My First Plugin: An Adventure In WordPress Admin Color Theming

On scratching an itch to build an admin color scheme plugin

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I wasn’t intending on building an admin color scheme plugin, much less submitting one to the WordPress repository. But, when I found existing pink admin color schemes lacking in both good design principles (not enough contrast/hard to read) and in thoroughness (many places where the default WordPress colors still showed) I realized something had to be done.

So, I present to you Super Thorough Admin Color Scheme, based off the color scheme on my own website (which is gorgeous, obviously). I went through the WP Admin with a fine toothed comb, checking as many buttons, links, active/focus states, borders, backgrounds, and box-shadows as I could find, and trying to account for every element one would normally encounter in the admin, while linking the Sass variables together in such a way that it would be easy to modify for my other clients… or by other front-end developers.

Lesson learned? There’s a whole lot of redundancy in the WP Admin, and a whole lot of obscure/specific classes on the tiniest elements declaring similar colors and values. Hopefully for those of you that want to design your own (and know your way around Sass), I’ve done some of the hard work for you.

Anyway, I’m off to install the official version of the plugin on my sites now to help improve my sad “Less Than 10 Active Installs” count 😉

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2 Responses to “My First Plugin: An Adventure In WordPress Admin Color Theming”

  1. Karissa Skirmont

    Awe this is awesome Michelle, of course I will at once change all the pinks to purples! In the past, I’ve used another Admin Color Schemer plugin but there IS so many tweaks that I didn’t get it to look right.

    One problem though

    Reply
  2. Weekly Roundup of Web Design and Development Resources: January 8, 2016

    […] My First Plugin: An Adventure In WordPress Admin Color Theming: When my friend Michelle Schulp discovered the existing pink color admin schemes didn’t follow good design principles and weren’t consistent, she took action and created her own admin color plugin. Nice job, Michelle! […]

    Reply