This is the front page of your dashboard, it provides a little bit of information about your website.
The main page of the dashboard plugins a series of widgets that provide different information. Out of the box the dashboard page does not provide much information. Different plugins can add new widgets, such as viewing your Google Analytic stats, Twitter details, and more. Each widget can be dragged and dropped to be rearranged in different positions. The page can also be customized to show and hide these different widgets.
At the top of the screen there are two tabs "Screen Options" and "Help" - these two tabs will be on just about every page within your WordPress dashboard. The screen options tab will drop down a menu that allows you to customize different viewing options about the site.
The screen options menu for the dashboard page
By default every option is selected, as shown in the dashboard above. Each widget has a checkbox to turn on or off its display. Taken from the actual help menu, here is a breakdown of what each of them do:
- Right Now - Displays a summary of the content on your site and identifies which theme and version of WordPress you are using.
- Recent Comments - Shows the most recent comments on your posts (configurable, up to 30) and allows you to moderate them.
- Incoming Links - Shows links to your site found by Google Blog Search.
- QuickPress - Allows you to create a new post and either publish it or save it as a draft.
- Recent Drafts - Displays links to the 5 most recent draft posts you’ve started.
- WordPress Blog - Latest news from the official WordPress project.
- Other WordPress News - Shows the WordPress Planet feed. You can configure it to show a different feed of your choosing.
- Plugins - Features the most popular, newest, and recently updated plugins from the WordPress.org Plugin Directory.
- Welcome - Shows links for some of the most common tasks when setting up a new site.
Here is an example of an adjusted dashboard page
