Help and Impress Clients with WP Admin Pages Pro

A few years ago I made a video on customising a WordPress dashboard with page builder templates. The idea opened up some opportunities for smoother onboarding and client communication. Yet. I never really made use it. There were limitation of what could be done in the dashboard space and problems with dynamic content like form submissions.

Then, a few weeks ago I heard about the soft release new premium plugin called WP Admin Pages Pro. It works with the WordPress editor but also with Beaver Builder (standard above) Elemento Pro and Brizy (free) so far. I think support for other builders is planned.

It was exactly what I was looking for and in this video going to share how I am going to use it.

There is not free version of this plugin, but I asked and was kindly given a discount coupon to share with you which takes 15% off all plans including the lifetime deal. It's "DAVID15"

What I like about WP Admin Pages Pro

I create a whole website for clients in the backend of their site.
I can append custom content to existing WordPress pages.
I can personalized content (shortcode for user and site names).
I can to show (or not show) different pages to different users via WordPress roles.
I can easy remove temporary or project startup pages.
I can add my own CSS, JS and PHP too on a page by page basis.
It's from Arindo Duque who created WP Ultimo which I have been impressed by.
It works on multisite WordPress installs.
The low cost for something this handy seemed a no-brainer to me personally.

How I'm going to use it

As a permanent "Help Desk" with a contact form and links to resources.
As a place to store custom videos and information related specifically to the client's site. Done when building a site.
As a way of welcoming and onboarding client who get early access via a "Getting Started" page.
As a way of keeping us in the mind of client not on our care plan (although we will show how to remove our branding).
As a way of showing off how WordPress can be customized.
As instructions on my (multisite) demo sites.

Click for screenshot of my draft pages

What to be aware of

The product is new so is unlikely to be perfect.
The prices may go up from my video.
Page Builder templates will inherit the dashboard's styling so you specifically overwrite these (often at the level of the element) if you want your own styles to show through. But, great if you want to match the look of the WordPress backend.
You may wish to lock down access with a php snippet in your functions php file to prevent clients taking over you account (see tips).
Page builder templates you create for the backend are going to be in your template library (see tips).

A Few tips

There is a snippet you can add to the child themes functions.php file to stop client being able to turn admin pages on. It also hide the templates but (at least on Beaver Builder) the templates show on the front end (also see below).
However, if the temples are saved as drafts they are no longer an option, yet still show as admin pages.
Here is the personalization shortcodes I used{{user:first_name}} and {{site:blogname}}.
You may wish to copy and paste this HTML unicode to external links. You can presently add a dashicon or FontAwesome.
With sub-menus the last page published show on top (a way to order them this is coming). If you update a page you can move it position.
For linking from one page to another I used: admin.php?page=my-slug-name so the template can be used on any site.
You may to hide the Screen option tab and WP footers on certain Admin Pages. I used this CSS:

#screen-meta-links .show-settings {display: none;}
#contextual-help-link-wrap, #screen-options-link-wrap {border: 0;}
#wpfooter {display: none;}

// Anywhere in the child theme's functions.php file to stop clients activating the options.

add_filter('wu_apc_should_display_admin_menu','__return_false');