Dashboard

The Dashboard is the first main screen of Weather Station. Its main purpose is to show you the current operating status of the plugin and to highlight commonly used links, items and analytics.

Dashboard details

Before going into the details of this Dashboard and understanding how it is composed, let’s take a look at the different elements that are related to the plugin use:

On the left-hand menu (the WordPress admin menu) you will find, under the settings item, the Weather Station menu with its four items. Each of these four items allows access to one of the four main screens of Weather Station:

  • Dashboard: its use is described below in this page.
  • Stations: offers you a way to manage stations and get shortcodes.
  • Events: displays the Weather Station events log.
  • Settings: to connect to services, adjust the mode of operation and set parameters.

At the top right (under your name) you will find on each main and secondary screens of the plugin – when it is necessary – two dropdown tabs:

  • Screen Options: to adjust the items shown on the current screen.
  • Help: to obtain inline or online help regarding the current screen.

The welcome panel

The first element in the dashboard is the welcome panel. This panel highlights the most important (and most used) features of Weather Station. You will find in this panel a button allows you to configure connection to services, a shortcut to add a station and links to the stations management screen, to the settings screen and the events log. A last link gives you direct access to the Getting Started page of this handbook.

   If you do not want this panel to appear in the dashboard, just click on the “dismiss” cross at the top right of the panel. To show this panel when it is hidden, go to the “Screen Options” tab.

“At a glance” box

This box, which is replicated in the main WordPress Dashboard, allows to identify “at a glance” the operating status of Weather Station and the main elements of its status and its connectivity.

“Notifications” box

This box displays important notifications generated by Weather Station. It can be informations about background processes (like applying fixes, importing historical measurements, etc.) or warning about security, versions or database.

“Cache performance” box

This box provides you with a summary of cache performance for the last 24 hours, for each item for which this cache is enabled. The first indicator, called “efficiency”, shows the Cache Hit Ratio as a percentage, while the second indicator shows, in milliseconds, the time saved per query by using the cache.

“Versions” box

This box describes the main versions of your WordPress and Weather Station installation. It also contains a link to the plugin’s internal changelog and a summary of your server configuration.

   You can find a full public changelog here.

“Weather Station news” box

This box displays a news feed coming from the blog section of this site. It shows you plugin announcements and meteorology related articles.

Other boxes

The Weather Station Dashboard displays some other boxes – like “about”, “licenses” – and may displays many new boxes in the future versions of the plugin.

Customizing your Dashboard

In the same way as for the other Weather Station screens presenting a layout with boxes, you can use the following controls to arrange your Dashboard screen to suit your workflow:

  • Screen Options: use the “Screen Options” tab to choose which Weather Station Dashboard boxes to show.
  • Drag and Drop: to rearrange the boxes, drag and drop by clicking on the title bar of the selected box and releasing when you see a gray dotted-line rectangle appear in the location you want to place the box.
  • Box Controls: click the title bar of the box to expand or collapse it.