Understanding WordPress Dashboard

 The WordPress Dashboard is the first screen which you will see when you log into the administration area of your blog. This screen displays the overview of the website. It is a collection of widgets and gadgets that provides the information and gives an overview of what's happening with your blog. It is highly customizable and you can customize it according to your needs by using some quick links such as writing quick draft, replying to latest comment, etc.

As shown in above screenshot we have divided the dashboard into several categories. Each of these categories are discussed in the following sections −

Dashboard Menu

The WordPress Dashboard provides us with navigation menu that consists of menu options such as posts, media library, pages, comments, appearance options, plugins, users, tools and settings on the left side .

Screen Options

The dashboard contains different types of widgets which can be shown or hidden on some screens depending upon our requirements. It contains check boxes to show or hide screen options and also allows us to customize sections on the admin screen. We can use these checkboxes to show or hide our widgets on our admin screen.

Welcome

It includes the Customize Your Site button which allows customizing your WordPress theme. The center column provides some of the useful links such as creating a blog post, creating a page and view the front end of your website. Last column contains links to widgets, menus, settings related to comments and also a link to the First Steps With WordPress page in the WordPress codex. You can  also add widgets from here.

Quick Draft

The Quick Draft is a mini post editor which allows writing, saving and publishing a post from admin dashboard. It includes the title for the draft, some notes about the draft and save it as a Draft.

WordPress News

The WordPress News widget displays the latest news such as latest software version, updates, alerts, news regarding the software etc. from the official WordPress blog.

Activity

The Activity widget includes latest comments on your blog, recent posts and recently published posts. It allows you to approve, disapprove, reply, edit, or delete a comment. It also allows you to move a comment to spam.

At a Glance

This section gives an overview of your blog's posts, number of published posts and pages, and number of comments. When you click on these links, you will be taken to the respective screen. It displays the current version of running WordPress along with the currently running theme on the site.