to have the plugin designed in such a way that I could have it always customized to my business and just have to change the clients info. Even to the point where my logo is pre-packaged in the plugin. Great plugin! Keep up the great work guys!
Hi Daniel,
We totally agree with what you have said. The White Label CMS plugin is designed for small business owners who will use in a very similar way each time, and so it would be nice to have a config file similar to Video User Manuals which would allow a one click setup of your favourite preferences.
If more people ask for this, we will consider it for the next version.
Thanks
I know that for example adminimize has an import/export option. That would be handy. On every new install just import your settings and you’re done!
Excellent idea.
We will look into this.
Thanks
Hi,
Great work with the plugin, one thing I was wondering was if it was possible to remove the [You are using WordPress 3.0.1] message from the bottom of the [Right Now] panel on the dashboard?
Cheers
Pete
I’m using your latest version of the plugin on a fresh wp 3.0 install.
Is there a way that when creating separate login logos for each mini site, the image link doesnt direct back to the root of the multisite install?
thanks for a great plugin. and your usermanual too 😉
Hi Paul,
Sorry, there is no way to do this built into the plugin. However, if you want to get your hands dirty, it is really easy to modify. In the code, just search for “loginalt()” and make the change there. It is quite simple.
We seem to be getting a lot of requests about mulitsite functionality. We might look to create a new menu option to group and handle these requests in the latest version.
Cheers
This plugin is utterly superb. Fantastic.
My one question is what you covered right at the end there – is it possible in a future release to be able to install it through a multisite network and NOT need to access each individual site (in my case 1200+!!) to make it work?
Hi Nik,
If someone tells us how to do this, then I see how it would make a lot of sense.
Thanks