This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Old Style Admin UI

Description

After I updated WordPress to 5.3, I thought something had gone wrong with the update when I saw those borders in the admin area, the blue color of texts on the form elements and the lack of design subtlety of the UI. So I decided to create a plugin that would undo that.

The plugin styles the WordPress 5.3+ admin panel back to how it was before the 5.3 update. So, if you also disliked the vivid blue texts and strong borders of the form elements, like buttons, inputs and selects, or found them to be way too prominent, this back-to-the-good-old-days “legacy” plugin will allow you to update WordPress to 5.3 and benefit from its code updates, while still retaining all of the previous version’s backend UI styles.

Very very lightweight and easy to use.

Installation

  1. Upload the decompressed ‘old-style-admin-ui.zip’ folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory, or upload the zip file via the WordPress dashboard: Plugins > Add New
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  3. Enjoy the old style of the admin panel 🙂

FAQ

What should I do if there is a bug?

Due to the straightforward nature and simplicity of this plugin, chances are it will behave flawlessly in all WordPress installations. I’ve tested the plugin in different environments and I have all confidence it has no bugs or errors. However, if you spot any issues, feel free to send a message to seo(at)webgraphic.ro

Reviews

Dáliw 3, 2020 1 reply
The new UI is awful, can’t show that to a client, it looks broken. This plugin fixes the ugly. Few minor issues with specific plugins (eg, woocommerce’s notice pink buttons) but it can’t cater to every other plugin on wp.org, and a million times better than without
Qawıs 22, 2019 1 reply
I absolutely can’t stand the new 5.3 design… thank you SO much for giving me back the normal styling! 🙂
Qawıs 21, 2019
Thank you very much to the creator of this plugin. It restores the admin area to a design which I much prefer.
Qawıs 19, 2019
This plugin does exactly what is says and is precisely what I needed. It also comes in perfect timing when I was just about to lose all hope and thinking of installing far more complex plugins in order to achieve this, though they would have cluttered my website with useless functions. Thanks again! PS: This plugin is so lightweight it produces absolutely no difference in time or speed whatsoever when active, tested this with a before and after tool and it makes no difference in loading time or queries or anything else. The whole css has only the essentials packed in just 7kb and is minified, nice :))
Read all 9 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Old Style Admin UI” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “Old Style Admin UI” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

1.0.3

Extended the old style UI to Gutenberg and other common editors. Added compatibility with the Advanced Custom Fields and its recent CSS updates.

1.0.2

Fixed minor bugs with specific WooCommerce select elements.

1.0.1

Missed out a few minor CSS bits in the Media panel. Improved some barely noticeable margins in the Classic Editor plugin.

1.0

The first version of the Old Style Admin UI is born.