WordPress Administration Panel Confusion – Changing the wpadmin.css

I have several blogs and I was going crazy figuring out which one was which in my Firefox browser. With the three tone blue Administration Panels in WordPress, I couldn’t tell which blog I was in without looking at the title. I work very fast and I needed something faster to catch my eye to let me know which WordPress blog was which.

I can’t change the colors of the Administration Panels in WordPress.com, but I can with my full versions of WordPress.

I edited the /wp-admin/wp-admin.css style sheet to change the colors in the three headings in the top of the Administration Panels. Extracted from the stylesheet, the three sections are:

#wphead {
	background: #14568a;
	padding: .8em 19em .8em 2em;
	color: #c3def1;
}
#adminmenu {
	background: #6da6d1;
	border-top: 3px solid #448abd;
	margin: 0;
	padding: .2em .2em .2em 2em;
}
#submenu {
	background: #0d324f;
	border-bottom: none;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 3px 2em 0 3em;
}

Search for each ID to find the appropriate section.

I simply changed the background colors to something more interesting to me, colors associated with my web page design.

For Taking Your Camera on the Road, I wanted more nature colors, like those on my site. I used:

#wphead {
	background: #006600;
	padding: .8em 19em .8em 2em;
	color: #c3def1;
}
#adminmenu {
	background: #4D9900;
	border-top: 3px solid #448abd;
	margin: 0;
	padding: .2em .2em .2em 2em;
}
#submenu {
	background: #993300;
	border-bottom: none;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 3px 2em 0 3em;
}

Changing the stylesheet is not a major change to the programming core, and easily fixed if you upgrade again and the wpadmin.css file is replaced. But it certainly improves my usability of my different blogs, helping to quickly recognize which one I’m working in as I switch back and forth.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen