How to customize the Magento Admin site (part 1)

Every Magento instance consits of at least two seperate sites: the frontend, which allows customers to navigate, create accounts and purchase goods, and the admin site: which provides a secure platform for the commerce's administrators to perform tasks such as order management, catalog updates, content creation, marketing campaings, generating reports and configuring all the settings for the store, amongst other ations.

There is usually a large effort placed to develop and customize the frontend, which is clearly important, since it's where all of the customers will navigate, however, far too often the admin site gets overlooked, sometimes without even knowing that it's entirely possible to customize and modify the Magento admin site down to the last pixel.

Magento is characterized by its flexibility and adaptability, not only in the front-end design, but also in the administrative interface. Customizing the magento administration panel is a key practice for development and management teams looking to optimize workflows, improve usability and adapt the platform to specific business needs. Adjusting the administrative environment can reduce operational times and facilitate daily navigation.


The Magento admin is built in a modular and scalable way, allowing you to modify everything from dashboard widgets to user roles, menu structures and even visual styles. These tweaks help improve task assignment, establish clearer access controls and provide a more user-friendly interface for non-technical users.


This article is the first part of a series on how to customize the Magento admin, and focuses on the basic steps to make significant changes to the backend. Knowing these customization techniques allows you to build a much more efficient management experience tailored to each organization.


Some benefits of customizing the admin site are:

• Greater personalization for the merchant: include their logos, icons and colors in the admin site, to provide a clear company image and branding throughout the entire Magento platform, which will also give your admin site a more professional look and feel, which will allow you to better showcase it to stakeholders, inverstors and business associates.
  
  
• Show what you want, no more, no less: Magento has tons of functionalities out of the box, especially if you're using the Adobe Commerce version, but sometimes less is more. Having so many tools and sections can be confusing for a user that only needs to perform a few tasks, and while ACLs (Access Control Lists) exist to create rules for users that allow them to access only particular sections, maybe an extension you have added to your site doesn't have this configuration, or maybe you don't want any user to see a particular section in the menu. Well its as simple as modifying the menu template to add, remove or modify any menu item in the admin site.
  
  
• No ambiguity: the users of the admin site will know for sure their in the right place, after all, some people might have to interact with several magento instances (such as developers, contractors and part-time workers). By having your admin customized to match your commerce's branding, it makes it obvious that your in the right place.
  
  
• Let creativity flourish: while this may not apply to everyone, some might say that the default Magento admin site looks a bit... bland. This is of course, intentional, as it must be able to function for any type of business and industry, therefore, vanilla is the flavor for the task. But it doesn't have to be this way, maybe you want your employees to feel like they are using an exiting, creative and top-notch platform when they enter the admin, its up to you, after all, as you will see in this article, it doesn't take a lot of work to give your admin site some improvement.
  
  
  
  
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To modify your admin site, you'll have to create a theme and a module, and while this will require some basic coding, you can just use the code provided, but be sure to replace the vendor's name to yours. 


Here is how it's done:

1. In your magento root folder (where you'll find the app, pub, generated, vendor and var directories), navigate to app/design/adminhtml, here you should see a folder named "Magento", but since we want our theme to be seperate from Magento, we'll create a folder with our vendor's name (in this example, replace "Imagineer" with your company):
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Inside this folder you created, make another folder, which you can name with whatever name you want to identify your theme with (since you can create an indefinite number of themes, you can be as creative or generic as you want with the nomenclature), here we are using "adminDemoCCR" as our example:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Inside this folder, create a file "theme.xml" with the following content:
   
   
   
   
   <theme xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:Config/etc/theme.xsd">

       <title>Admin Demo CCR</title> 
    <!-- ^ your theme's name -->

       <parent>Magento/backend</parent>   
    <!-- ^ the parent theme, in case your theme inherits from an existing theme -->

       <media>

           <preview_image>media/Icon_CCR.png</preview_image>
        <!-- ^ the path to your theme's preview image -->

       </media>

   </theme>




    
4. Also, create a file "registration.php" to let Magento know that this is a component (replace "Imagineer" with your company and "adminDemoCCR" with your theme's name):
   
   
   
   
   
   <?php

   use \Magento\Framework\Component\ComponentRegistrar;

   
   

   ComponentRegistrar::register(ComponentRegistrar::THEME, 'adminhtml/Imagineer/adminDemoCCR', __DIR__);



    
5. Next, create a folder "media", which you can use to upload images, styles and scripts (make sure the name of your Icon matches the <preview_image> defined in step 3):
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. Additionally, you can create a folder "web" and inside it another folder "images", to add all the images you want Magento to load in your admin:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. To change the image shown in the log in screen, create a folder "Magento_Backend", in which we'll override the default login image. Inside this new folder, create a folder "layout", and a file "admin_login.xml":
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
8. Add the following content (remember to replace "Logo_CCR.png" with your logo's name):
   
   
   
   
   
   <page xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" layout="admin-login" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:View/Layout/etc/page_configuration.xsd">

       <body>

           <referenceBlock name="logo">

               <arguments>

                   <argument name="logo_image_src" xsi:type="string">images/Logo_CCR.png</argument>

                   <argument name="logo_width" xsi:type="number">150</argument>
                <!-- ^ Add custom logo width -->

                   <argument name="logo_height" xsi:type="number">80</argument>
                <!-- ^ Add custom logo height -->

               </arguments>

           </referenceBlock>

       </body>

    </page>

    
   
   
   
   
   This is the image we are replacing:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
9. So far, your theme sould have the following structure:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
10. Next, to tell magento that it needs to load this theme, you have to create a module, so navigate back to your Magento root directory, and enter the "app" folder, from here, enter the "code" folder (if it doesn't exist, create it), and create a folder with the same vendor name that you defined in step 1 (probably your company name), in our example, it's "Imagineer". If a folder with this name already exists, then just open it:
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
11. Inside this folder, create a new folder with your module's name, in this example, we call it "AdminTheme" (it's okay if you have multple modules in here, just give it a unique name):
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
12. Inside this folder, create a file "registration.php" (yes, we created one in step 4, but that was for the theme, here we are creating a separate module that will actually load that theme):
    (repace Imagineer with your company)
    
    
    
    
    
    <?php

    \Magento\Framework\Component\ComponentRegistrar::register(

    \Magento\Framework\Component\ComponentRegistrar::MODULE,

       'Imagineer_AdminTheme',

       __DIR__

    );

    ?>




     
13. Next, create a folder "etc" and inside create a file "module.xml" (again, make sure to repace Imagineer with your company):
    
    
    
    
    
    <?xml version="1.0"?>

    <config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:Module/etc/module.xsd">

        <module name="Imagineer_AdminTheme" setup_version="1.0">

       <sequence>

          <module name="Magento_Theme"/>

          <module name="Magento_Enterprise"/>

       </sequence>

        </module>

    </config>

     



14. Inside the "etc" folder, create another file "di.xml" (replace Imagineer/adminDemoCCR with your company and theme names defined in steps 1 and 2):
    
    
    
     

    <config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:ObjectManager/etc/config.xsd">

        <!-- Admin theme. Start -->

        <type name="Magento\Theme\Model\View\Design">

            <arguments>

                 <argument name="themes" xsi:type="array">

                     <item name="adminhtml" xsi:type="string">Imagineer/adminDemoCCR</item>
<!-- Example: "Magento/backend" -->

                 </argument>

             </arguments>

        </type>

        <!-- Admin theme. End -->

    </config>



15. Now let's add an icon to the side menu of the admin site, to do this, go back to the module's folder (app/code/YourCompany/AdminTheme) and create a folder "view" and inside it a folder "adminhtml", and another folder named "layout". Here, create a new file "default.xml" (remember to replace "Icon_CCR.png" with your icons's name):
    
    
    
    
    
    <?xml version="1.0"?>

    <page xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" layout="admin-1column" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:View/Layout/etc/page_configuration.xsd">

        <body>

            <referenceContainer name="header">

                <block class="Magento\Backend\Block\Page\Header" name="logo" before="-">

                    <arguments>

                        <argument name="show_part" xsi:type="string">logo</argument>

                        <argument name="logo_image_src" xsi:type="string">images/Icon_CCR.png</argument>

                    </arguments>

                </block>

            </referenceContainer>

        </body>

    </page>
    
    
    
    
    
     
    This is the image we are replacing:
    
    
    
    
    
16. You can also add images in this module, to do so, go back to the view folder created in step 15, and create a folder "web" and inside it a folder "images", where you can upload images for your theme.
    
    
    
    
17. So far, your module sould have the following structure:
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
18. Lastly, we must compile, generate static content and clean cache. To do so, navigate in a terminal to your magento root folder, for example "cd /var/www/html/magento", and run the following commands:
    
    
    
    • bin/magento setup:upgrade
    • bin/magento setup:di:compile
    • bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy -f
    • bin/magento cache:flush
    
    Now you can enter your admin and verify that the changes were successfully applied. In the next chapter of this guide, we'll explore how to add styles to your theme through css and less files in order to change the appearance of the buttons, fonts, colors and other elements of the admin.
    
    
    Customizing the Magento admin panel goes beyond a visual enhancement; it represents a strategic optimization that increases operational productivity and adapts the platform to real business processes. By taking control of the backend design and functionalities, companies can offer their teams a cleaner and more efficient working environment.
    
    
    Magento provides the necessary tools to extend and customize the administrative dashboard in a way that simplifies day-to-day management. From reorganizing menus to creating custom modules, these adjustments reduce friction in the operation and facilitate more agile and informed decision making.
    
    
    This first installment on Magento admin customization lays the groundwork for future improvements in usability and scalability. With a well-defined structure, it is possible to build a back-office that effectively supports business growth objectives.