About Dashboard Extensions

Dashboard extensions let you add UI and functionality to the Wix dashboard, where Wix users manage their site, business, and content. Your custom dashboard extensions render alongside native Wix pages and tools, and are visible only to site owners and collaborators with the required permissions.

Dashboard extension types

Wix supports 5 kinds of dashboard extensions:

• Dashboard pages: Full-page experiences in the dashboard, optionally added to the navigation. Often used for settings, data management UIs, and reporting views.
• Dashboard modals: Pop-up windows triggered from other dashboard UI. Often used for confirmation flows, detail views, and quick-edit forms.
• Dashboard plugins: Interactive widgets embedded into Wix-built dashboard pages through a slot system. Often used for adding custom data or actions to Wix business solution pages like Orders or Bookings.
• Dashboard menu plugins: Custom items added to menus on Wix-built dashboard pages. Often used for linking to your own dashboard pages.
• External URL extensions: Links in the dashboard that open destinations outside Wix. Often used for linking to a product site, hosted help, or an external admin console.

How dashboard extensions work

Each dashboard extension is registered with the platform. The registration declares the extension's type, the page, slot, or menu where it appears, and where its code lives. The dashboard discovers registered extensions and renders them in the appropriate locations.

At runtime, dashboard extensions interact with the platform through the Dashboard SDK. The SDK lets an extension read context from its host, navigate between dashboard locations, open modals, and trigger other dashboard behaviors. Dashboard extensions can also call other Wix APIs from inside the dashboard, including the business solution APIs for reading and writing site data. Menu plugins are the exception. They're configuration-only, don't run code, and don't use the SDK.

Design the UI

The Wix Design System is a React component library of layouts, buttons, inputs, and other primitives matched to the native Wix dashboard look. Using it makes a custom dashboard extension feel native, ships accessible and themed components out of the box, and saves you from re-implementing primitives that already exist.

The Wix Design System also includes Patterns, an advanced component library of ready-to-use solutions for common design needs in Wix apps.

Both libraries are React-based and apply only when you're writing the extension's UI in React. Menu plugins are configuration-only and don't apply.

Dashboard extensions across development paths

Dashboard extensions can be built across multiple development paths, and which paths support each type varies.

• Sites: Add dashboard pages directly in the Wix Editor or Wix Studio without going through an app. Other dashboard extension types require creating a private app and installing it on the site.
• Wix-managed headless projects:
  • Full Wix integration (Astro): Use the Wix CLI. Every headless project has a Wix dashboard, so all dashboard extension types are supported.
  • Other frameworks: Don't support dashboard extensions directly. Follow the same approach as self-managed headless projects.
• Self-managed headless projects: Don't add dashboard extensions directly. To add them, create a private app that registers the extensions and install that app in your headless project.
• Wix-managed apps: Use the Wix CLI. All dashboard extension types are supported.
• Self-managed apps: Build and host the extension UI yourself. Configure the extension in the App Dashboard.
• Blocks apps: Don't support dashboard extensions. An app that uses Blocks for UI can still register dashboard extensions by adding a CLI or self-hosted component.

See each extension type's article for path-specific implementation details.