Custom Management Panel: Change Opening Hours, Prices and Offers From Your Phone Without Logging Into WordPress
It’s Friday, tomorrow is a bank holiday and you’re closing early. All you want is to change the opening hours on your website. You pick up your phone, log into the WordPress admin, hunt for the page among dozens of menus, the visual editor doesn’t fit on the screen and every time you touch something, something else moves. In the end you leave it until Monday, or you call whoever built your website.
In short: a custom management panel is a private page that shows only what your business changes often (opening hours, prices, offers, places or tickets) with big buttons designed for your phone. You change it in a couple of taps and it shows on the website straight away, without touching the design or logging into the admin. In most cases it’s added to your current website, as long as your website allows it.
Why is changing opening hours on your website so hard?
Because the WordPress admin is built to create and maintain the whole website, not for the quick everyday change. You notice it in things that keep happening:
- It’s designed for a computer. On a phone, visual editors become small and awkward to use.
- Everything is mixed together. To change a price you go through plugin menus, settings and pages you don’t care about.
- Touching the content means touching the design. In a visual builder, the opening hours sit inside a block with its own size, margins and mobile version. A clumsy change throws the page out of shape.
- You need a user with too many permissions. Whoever only changes the menu ends up logging in with a user who could delete pages or deactivate plugins.
What is a custom management panel?
It’s a screen built for your business that brings together, in one place, the few things you actually change. It has no plugin menus or design editors: it has a switch to open or close, a field for the price and a button to save. It opens on your phone, with your own user, and whatever you save appears on the website in its place and with its design.
“Custom” means it shows what your business uses. A restaurant needs opening hours, the menu and the set lunch. An academy, course dates and available places. A concert venue, the events, the capacity and the tickets sold. A guesthouse, seasonal rates and last-minute offers.
What can you change from the panel?
Whatever today forces you to log into the admin or ask someone else:
- Opening hours and closures: the hours for each day, bank holidays and notices like “we close at six today”.
- Prices and rates: the menu, seasonal rates or the price of a course.
- Offers: switch them on and off with one tap, or schedule them with a start and end date.
- Places and tickets: see how many you’ve sold, close sales when it’s full or open a new session. If you sell tickets, we cover it in Selling Tickets on Your Own Website or on a Platform.
- Today’s figures: besides changing things, the panel can show you what you sell. We explain it in How to See All Your Sales in One Place.
How does it connect to your website?
If your website runs on WordPress, the panel uses its REST API, the way WordPress provides for other applications to query, create and modify the website’s content. The panel writes the data (the opening hours, the price, the offer) and the website displays it with its usual design, so the change can’t throw the page out of shape.
For security, WordPress organises users by roles and capabilities: each role defines what a user can and can’t do. The people using the panel have a user who can only change what the panel shows, with no access to the rest of the website.
If your website isn’t WordPress, the panel connects to wherever your data is, as long as your website allows it. We check this before starting and, if something doesn’t fit, we tell you before giving you a quote.
Can you use it like an app?
Yes, without going through any app store. The panel can be set up so you add it to your phone’s home screen and it opens like any other app. According to web.dev’s installation guide, on Android the browser offers “Install” or “Add to Home Screen”, and on iPhone you do it from the Share menu with “Add to Home Screen”.
Who can use it?
The people you choose, each with their own user. The shift manager can change the opening hours and switch on the offer of the day; the person handling bookings can see the places available; and nobody needs the website’s admin password. If someone leaves the team, their access is removed without touching anything else.
How much does it cost?
It depends on how many things you want to change from the panel and how your website is built. That’s why each panel is quoted individually and you’ll know the cost before we start. Small adjustments are paid with an hour pack and projects with a fixed price. The delivery date comes in the same quote.
After delivery, if you want the panel to stay in step with your website, we look after it within a maintenance plan; if you’d rather handle it yourself, you can.
Your website, from your pocket
If every small change to your website costs you a while or a phone call, a custom panel puts it a couple of taps away on your phone. On the new features page you’ll find how we work and how to ask for a quote.
New features for your website
Custom panels, bookings, ticket sales, voting and integrations for the website you already have.