Dashboard and navigation

Sitefinity CMS main menu gives you access to all Sitefinity CMS features and functions. You use the main menu as the primary navigation in Sitefinity CMS administration (backend).

The main menu is divided in the following sections, represented by sections:

• Pages
  Use this section to create, edit, and delete pages and page templates. You can change the status and the properties of pages and manage the sitemap.
  For more information, see the Pages: Structure functionality and appearance.
• Content
  Use this section to create and classify reusable content items, such as news, events, blog posts, etc. You can also upload different kind of media and documents.
  This guide describes the actions which you can perform in this section.
  For more information, see Content: Create and manage website content.
• Ecommerce
  Use this section to create and manage your online store.
  For more information, see Ecommerce: Build a webshop.
• Design
  Use this section to create and design page and widget templates and themes.
  For more information, see Widgets: Add content and functionality to pages.
• Administration
  Use this section to activate and manage your license, to manage roles, users, and permissions, and to perform various administration tasks.
  For more information, see Install, upgrade, and deploy.
• Marketing
  Use this section to track your website traffic and marketing effectiveness as well as to configure Sitefinity CMS personalization and Email campaigns.
  For more information, see Overview: Sitefinity CMS Analytics, Overview: Personalization, and Overview: Email campaigns.

The Dashboard is the welcoming page of Sitefinity CMS administration.

The Dashboard is preconfigured to display useful links and widgets. You can also customize it, according to your specific needs.

Default Dashboard display

By default the Dashboard displays the following widgets:

• Content block widget
  The widget displays the title of the page – Dashboard.
• Sitefinity CMS Welcome widget
  The widget contains useful links to video tutorials and getting started documentation.
• Analytics Timeline widget
  The Analytics Timeline widget is configured to display a graph of the New Visits metric and a link to the Analytics module.
• Recent items widget
  
  • An instance of the Recent items widget, configured to display all recently modified content items and pages, with all statuses, modified by the currently logged user.
  • An instance of the Recent items widget, configured to display all recently modified content items and pages, with all statuses, modified by all users.
  • An instance of the Recent items widget, configured to display all recently modified blog posts, with all statuses, modified by the all users.
• Configure Dashboard widgets widget
  A widget displaying a link to customizing the widget displayed on the Dashboard.

Customize the Dashboard

You can customize the content displayed on the Dashboard. You can delete and reorganize existing widgets and also add and configure new widgets. There is a dedicated Dashboard widget group that contains widgets used to customize the Dashboard only. You cannot use these widgets on frontend pages. You can also add all other existing widgets to the Dashboard, such as Content widgets or Search widgets.

The Dashboard is a backend page. To customize it, perform the following:

1. In the main menu, click Administration » Backend Pages » OK, Continue.
2. Expand Sitefinity CMS and Dashboard group pages.
3. Click Dashboard page to open it for editing.
4. To modify the layout of the Dashboard, in the upper-right corner of the page, click Layout.
   For more information, see Design a layout template.
5. After completing the changes to the layout of the page, you can add and remove widgets.
   For more information, see Add widgets on pages and templates.
6. You can add and configure both Dashboard specific widgets and all other types of widgets.
   For more information about Dashboard specific widgets, see Dashboard widgets: Customize your dashboard.
   For more information about all other widget groups, see Overview: Built-in widgets.
7. After you have finished modifying the page, perform procedure Set the status of new pages and content items.