In your WordPress.com account, you can manage global site, domain and account settings through the Sites list. You can edit a specific site’s settings and content through either the Default View or WP Admin. This guide will introduce you to each view and provide instructions on how to switch between them.
In this guide
The Sites List for WordPress.com is where you can manage your sites and domains, access the Reader, and view your account profile. This view is especially helpful for managing multiple sites.
To navigate to the Sites list:
- Visit any of your sites’ dashboards.
- Click the “All Sites” option in the upper left corner.
You will then see the Global View, defaulted to the Sites option. Navigate to Domains or Reader from the sidebar. Or, select your Profile, access Help, collapse the sidebar, or view notifications using the icons at the bottom of the sidebar.
If you wish, you can make the Sites list your default homepage in Account Settings. This is especially helpful if you manage multiple sites.
To set your default home page to display all your sites, follow these steps:
- Log into your WordPress.com account.
- Visit your profile at https://wordpress.com/me
- Click the “Account Settings” option under your profile picture.
- Under the “Interface settings” header, locate the “Admin home” section.
- Toggle the setting to “display all my sites instead of just my primary site when I visit WordPress.com.”
Your settings will be updated automatically. The next time you visit WordPress.com, you will be on the all sites dashboard.
The Default admin is a built-in interface that provides the functionality you need to manage all aspects of a specific site on WordPress.com. In the Default admin, you will find the functionality to view stats, edit content, manage the site’s appearance, and more.
As the name implies, the “Default Admin” is what you will see by default when you visit your site’s dashboard. If you switched to the WP Admin view (described below) and want to switch back to the Default Admin you can follow these steps:
- Visit your WordPress.com dashboard.
- Click the “View” tab at the top right of your screen.
- Select “Default View” from the menu.
The screen will reload into the default view of your dashboard.
The “View” tab will not appear on the “My Home” and “Stats” pages in your dashboard. Navigate to one of the other menu items in your dashboard to see the “View” tab.
WP Admin is the classic WordPress dashboard interface. You will often see this dashboard when looking at WordPress tutorials online — usually with a black left sidebar. WP Admin includes all of the same functionality included in the Default View with a different look and feel. Plugin-enabled sites may see additional menu items in WP Admin depending on the plugins that have been installed.
There are a few ways to access WP Admin (Classic View) from the Default Admin, as described below:
- Plugin-enabled sites can set the admin interface to the “Classic” style.
- Add /wp-admin to the end of your website URL, such as
yourgroovysite.wordpress.com/wp-adminoryourgroovydomain.com/wp-admin. - Locate the “View” tab at the top of your screen, and choose “Classic View.”
- Click on “WP Admin Dashboard” in the “Quick Links” section of “My Home”:
