Who doesn’t love to have fun with all the different ways you can make a WordPress website appear? All these things you can do to make a website appear and act in different ways are definitely some of the best things about WordPress. This is what can help you create a legal themed website and make it look completely different from a business directory website, for example.
While these changes are not purely cosmetic – they can affect the way a website works – they are intended for website visitors. But WordPress is also customizable the other way around – you can white label WordPress if you know how.
That’s what we’re here to show you! In this article, you will read:
White labeling is the process of taking a product or service created by a company and putting your brand on it. White labeling as a branding or product sourcing strategy has been around for a lot longer than WordPress. Supermarket store brands are often white labeled. The same goes for some consumer electronics.
White labeling in WordPress means changing the entire website to have a more uniform branding. Because WordPress allows users to do a lot using themes or website builders to customize how the website looks, white labeling is usually reserved for areas where regular visitors don’t tend to sit. These areas include, but are not limited to, the admin dashboard.
Now, why would anyone want to go through the hassle of white labeling the backend of a WordPress website? It’s not like website developers don’t have enough work to do when building a website. While the process itself is quick and easy and there are plenty of developers to do with plugins and themes, it can still be a lot of work to get a website right.
So if this exact website we need to fix is for a client, wouldn’t it be neat if there was no interruption in branding between the frontend and the backend? The two cannot and should not look the same as they do not function, but there is no reason why some branding elements should not be rolled out across the entire website.
It is also possible to adapt the control panel menu to suit a customer’s exact needs. Usually, you shouldn’t just grab and hide menu options from the control panel, but if you’re working with a client who knows what they want, having the ability to perform this little customization can be very useful.
How do you do anything that requires coding in WordPress? Either edit your website files or download and install a plugin. In this case, a plugin will do – it will protect any changes against future theme updates and save you the hassle of creating a child theme for your website.
It is the most popular plugin on WordPress.org when it comes to white labeling plugins. White Label IYS, so we’re going to use this to explore white-labeling in a website’s admin area. You can find and install the plugin as you usually do – go to: Plugins > Add New Search and install and activate White Label CMS from your website control panel.
After installing and activating the plugin, you can go to Settings > White Label CMS and start its installation. Right off the bat, you’ll be able to choose between performing a Quick Install Wizard and skipping it altogether. The wizard will help you set things up faster.
Setting the Wizard
On the first page, it will ask you – the developer – for your brand. You can provide information including your name, URL, text you want to appear in the footer, and even an RSS feed.
In the next step, you will be asked to provide information about the customer, including the business name and logo. You will also have the option to enable the Retina login logo and you will need to provide an appropriate image for this.
The wizard is optional, so in both cases you’ll need to know your way through the plugin’s options. They are divided into several sections and we will explain them one by one.
Brand Options
Branding options start with the branding of WordPress. You will face the possibility. Hide the WordPress logo and links, hide the WordPress version you are using, and replace “WordPress” in the page titles with custom text.
In the Admin Bar branding section, You will be able to replace the WordPress logo in the admin bar, the WordPress alt text, the “Howdy” greeting, and the WordPress.org link with your own.
In the Side Menu marking section, You can add an image to the side menu, an image that appears when the side menu is collapsed, a URL to add to that image, and alt text for the image.
In the footer branding section, You’ll be able to replace the “thank you for creating with WordPress” copy with an image, add some text to follow that image, or use HTML to create further changes to the footer.
Input Options
The options you have in the login options are the options that allow you to customize the login page of the website. Again, there are several sections under these options. The first is about the logo and the background – Besides choosing the logo image you will be able to choose its size, the color and image of the background, its position and whether to repeat or not.
The Advanced section contains the following options: Hide the “go back” and “sign up/lose password” links and choose a color for the buttons and links on the page.
You will have room to add custom JavaScript and Custom CSS to modify the login page.
Clipboard Options
In the clipboard options, you will be able to select the dashboard panels you want to hide. But before you do that, you will also be able to change the clipboard icon and name and choose which user roles see the clipboard panels.
You will also see the option to add your custom welcome panel. you can once again select roles, type of templates, title of panel and description HTML. You can make the panel full width or even add a second panel if you want.
You will also be able to add an RSS panel to the board. You will be able to select the feed’s title and logo, the number of items visible, whether you want to show the post content, the input HTML and add the RSS feed address.
menus
The first thing you can do under the menus settings is, Choose whether you want to hide the menus from people with other roles on the website.
Next, it will be possible Choose which menus you want to hide, including submenu options.
You will be able to do the same for the Admin Bar, which you can see at the top of your website when you log in.
Settings
Under Settings, you can hide the front-end admin bar that logged in users can see. You can also hide the help box and display options and turn off nag messages.
Finally, you can add custom CSS for admin and load a custom CSS style sheet.
As you examine all these options, you will notice the settings at the bottom of the page. They will allow you to import the settings, export them and reset the plugin if you want.
Let’s wrap it up!
White labeling a WordPress website is a great way to ensure that the front-end and back-end provide a seamless, unified user experience when switching between them. With plugins like White Label CMS, you will be able to easily customize the login screen and have full control over the dashboard and backend menu. However, be careful if you’re building a website for clients and want to hide some options – you may think you’re getting them out of the way, but for them, they can be completely lost if you don’t’ set up appropriate roles and let someone else be a Super Admin.
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