All users on WordPress.com received a dashboard refresh today at 12 p.m. ET. More information here.
The new dashboard looks different: new colors, better typography, and, coming soon, a responsive layout delivering a better mobile/tablet experience. There are no functional changes to the dashboard, and all the menu items remain in the same place.
For more VIP-specific information, please see our previous post.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
The WordPress dashboard has been looking forward to a refresh for some time, and on Monday June 17th, the WordPress.com dashboard will get a facelift! Here’s what you can look forward to:
We’ve done all this while retaining the familiar, user-tested interface that millions of users already know and love. You can learn more about the new design here.
What’s changing?
The dashboard will look different: new colors, better typography, and, coming soon, a responsive layout delivering a better mobile/tablet experience. There will be no functional changes to the dashboard, and all the menu items will remain in the same place.
When is this update coming?
On Monday, the new dashboard will be turned on for all WordPress.com users. If your users would like to delay the new dashboard, they can navigate to their Personal Settings page and select the box “Delay new design until July 17th.” This will turn off the dashboard until July 17, when the old dashboard will be retired from WordPress.com.
Can’t wait until Monday?
Preview the new awesomeness by heading over to Users → Personal Settings in your blog’s dashboard and checking Enable experimental admin design (MP6), then clicking Save Changes.
How should I notify my team?
You can send along this WordPress.com post, which discusses the new design and has instructions on how to enable it for testing. We will also be sending out an email this week to all authors, editors and administrators on any WordPress.com VIP site notifying them about the coming upgrade.
Can we use this on our development/staging/self-hosted WordPress sites?
You sure can! The new WordPress Dashboard is available for WordPress.org/self-hosted sites via the MP6 plugin.
What if I really need to delay the new dashboard because we need to make some changes to our custom UI?
While this is not advised, developers can delay the new dashboard for all users on a VIP site until July 17 by adding the following line to their functions.php file:
add_filter( 'wpcom_disable_mp6', '__return_true' );
As always, if you have any questions, run into any issues or spot any bugs, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
We’ve pushed an update to the “SVN Access” widget in the VIP Dashboard for each site to include a list of all the SVN repositories that you currently have access to, including a handy link to each repo.
If you’ve never seen the SVN Access widget before, check it out! It’s a great way to keep an eye on who currently has access to your code. We highly recommend doing a routine audit (at least once a month) of this list. Find someone who shouldn’t have access? Just send in a request and we can help you remove them.
Available under the “VIP” menu item in your administration area there is now Plugins. The Plugins Page lists all of the approved plugins that are available for you to use, as well as what plugins are already in use by your theme.
A few notes: this feature requires that your theme is using our wpcom_vip_load_plugin() helper function to load the approved plugins; it will not display or highlight plugins loaded directly using include() or require() in your theme; and this list will also not include any plugins that are within the theme (custom plugins).
WordPress VIP Lobby 
You must be logged in to post a comment.