Why Do WordPress Themes Have to Be So Hard to Use on the Backend? (Hint: They Don’t!)

Whether you’ve designed websites with only a small handful of WordPress themes or have used dozens of them over the years, we can all agree on one thing: Many WordPress themes that are visually stunning on the frontend of a website end up being ugly as sin and difficult to use on the backend.

Why does it have to be that way?

It doesn’t. If a WordPress theme looks and feels great on the frontend, there’s no reason why its backend doesn’t as well. BeTheme is proof of this.

BeTheme is one of the top 5 best-selling WordPress themes of all time, with more than 260,000 sales and a 4.83-star user rating. In this post, we’re going to show you some of the ways in which this WordPress theme backend is going to make your life easier as a web designer.

Upgrade your workflow with a WordPress theme backend that doesn’t suck

After you install BeTheme, you’re going to notice something is different. Gone is the drab and oftentimes cluttered and unintuitive backend of WordPress. In its place, you’ll find a clean, attractive, and useful theme dashboard and tools.

Don’t worry. WordPress and all of its content management tools are still there. But when you’re inside of BeTheme, you’ll find yourself in a space that is at once visually appealing and so easy to use you’ll wonder why the rest of WordPress isn’t built this way.

If you haven’t been inside of BeTheme before (or even lately), join us as we walk through some of its best and most useful backend features:

1. Dashboard design

Your BeTheme dashboard will appear directly under the main WordPress Dashboard link. So there’s no need to sift through the sidebar trying to figure out where your theme settings are.

It’s not just convenient access that makes the BeTheme dashboard great. Click on BeTheme or the Dashboard link and you’ll discover:

Navigation bar that takes you to the most commonly used BeTheme tools
Status and plugin updates
Step-by-step website creator
New feature announcements
Latest pre-built websites
Theme registration information
Popular BeTheme integrations

Everything in the dashboard is here for the express purpose of helping you get more out of your WordPress theme. Whether it’s streamlining your website setup or discovering new features to use, the dashboard is there to help.

2. Dark/light mode

The research on dark mode and the benefits associated with it is inconclusive. That said, enough people have shown a preference for dark mode (which is why popular devices and apps offer the option now), so it could demonstrate big benefits on an individual basis.

The most common benefits that users report are reduced eye strain, better sleep, and longer lasting device batteries when using dark mode.

As a web designer, you’re working in front of a computer screen all day. If you find dark mode to be beneficial for any of these reasons, then you should find yourself a WordPress theme backend like BeTheme’s that enables you to toggle on dark mode.

3. Step-by-step website creator

When you first install a WordPress theme, it’s not always clear where you should go next. For instance, you know that your theme comes with demos, but where do you go to find them? Some themes bury their demos or pre-built websites inside their settings panel, so it can take some digging around.

BeTheme removes all the guesswork.

You’ll find the Setup Wizard under BeTheme as well as in the dashboard. Click on it and the step-by-step website creator will help you:

Name your website.
Choose your preferred editing mode.
Select a page builder to work in.
Pick the perfect pre-built website for your industry/niche.
Remove existing content and replace it with your new site.

This whole process takes less than 30 seconds to complete — from the moment you click the setup wizard button to the time it takes to load your new site and page builder into WordPress.

4. Pre-built site previews

BeTheme has over 650 pre-built websites, with new ones being added to the collection all the time. You’ll find them under the Websites link in the dashboard or under Pre-built websites under the BeTheme sidebar menu.

As a web designer, you’ll quickly become acquainted with the options that are available — and you may even find favorites you prefer to start with.

That said, you want to make sure you’re always designing websites using the latest and greatest design trends and styles. Because of this, BeTheme places previews of its newest pre-built sites in your dashboard.

Having the newest themes front and center will be useful in a number of ways. For starters, you’ll know when you have new sites to design with. Even if you choose not to use those sites (because you already have one you like, for instance), seeing the latest styles and features will be a good source of inspiration. Either way, this will enable you to utilize the latest design trends in your website designs going forward.

5. Plugin manager

The Plugins area of BeTheme isn’t the same thing as the Plugins area in WordPress. While there is some overlap, the purpose of the BeTheme plugins manager is to give you a place to:

View your actively installed plugins.
Update plugins that need it.
Install and activate recommended plugins for your pre-built website only when you need them.

It’s the last point that’s important to take note of. You won’t see any of these plugins in the WordPress plugins manager until you’ve installed them.

These recommendations come directly from BeTheme and can help you get more out of your theme and pre-built site. On the flipside of that, not installing them can also help you cut back on unnecessary plugins which will allow you to keep website performance high.

6. BeTheme support

WordPress might be the most powerful and popular content management system in the world. However, it’s a mostly community-driven platform when it comes to themes, plugins, and even providing support.

You shouldn’t have to dig through forum after forum on the WordPress.org website to find help or get answers to your questions. You shouldn’t need to leave your WordPress admin if you can help it at all either.

You won’t need to go far to get support for BeTheme.

Manual & Support are available from the BeTheme sidebar as well as the dashboard. From the support center, you’ll have access to self-support options like FAQs and Documentation. You can also submit a ticket for direct assistance.

7. Theme options

Many popular WordPress themes give users the ability to customize the theme settings. With BeTheme, in particular, you can set brand colors, choose custom fonts, establish global layouts, and configure things that are important for the user experience and SEO, like responsiveness, accessibility, and performance.

The one thing that can be annoying about these theme options is that the only way to modify them is from the main WordPress dashboard. So if you happen to be working on a page and realize the global button design hasn’t been configured or you’re dissatisfied with the default sidebar design, you have to save your changes and go to your theme’s backend.

With BeTheme, you don’t have to disrupt your workflow. You can modify your Theme Options right from where you are — be it the BeTheme dashboard or from inside the BeBuilder.

8. White label mode

The last area of the BeTheme WordPress theme backend you should know about is called BeCustom. You won’t find this under the dashboard, but you will find it under BeTheme on the sidebar.

This tool gives you the ability to white label BeTheme in certain areas. Here are some of the things you can do with BeCustom:

Swap out Be’s branding for your design business’s own.
Disable features that your client won’t need or that you don’t want them to have access to.
Create a custom WordPress login and change the look of it, simultaneously making it more user-friendly and secure.
Customize the “Welcome” message on the dashboard.

White labeling allows you to do a number of things.

First, by adding your own branding, it’ll give you a chance to reinforce your name with clients long after you complete their site. While BeTheme may be a name that designers know and trust, your clients will benefit more from seeing yours in there.

In addition, white labeling helps you make WordPress more user-friendly. If you want your clients to feel confident in owning and managing their websites after handoff, removing features they don’t need and making the WordPress theme backend more attractive will help.