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FeatherDash
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Getting started

Updated 10 November 2026

Requirements

  • WordPress 6.8 or newer (built and tested on 7.1)
  • PHP 8.2 or newer (tested on 8.5)
  • A modern browser. Page prefetch works in Chrome, Edge and other Chromium browsers; page transitions in Chromium and Safari. Other browsers simply load pages normally.

Install

From WordPress.org

Plugins → Add New → search FeatherDash → Install → Activate.

From a zip

Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin → choose featherdash.zip → Install → Activate.

With Composer (Bedrock and similar)

composer require wp-plugin/featherdash

Then activate the plugin. The package comes from the WordPress.org mirror Bedrock already includes (WP Packages); with WPackagist, require wpackagist-plugin/featherdash. See For developers for more.

Out of the box

Activating FeatherDash only changes the look: the admin theme, your accent colour and a tidier toolbar (site name, Edit, My account and Search; the display name instead of “Howdy”). Clean-up, content, front-end and security settings stay as WordPress has them until you switch them on.

Your first five minutes

  1. Appearance → Accent colour — your brand colour for buttons, links, switches and the current menu item.
  2. Appearance → Theme — Default, Modern for a white toolbar on top of a light grey content card, or Light for a light grey sidebar joined to the content.
  3. Toolbar — tick only the toolbar items your clients need; untick plugin items you don’t want to see.
  4. Dashboard — tick the widgets worth keeping.
  5. Login — turn on Customise the login screen and add your logo.

Then go to Tools → Export to JSON and keep the file: import it on your next site to start from the same setup.

How FeatherDash changes the admin

  • It adds a layer of styles on top of WordPress’ own; nothing is replaced. If you turn the admin theme off (Appearance → Enable admin theme), WordPress looks standard again and all other settings keep working.
  • The block editor keeps its own layout; it only picks up your accent colour (optional).
  • Phones get the admin menu as a slide-in drawer.
  • Settings are stored in one database option (featherdash_settings); the menu layout in featherdash_menu.