I love WordPress, it's powerful and versatile. But I think its biggest flaw is cosmetic: the dashboard overwhelms casual users because it doesn't prioritize the features people actually use.

Even recent updates have improved things under the hood without fixing the layout itself.

So for this plugin, I redesigned the layout inspired by platforms like Medium and Substack, around what I believe people use 90% of the time.

Posting-related actions are front and center; everything else is secondary. Inside the editor itself, the same logic applies: category, featured image, and content are what you see first. It's entirely cosmetic, you can switch back and forth between dashboard with a click.

I would imagine some of my choices here are controversial, and I welcome other people's take. But I believe we need to be more opinioned about what shows up where in the WordPress dashboard, and that's the main point I wanted to make here.

Here's the github link if you want to take a look, play around, or improve on it. (I had to add Promo to my post title but I am not actually promoting anything paid, just to be clear)