If you’re creating a website for a client you will normally find they don’t want to learn how to use everything in the WordPress admin panel. They probably hired you so that they didn’t have to learn loads of new stuff and I’m sure what they wanted was a simple admin panel that made updating their site easy.

Unfortunately, as brilliant as WordPress is, if you simply gave them a login and left them to it the chances are they’d look at the admin panel, get scared and never go there again, or start changing all of the settings until they broke something. Luckily, there are a ton of different ways we can modify the WordPress admin panel to make it quicker and easier for our clients to use.

Hiding stuff they don’t need

This one is obvious, if they can’t see a button to click, then they can’t click it! I normally hide things to do with automated site backups (which you should be doing on all of your sites!), settings (for the site and plugins) etc. Basically stuff they wouldn’t normally need to use.

For this I use WPLite. Once installed WPLite gives you a list of all the options on the left menu in WordPress with a checkbox next to it. Simply select the ones you want to hide from the menu and that’s it! There is no editing any of WPs files and if in the future they need to see an option that they currently can’t, it’s as simple as logging in and changing some options.

Just don’t forget not to hide the WPLite link from yourself! There is an option to show everything to admin users so it’s advisable to do that and set yourself up as admin and the other users as something else if possible.

A similar plugin to this that I haven’t tested is the Hide Admin Panels plugin which says it will let you hide certain admin options from specific users. This could come in very hand for some sites.

Integrating Analytics

Everybody wants to know how much traffic they’re getting on their new website but giving a user some login credentials and a link to update their website and then some more credentials and another link for their web statistics can be a little overwhelming for them. Luckily there is a nice plugin for WordPress that allows you to easily integrate Google Analytics into the WordPress dashboard. No more links, no more login details, it just works! Have a look at Google Analyticator.

Custom Wordpress Option Panels

If you’ve made a custom theme for a client. It might be a good idea to add some custom options to that theme to make it a better fit for the users. I wrote a post a little while back on Custom WordPress Option Panels that rounded up some tutorials.

Nettuts

How to Create a Better WordPress Options Panel

WPShout

Create an advanced options page in WordPress

ThemeForest

Create an options page for your WordPress theme

ForTheLose

How to create an options page for your WordPress theme

Vitali Software

Add an options page to your WordPress theme

Although the site isn’t up yet, they are offering a few free teasers in the MediaLoot blog.

Free Icons

Free Corporate Identities

Free UI Set

On their splash page it says they’re launching Feb 2010 (which has already been and gone) so I guess they’re not too far away from launching now. If you stick your email address in the box on their splash page they will keep you up to date with what’s going on.

It’s all to do with AB testing when you’re running your site on WordPress. Don’t worry if you don’t know what AB testing is, he goes through it in the video.

I tried to embed the video in here but it didn’t want to work so here’s a link to AB Testing in WordPress from Carsonified.

I’ve been learning loads about CodeIgniter and Doctrine when I’ve had time aswell and I’d really like to write a few blog posts on that when I’m not as busy but it looks like I’m going to have loads of work on for the next month or two at least.

Hopefully when I get back to having time to post here I’ll come back with loads of great ideas for articles.

Here’s a rundown on the software I found and the good and bad bits.

Things

First off, there are some excellent programs out there for OSX. Things is a great example of this. It works well and looks great, but only on a Mac and an iPhone. This isn’t a problem for some people but since I develop stuff for Windows Smartphones I also need a Windows computer for work and Things won’t work on that, there also isn’t an Android app yet, maybe sometime in the future!

At $49.95 Things is also quite expensive, although if it would work on Windows and on my phone, I’m sure I’d pay it. So if you only work on a Mac and use an iPhone, Things is probably the best it’s going to get!

Remember The Milk

Now I move on to web based applications. Remember The Milk is pretty awesome as well. The main online program is free, it’s browser based and does everything you need a GTD application to do. I don’t think it’s quite as pretty as a desktop app like Things, but that’s just my opinion! Because it’s browser based, it will work on Windows, OSX, Ubuntu, or whatever.

Their pro plan costs $25 a year which is very cheap and this allows you to get the Android or iPhone app. They also have an api which has allowed other developers to create applications to work with Remember The Milk, one of these applications that I tried out was Astrid. This means you can actually use the service on your phone without having to pay to upgrade to pro, although if you like Remember The Milk and you use it a lot, it’s worth going pro just to show your appreciation.

The only downside I could find for Remember The Milk was the lack of a standalone desktop application I could use. I didn’t want to have my to do list open in my browser all of the time. There are a few sort of hacks you can use to see your list somewhere other than your browser but nothing that felt natural to me.

Google Tasks

Google have their own GTD software which is also web based. It integrates with GMail, Google Calendar and iGoogle which is pretty good and there is also a mobile version which isn’t a mobile app, just a web page optimised for your phone.

Again, the lack of a desktop app and the fact that there wasn’t an actual mobile app put me off using this.

Doit.im

I started to think that maybe I was asking for too much from the GTD software and started to use Remember The Milk when I came across doit.im which basically does everything I need it to. There is an Adobe Air app which means it can run on my Windows PC and my Mac just like I wanted, there is also an iPhone and an Android app. All of the applications are synced to the web so all of my computers are up to date and everything works nicely and looks great!

I think the software is quite new so there are a few bug here and there but nothing major. The main one was when I installed it on my Mac it crashed the first few times I tried to run it which I think was something to do with their SSL certificate but it’s working now and hopefully they’ll get a better certificate soon so nobody else gets that problem.

Not only does Doit.im do everything I want it to, it’s also totally free and a according to their website it always will be.

Other GDT software to check out

This is a list of GTD software I haven’t had a chance to test myself.

Task.fm – Web based software with SMS reminders and email creation of tasks. They offer a free plan and a pro one for $3.99 per month.

Nozbe – Another web based one with an iPhone app.

TaskMerlin – Windows based GTD software

Disclaimer

I should point out here that I have nothing to do with any of the companies that make the applications I’ve written about. I’m just giving my opinions on the software.

Freelance Radio

Like all of the other Envato sites, Freelance Switch is pretty awesome and the official Freelance Switch podcast, Freelance Radio doesn’t let down either. They have talked about everything from working on the road to social networking.

I’ve only just started listening to this podcast but I liked it so much, I downloaded every single episode from iTunes and I’m listening to them in order.

Freelance Advisor

This is another podcast based around freelancing. I do like this podcast a lot as it’s one of the only UK based ones I have found which means a lot of the stuff in terms of accountancy etc is more relevant to me.

The podcast is founded by the same people that make the Crunch accounting system, however I haven’t found it to be too promotional.

Tweak

Tweak is a podcast aimed at creative entrepreneurs that is created by Josh Iwata. In his podcast he goes through important things such as choosing a pricing level, how to manage a project and how his design phase works.

Anyway, on with the post. A while ago I wrote a guide on installing multiple versions of IE on your computer for testing purposes.

Since then there have been a few changes, first off IE8 has been released and a few more programs have been developed. I’m going to go through a few options you have when testing your site.

Spoon Browser Sandbox

The first program I want to mention is the Spoon browser sandbox. For me, this is a fantastic idea. The first time you visit the site it will ask you to install a Firefox addon (if you’re running FireFox, I’m not sure what it does for other browsers). Then it will show you a fantastic list of browsers (IE 6,7,8; FireFox 2,3,3.5; Opera 9,10; Safari 3,4 and Chrome) all you do is click on the thumbnail and it launches the browser straight from the web.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get this to work with IE8 when I tried (the browser launched and then just closed again) but it did work with Safari so I’m guessing it’s either a bug with the IE8 installer on their site or something up with my computer so I’d love to hear how it works for you guys.

IE Tester

IE Tester is a program designed just to test sites in different versions of IE. It lets you look at your site in IE 5.5, 6, 7 and 8 which is really more than enough. The program is a little buggy and does close every now and again but it is free and I’m sure they’re looking at fixing these little bugs. I would advise you download the DebugBar aswell as you need this to view the source of the page you’re looking at.

Browser Shots

This site takes the idea of cross browser testing from a slightly different angle. Instead of installing a program on your computer it takes your web URL and opens it in a number of different browsers on a number of different operating systems (you can select which ones when you add your site).

The downsides of this site are that it isn’t instant and you only get to see a screenshot rather than the actual page. On the other hand, you get to see your site on different operating systems so if you’re on a Windows PC, you could check your site out in Safari on OSX which really is invaluable if you don’t have access to multiple operating systems.

Litmus

So far all of the options I’ve looked at have been free so to balance the whole thing out I’m going to look at a paid option (they do have a free package aswell). Litmus is an online application that lets you test how your application or website looks in a load of different browsers in either OSX or Windows. Similar to Browser Shots, Litmus will show you a screenshot of your site in the different browsers.

Litmus really does have some awesome features that makes paying for the app worth it if you’re serious about your application or if you’re a designer/developer. First of all, you can get screenshots of sites that are password protected, just enter a username and password the application can use and it will do the rest. Litmus will also generate a nice compatibility report that you can use to explain your findings to your boss, client or whoever!

Finally Litmus will also let you test how your emails will look in different email clients such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail and some more. It also does web based clients like GMail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Live Mail/Hotmail and a few others.

Conclusion

Hopefully now you will have a good idea of different ways to test your site in different browsers and even on different operating systems.

I’d love to hear how you’re getting on with the software I mentioned above or if you have any other suggestions!

You can watch the video below and read more information on it on the official google blog.