If you find the WordPress welcome panel a tad irritating or a distraction to your WordPress clients pop this code in your themes functions file – or better yet make a plugin and put the code in that.

The welcome panel will still be accessible under the screen options panel but it will be turned off by default.

add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'hide_wp_welcome_panel' );


function hide_wp_welcome_panel()
{
if ( current_user_can( 'edit_theme_options' ) )
$ah_clean_up_option = update_user_meta( get_current_user_id(), 'show_welcome_panel', false );
}