The new ePanel from ElegantThemes

If you’ve been following Nick from ElegantThemes, you already know he’s been working hard at creating a new admin panel for his WordPress themes.

ePanel as Nick named it is ready and has already been implemented into 6 of the themes: eNews, Bold, ePhoto, eBusiness, CherryTruffle and PureType.

Here’s a list with ePanel’s new and improved features:

  • 1. New, awesome design

    New DesignThe new design is built with the user in mind. It contains 8 main sections (General Settings, Navigation, Ad Management, Layout, Colorization, Integration, SEO and Support Documents), with each having multiple sub-sections.

    The new structure removes previous unnecessary scrolling and makes it much easier and faster for the user to find a certain option. Also, some dropdown menus were replaced by checkboxes, making the layout more compact.

  • 2. More user-friendly and improved functionality

    User FriendlyNot only has the structure been reorganzied, but now theme options are easier to use. You can exclude pages from the navigation with a simple toggle button or, for example, you don’t need to know a certain category/page ID if you want to use it as a featured category or as your main page.

    Options status is nicely indicated through the use of checks/crosses and they even have individual descriptions, in case you don’t understand exactly what that option does.

  • Less is more: new widgets!

    ePanel Widgets
    Some options have been removed from the ePanel, by taking advantage of the WordPress widgets feature. For example, the advertisement area is now a widget that you can activate within the widgets page.

    One of the things I liked is that you have a checkbox option for enabling 125×125 ads to open in a new window, so you don’t need to worry about inserting a “target” attribute to each banner link.

  • ePanel full interface screenshot

    ePanel interface

These are just a few of the new features of ePanel. Details about each section of the new control panel from ElegantThemes can be found on the ElegantThemes blog.

At only $19.95 per year for all the themes, plus the coolest control panel around, ElegantThemes is an option that anyone looking for premium WordPress themes should consider.