We’ve been giving a lot of thought into how to make the home page of the dashboard more useful for you. This is the most-loaded page in our admin backend, but the balance of community vs. personal information wasn’t that good, and the design with the grey boxes and such left something to be desired.
Well, now we have something new.
We’ve split the dashboard into two, the left which shows all the action happening in your world — new posts, comments, comments you’ve left — and the right, which shows the hottest stuff in your language’s community. (And provides good fodder for blogging.)
We’ve also done a bit to make the whole thing load faster.
I’m pretty curious to hear you thoughts on this, particularly on anything you would like to see in the activity stream on the left. That’s an area I think is going to change a lot based on your feedback.
WordPress.com News 
I like the basic concept – but the left column seems a little confusing with the posts/comments, etc mixed together. I’d rather see those listed separately. Also, I have more than one blog so this really confused me at first.
Nice concept though for streamlining purposes.
Thanks,
WC
good…
like the new layout, though where the links are coming in from would be a great help (as opposed to Incoming Link: Title of Article on My Own Blog with link to said article)
You never get a second change to make a first impression, but I give you a second change to make another impression. You take that change whit both hands 😉
thanks a lot
Dennis
“No sir, I don’t like.” Please tell me just is this a Halloween costume for our dashboards, because it sure is scary. (And appropriate, since it IS Halloween. BOO!)
I though the page had stopped loading in the middle and it all was a bug at first. But I guess it’s a needed fix, since the last page was sloooooow. The entire admin panel is rather slow for me actually.
What’s hot
is ok, but I don’t like My Stuff all mixed up as it is now. Comments and posts don’t go along very well (though your idea is good and the overall positive). I even see comments from other blog mingled in there.
I like the new dashboard. But I am missing the count down given for drafts that have been set to a future date for posting.
I can’t see that anywhere. I found that useful so that I could see how much time I had left for a future post.
Does anybody else like that function?
V
The jumble of information on the left is useless and incoherent. I want to see incoming links and comments in separate areas.
And I really don’t care about the “hot stuff” on the right. Please give me the option of not having the “hot stuff” shoved in my face. For me, WordPress is a tool, not a community. Please do not force me into the community at the expense of the tool’s usefulness.
Sorry – didn’t mean to sound so cranky. I should add that in general I love WordPress and really appreciate your continued hard work at supporting and improving the whole site.
I don’t mind change. Change is good. But I don’t like this particular change much at all… On the plus does look cleaner and more streamlined and at least key links are at the top. It will take some getting used to.
The new look dashboard seems to contain so much “other” stuff..that I don’t necessarily want or need to see in that spot… I don’t know what it is but the “What’s Hot” stuff seems so much more dominant(prominent?) on the page. I think I’d swap the positions of “My stuff” and “What’s Hot” for starters. I liked being able to see at a glance my new posts, comments and the ability to edit them from that place and access them easily. It was functional, even if not as streamlined. I think we’ve lost the functional aspect to design. I already get the WP news etc when I log in, why do I have to have that whole panel again on my dashboard?
I also don’t like the fact that comments, new posts, commented and incoming links are now all mixed together. Confusing, and not particularly very user friendly… Also, re the time sequence, we have the section called “Last Week”, yet under it we have “New Post.” If the time is anytime in the past, how can a post still be a new post?
Personally, I don’t like it at all, as it looks too cluttered and confusing.
Since I have three blogs – personal, school, and club – I really hate having all my posts mixed together. I can learn to live with it, but “I’d prefer not to”.
I agree that the left column is confusing with the posts/comments/incoming links all mixed together. I really preferred when these were broken down separately rather than the current breakdown by day. Maybe you could give the option for either?
Like the new layout of dashboard…..
great work…
I miss the feature from the old dashboard that would show posts that were scheduled for future dates. Bring it back, pretty please.
I dig the new upgrades.
thank you so much!
Sorry, I’m going to have to chime in with another negative. I don’t like the mixing of new posts and comments (and multiple blog info) and I don’t like the emphasis on other WordPress blog info (the hot sites, etc). With the grey box around that section and the fact that it’s on my “favoured” side of the screen my eyes naturally go to it first. I’m more interested in what’s going on with my site and don’t like the extra distraction.
Your continued efforts at improving WordPress are appreciated, though.
Request for a link at the top to “Discover Themes” (the generic page where a non-logged-in user can surf the themes). Right now, if you click on “Presentation”>”Themes”, clicking anything on the resulting page will actually change the theme of your blog.
We need some obvious way to just surf them while logged in.
yes please bring back the post stats. number of posts and comments. there is too much other stuff on the dashboard now.
I like it. A few remarks though:
– I’d like to see the number of visitors of my blog on the dashboard, and maybe also the statistics.
– the Akismet spam thing should be in the left column.
But, overal, nice work! And I enjoy how WordPress.com is constantly moving and evolving.
i dont like this change.. too confusing..
Actually I have to say that the old dashboard was a lot more user friendly. The new one is more aesthetically pleasing but is a bit more confusing and has lost some functionality.
Appreciate the efforts though!
V
Would love to have the visual stat (total visits per day) on the dashboard… I’m sure that would slow down loading, but I got to it regularly. Maybe just display the numbers of the past 5 days if that speeds up loading.
I agree with the idea of giving users the ability to build their own customized dashboard.
+ Thank you for brining back the incoming link 🙂
I think WordPress is one of the best and easiest blogs to use, and at the same it gives
a very management-information too.
Sonia Wahnloop
Argh! Confusion! I can’t see any real benefit to it yet, but maybe it will come! I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
Yep,
I like the new, improved feature laden dashboard. It’s easy to use too. A definite plus and useful when blogger beta is sniffing at your heels!
Jim
I started a separate blog to do that, wholeshebang. That way I can play with various custom headers and widgets without disturbing my main blogs. Though a ‘preview button’ is also a good idea.
Much like a preview button when making comments would be great. 🙂
I don’t mind so much that stuff from all my blogs are posted together, but as many people have mentioned, having New Comments, New Posts and Commented all lumped together helterskelter is a bit confusing.
wonderful…thanx
Its Great !!!
Dont have time to read all the comments, just this: I’d like to be able to edit the number of “My Stuff” I can see, posting everything I ever posted is just ridiculous…
I love the fast way it loads, but I hate having MY stuff on the left side. I don’t know why, buy my eye goes to the right side first.
I don’t care about the other stuff, I want to see my stuff. I am usually in a hurry, I want to know where I need to reply to a comment, and the old dashboard helped me more with that. The new dashboard is hard to prioritize – it’s hard to see what I need to attend to NOW.
Please put all the other stuff at the bottom. Mostly, to see other blogs that interest me, I use the tag surfer; those blogs are more relevant to me.
Thanks for your continuing hard work!
I got confused in a earlier comment: the little chart at the top of the page that showed how many hits my blog got each day is on the “Blog stats” link, not the dashboard, so I am glad to find it still there. 😳
Was very suprised to see the whole thing, still it’s nice. Would even nicer to customize the right side menu 🙂
Hello! I like it! I think is so useful.
There are two things that I do not like about it. First if you have more than one blog, all of your recent posts are on that page, which is nice, but unless you remember the title of the post that you made on each separate blog, there is nothing that shows which blog they are posted to. I would suggest listing the posts under the title of the blog and separating the posts that way.
Secondly, the mini-dashboard as I have come to call it, that is the header of any page when you are logged in except when you are at the dashboard for one of your blogs. I kind of find this annoying and would like to see that header included at all times.
I believe that these two small changes would make the new dashboard even more intuitive and user friendly.
Thanks
I wrote previously that the new dashboard is a bit confusing. Upon better inspection I can now say that it is totally confusing. Sorry, but the old one was better.
I don’t like the posts and comments mixed up together. Too confusing to sort out. I preferred the old dashboard.
First, I will also say, that for some reason some of the links to posts do not work. Don’t know why. 🙂
I have deeply mixed feelings about the new Dashboard. Like some of the commenters, I find it a bit disorganized, and the information about what happened more than a couple of days ago not very useful.
But I will say that, perhaps, it is a step in the right direction. Although at first disconcerting, having information from all of my blogs (comments, posts, etc.) but I think it can be very positive if arranged a bit better (grouped by blog and activity type, all comments others made on my blog in one place, my comments, etc.).
I would also see it as a positive if it is a step in the direction of a unified dashboard. That is to say you can do everything for all of your blogs from one dashboard.
Perhaps it is insane to keep more than one blog, but I do and clicking around back and forth from dashboard to dashboard while not life threatening or anything does have it’s drawbacks. 🙂
WP is still by far the best blogging software and WP.com is by far the best place to use it. 🙂
I don’t really like it hey, i mean, it’s a big upgrade but i would prefer the old style which is not so busy 😦
I like the new Dashboard, but I notice the total number of comments and Posts is now gone. any way to get that info back?
Thanks
Darrell
I told you it sucks. Not just in a small way
Get rid of the last week/awhile ago sections. That is passe, has no functional use and just clutters up the page really badly.At the moment on my dashboard it has 38 links that I’ll never look at again. It just looks awfully cluttered and has no useful purpose for me at least. I would rather see Scheduled Entries return because I use that all of the time when blogging.
In the What’s Hot section, put links to the Blog of the Day section in the headings. It’s not the top 4 I’m interested in, its usually #20. I want to be able to access that quickly without having to go back to the WP home page.
I agree 100% with most of the comments here. This new dashboard is way too cluttered. I like what is happening on my blog to be on the right and I like it broken into groups (posts, comments, incoming links, scheduled posts).
I also loooooove!!! the idea of customizable dashboards through widgets and AJAX.
I also have 2 blogs and I like to keep them separate from each other. The new “mix them together” thing is pretty sucky!!!
I do loooooooove!! that the dashboard loads faster.
Keep up the good work Matt, Andy, Jeff(?) and everyone else at WordPress!
Ty
–Personal Blog
–Ghost and Paranormal Blog
I guess Im the only one who doesn’t like it. I like the old one because it allowed to check and approve comments via my mobile phone with minimal bandwidth. Now, the pages tend to be twice as hefty in terms of kbs. 😦
It works well on my desktop though.
The more I look at the new dashboard, the more I would rather have the old one back. This one has very little useful information on it. If we can’t have the old dashboard back, please at least bring back scheduled posts.
Just had a chance to look a little closer at the new dash and I have to say……I HATE IT!!!
I have two blogs here on wordpress and they just seem to be mixed together in the dashboard now i.e. my poker blog posts and comments mixed with my family law posts and comments. Bad bad move guys, its seriously messy and makes hard work of keeping two blogs.
I like it, but would love to see a “one click” link to moderate comments like what was there before, seems you have to take too many steps now to moderate them??
Overall, it’s fucking awesome (as usual for WordPress). However, I get a little confused when trying to determine new comments. That could very well be just me.
I like the new design, but I miss the clarity of having the new comments and new posts separate.
It’s not working for me. The old dashboards was much better organized IMO where I could see Incoming Links, Comments, Posts, Future Posts as separate items and it was easier just to scan the column for the info you want. Now I have to look at almost every line to make sure there is not a new comment or incoming link in the mix. Basically you took separate items which use to be categorized by what they were and re-sorted them by date which seems to be less intuitive. And mixing different blog posts together on one dashboard is also a bit of a pain.
Just my two cents.
Excellent dashboard. Great job!
For what it is worth…several people, including myself have reported that some links from the dashboard don’t work sometimes. It seems to me that the links that don’t work are links to posts that have punctuation (or perhaps any non-html type character) in the title. I would guess that the “link maker” is not parsing the article titles in the same way that WP actually does, leading to a mismatch.
Just a thought 🙂
Matt–love the new dashboard, but, dude, LOSE THE YANKEES CAP!
I found having the incoming links together and the comments together was useful. Can I have them back?
By the way, thank you, WordPress is awesome.
I appreciate you probably worked hard at it, but I’m sorry, I have to say that I agree with the others who give the new dashboard a big thumbs down. It’s too jumbled up and cluttered, I really don’t need to know what happened last week , or some time ago, or whatever.
The previous dashboard was functional and enabled me to tell at a glance what was going on and where.
I just updated it to show which blog different stuff is coming from, does that help those of you that have a couple of blogs? Awaiting moderation is back and on top, and I’m looking at a way to bring blog stats back in.
I love the new dashboard, I think it’s much better organized. As you mentioned already, I think “blog stats” should be under the “your stuff coloumn” – and perhaps add a limit to how many recent posts are listed…
Just some ideas.
I like what you’ve done for us folks with more than one blog, although the page is still noisy. Would like to see “What’s Hot” put somewhere else; how about making a “What’s Hot” button to direct users to another page? I like Dashboard for navigating my stuff; the “What’s Hot” list is just in the way. It’s good content, I just don’t want it on the dashboard. You didn’t print my previous comment. Was it because I mentioned that other platform “Bl*gger”? Is that one of Carlin’s dirty words?
how cool! :D, thanks for every improve you do everyday
saludos!
I’m back, after giving it a little more time to sink in. It still doesn’t work for me. Now I see my blog name next to every comment. I understand why that happened — but it’s even more confusing. I don’t believe in complaining about free stuff, and you certainly can’t please all the people all the time. I’ll deal with this if I have to but…
I’m not above begging. Please, please, please… at least let us have a choice between old dashboard and new. The old dashboard was perfect in its streamlined simplicity. I love WordPress, but IMHO you’ve fixed something that wasn’t broken 🙂
Matt, having the name of the blog before the title of the post or comment we make is great. But it looks like it´s great just for those who have more than one blog 😉
Thanks
Guido
Yes I like the *improvement on the improvement* update : comment moderation on the dashboard again and for a multiple-blog-owner (that would be me!) I like that I can now see which blog different stuff is coming from.
Thank you. Much less messy. I’m getting used to the new dashboard (though I was happy with the old one).
Can we have *scheduled posts* back on the dashboard please?
honestly, seeing “hools” next to every single entry or comment is MORE confusing since I only have one blog and it makes me think I made all the comments… Can this only appear if people have multiple blogs? Or perhaps the “Your Stuff” section could be broken up by blog. That would make it even less cluttered!
Thanks for trying to make WP as user-friendly as possible. Hope to see more of this as time goes on.
Oh, and could there be an option to “minimize” or collapse the “What’s Hot” section? I’d like to make my Dashboard as clutter-free as possible and I have only truly looked at that section twice during my whole WP membership time… Just a suggestion! Thanks, folks!
I did not think the old dashboard was a problem at all!
There is a facility I would like to have that neither the old nor the new has. I suppose this is my opportunity to bring it up as you asked for feedback:
The problem: switching between blog dashboards.
Explanation: If you have more than one blog and you are in the dashboard of Blog One… to switch to the dashboard of Blog Two, I have to view the site and choose the Blog Two dashboard from the menu bar.
Solution: In a dashboard there are two “dashboard” menu items, one of which could surely be relinked to a pull down of all your blogs, so the user with more than one blog can directly switch from blog dashboard to blog dashboard without having the intermediate step of leaving the dashboard area altogether.
Apologies if the above is unclear (it’s difficult for me to explain the idea). Keep up the good work!
Oh, and I do like the idea of being able to choose the old dashboard layout/ format because my new dashboard is confusing because it mixes up all my blogs together with other people’s blogs that have me as a contributor! It’s way too much information in a jumbled way, but I am not complaining as it’s free and it’s all good and you are working very hard to improve things all the time which is appreciated.
I’m lost. This doesn’t tell me about my incoming links, comments awaiting approval or upcoming posts.
Help!
I think its good that you’re keeping things clean and simple and user-friendly. Keep up the good work.
confusing at first but usefull. lots of info put in the 1st page. also notice uploading pictures now have different configuration style. Keep up the good work.
Okay…just saw it..it rocks..so do you guys…thank you HEAPS 🙂
I liked the old one better – it was more organized. This one mixes up incoming links and posts and comments. Arrrgh!
Great stuff 🙂 Always good to know that a service like WordPress listens to its users’ feedback and makes things better
“Hmm, but I don’t need to know what post I commented on or what posts I made because I already know. That space could be used up by something more useful, like maybe a preview of the blog stats.”
It’s redundant information.
Dito
Matt, I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t think you’re seeing the inherent flaw in the left column design. Adding the blog name does NOT help, it just adds to the visual noise.
I’ll say this again: by interspersing disparate data in a flat list, each element is diminished in its ability to be useful. Recent Comments/ Posts/Links should stay as short individual lists as they were before. I simply don’t see the value in being forced to see posts that I made on my own blog going back to “A While Ago”. If I really want to see this I can just look at the blog, or the manage list! It’s redundant, a waste of space and of questionable utility.
Using the left-side column for separate boxes for the traditional recent (say last 5) comments/posts/links would be infinitely more useful, easier to parse and save gobs and gobs of space.
I also find the “Use these links to get started:” redundant and of little value. As WordPress admins, I think we all know where to go for those functions. If you think those links are necessary, then I perhaps the flaw is in the top-level tab layout to begin with.
It still sucks with the changes… NEXT!
Very Useful, makes me conscious though of how little I’ve written so far. Well, you guys showed me that quality is better than quantity. Tnx for the innovation.
I have to be honest, I hate how comments, new post and incoming links are all mixed together. I t is indeed easier on the eye but it takes a lot longer to navigate. You guys still rock, but I do think I liked the old dashboard better for practical purposes.
Usefull
well, I still prefered the previous dashboard as I find it hard to navigate the new dash..
The new dashboard looks better than the old one. Clearly redesigned. I love it!
I saw the changes, still hate it. You guys do great work – this isn’t one of them. Please bring back the old dashboard.
this is awesome..thanks for all the hard work that you guys put in to this…
I usually enjoy WordPress enhancements but not this time. Because it was clearer, I prefer the older Dashbord. 😦
Anyway, I cannot find the total amount of my blog’s posts and comments. Where did that information go?
I still thank you for all the new stuff you always provide. I ‘m just uncomfortable with the new dashbord. May be it’s a matter of time to get used to it. 🙄
i think is great
😦 I like the old dashboard better. I’m having some trouble with the new one. It doesn’t look like the screenshot above. Whenver I go to dashboard, it says “Your stuff” and “What’s hot” and underneath both are those blue wordpress login boxes. It’s annoying to have to log in to see the stuff. Am I the only one with this problem…?
Yeah,very nice for manage WP Thanx 🙂
I like it. Thanks Matt!
😎
Awwwwe.some
Incoming links and scheduled posts…please bring these back!
Shift the layout from two columns to one (with the ‘what’s hot’ cruft at the bottom, natch) and I will have no problem with it. It’s pretty rare to see a two-column layout where the two columns are of equal width, and the ratio is offending my aesthetic sensibilities.
yeah i agree, i dont like the new dashboard. everything is mixed up and it isnt as pleasing to the eye as it was before. i suggest bringing back the old box and maybe adding one for things you commented
Very good… And this “loads faster” thing is a great improvement! It would be nice if the entire blog management section could load fast like that… Very nice structure, it provides a great overview over both one’s own activities plus community stuff… good.
Now that I’ve used it a while, I do like it—that is, when the “incoming links” thing is fixed so that clicking takes me to where the link is coming from. Having the comments, posts, etc., in the same list is not bad since I tend to remember things chronologically: I can quickly find what I’m looking for, and the chronological picture of activity is useful.
Very good job, guys.
i hate it. seriously. except that it loads faster, nothing else is to my taste. i love everything else that you guys have done to make wordpress the best blogging tool. but this. this is really a step backward.
I really do not like the new dashboard. What I want from a dashboard is a good summary of my blog in categories, with numbers, and an easy way to administer my content.
“Your stuff” is now very confusing – categorising by “fuzzy dates” (today, yesterday) rather than content category (posts, comments) is not sensible.
“What’s hot” is just plain irritating. I don’t much care what’s hot – I want to manage my content. If it has to be there, make it less intrusive.
I love your work, but this is not a good development. The previous dashboard was far better in terms of organisation and ability to manage.