Rethinking the ACP home page

[Arantor]

IMO that whole page is pretty much pointless. There's nothing here that isn't handled on other pages.

I'd argue that it's an improvement on the 2.0 admin home, which had a partial subset of the admin functions shown there. At least 2.1's actually shows the admin functions.

Would anyone like a tour of what other platforms show as their admin home page for inspiration?

(Also, maybe split this to a new thread?)

[Antechinus]

Sure, go ahead with the tour. But I wasn't arguing that it was not an improvement on 2.0.x admin home (which I think it pretty pointless too). I was just saying that it's a page that does not really do anything much. It's basically an intermediate stop, on the way to where you actually want to be to do some actual admin work. The only thing it is really useful for is new patch notices, which IMO would be better handled in index.template.php, like the maintenance mode notices.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Been playing with this.  I don't know....

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Hmm, I've removed Support and Credits from sidebar menu as posted above in Admin.php, it's redundant.  What will that do to mobile view?

[Arantor]

As promised, first up a tour of ACP home pages: Flarum, MyBB, IPS, vB 3/4/5, Woltlab, XF, Vesta, Sngine

Flarum - ACP dashboard gives you a headliner graph for showing off the current state of the forum and whether it's growing (or not), then has signposting and big chunky icons pointing to the... same as the sidebar, each of the big icons points to the area for each plugin (because in Flarum each major feature that you see listed is really a plugin)

IPS - the ACP dashboard is probably the most comprehensive on offer; it's a dashboard made up of blocks which you can add on demand and rearrange to suit. The navigation is also pretty well organised given how much functionality the full IPS suite really pushes on offer.

MyBB - server versions, MyBB news, admin notes. Sound familiar?

vb3 - frames! Honest to goodness frames! Also, server versions, admin notes, admin search, credits.

vb4 - lots borrowed from vb3, and lots of news stuff (I must have nuked the news in vb3 some time ago), extolling the virtues (hah) of vBulletin 5. Otherwise basically looks the same as vB 3's admin panel except with more/different navigation because this is the CMS edition.

vb5 - a more modern take, but the same information presented the same way - server versions, admin notes, admin search, credits.

Woltlab - news from Woltlab, and everything else is in the sidebar navigation. Minimal, and possibly even less useful.

XF - user search, graph showing the general progress of things, big icons pointing at key ACP areas (maybe for mobile use when the sidebar isn't practical), server environment/versions, some high level stats about engagements, admins online, file health (XF keeps a list of all the files it ships with, complete with a record of what the file's content should be). Note also that there is an admin search function squirrelled away in the top right corner that is unified (one search for settings, templates, language strings)

Vesta - one almost no-one here will have heard of, but that's OK. It's a forum written by an ex-SMF modder (that never hung around here, found the community too toxic, ironic given their own community) specifically for RP purposes. Some similarities to StoryBB, some differences. But again, admin notes are pretty prominent. Also that *hideous* turd-brown colour.

Sngine - it's not a forum, I know, but it's a social network platform (basically, your own micro Facebook, but less nice). I only just got access to a test site, so I thought I'd quickly throw in a comparison. Again, metrics and graphs are the key focus of the day, even if they are presented in a way I personally don't like much. And yes, the sidebar really is that long. It's... not ideal.


Some immediate thoughts:

* it interests me how only MyBB actually tries to fuse its navigation. I'm not sure if I gave MyBB a different theme if it would carry across but it at least looks like the default theme. It's the only platform reviewed here that actively looks like it's consistent. Flarum, IPS and WBB are at least thematically consistent but not *really* reusing structural items. They're full screen admin areas with maybe a link and some menu navigation to take you back to the main platform.

* I am interested how many platforms ship with some kind of admin notes widget.

* It's interesting to note how the more modern and explicitly 'more professional' platforms (XF, IPS) go in for having dashboards showing metrics and stats about the community, while older platforms devote large amounts of space to news. I should note that IPS and XF do devote space to updates but it's mostly banners at the top of the admin area when relevant telling you there is an update if a) there is an update and b) your licence is suitably up to date to receive it. (In XF's case the warning is about your licence having expired. I don't remember what the IPS one says.)

* It also interests me how all the platforms went in for sidebar navigation. I think IPS's 'two tier' (that isn't really two tier) navigation is surprisingly effective, e.g. we're on the System section here and you can see that we're on Overview > Dashboard within that. I think there is quite a lot of discovery here given how much functionality needs to be exposed (again, this is the full IPS suite). MyBB is also interesting by going down the tabs+sidebar route, as opposed to everyone else who seems to have gone down the route of sidebars that open out (a lot like SMF).


What would I do with this?

* Ditch everything on the SMF ACP homepage. As @Sir Osis of Liver and @Antechinus have pointed out, it's fluff that you don't really need. I might add that the point was made unnecessarily often, I heard you after the first few dozen times it was whined about.

* Following on from the above, I'd completely rethink how admin notifications of updates were handled. I'd also ditch the 'serve SM files' setup so that raw JS isn't handling this - I'd have the file be a JSON blob indicating the current version, parse that server side and if there is a new version I don't have, display it as a banner. Maybe even an alert to admins that there's an update pending.

* I'd build a dashboard out of blocks (as I outlined, I'd build a solid block system into the fabric of everything), and I'd fashion the ACP to have an overview of the state of the system - graph showing history of maybe 30 days' worth of posts/registrations. (I'd also gut the stats page and all its associated fluff and move it into the ACP.)

* I'd add an admin notes block. This is more complex than on other platforms because for the most part the assumption is 'an admin can see the entire ACP', there's surprisingly little partitioned permissions support. They operate on the principle of 'an admin is an admin', so notes visibility is less complicated. I'd probably set it up so that 'anyone who can see any part of the ACP can see the notes block' by default and let the admin change block visibility if that's not appropriate.

* Probably make the admin search more prominent - it currently sits in a visual blind spot. But I'd also beef it up to include things like language strings and maybe even members. Probably not the online manual option though.

[Steve]

Split from https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=582391.0

[Antechinus]

My 2c: XF is the most visually appealing, but the IPS menu is more functional.

[Arantor]

Note that the XF menu is expandable (I just didn't picture it, nor did I picture the very-big-menu that the cog icon shows) because I wanted to focus more on the ACP homepage itself.

It was just that navigation was bound to turn up in passing while we were looking at the ACP homepage especially if we're going to talk about duplication or, rather, deduplication of function.

[Antechinus]

This is going to come down to personal preference, but I've been thinking that I might just make the admin drop in the main menu have links to the main sections of admin, and simply not bother with the admin home page at all. Although obviously I would have to do that in conjunction with a better way of displaying upgrade/patch notices (index.template.php FTW).

[Sir Osis of Liver]

My feeling has always been that ACP should be strictly business, no frills, but I think there should be an ACP homepage.  Sidebars work best for me, loading into adjacent panel.  Just need to fill the panel with something useful until a menu option is selected, that's what I've tried to do here.  Only mobile device I use is 7" tab (my reader), it displays the panel content with dropmenus across top, looks ok and works fine.  Can't see the menus in FF phone emulations, touch features don't work.

[Arantor]

That's kind of the point of this topic, to establish what would be useful to have on the ACP front page...

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Well, the version info is a nobrainer, that's essential information and often needed here in support.  Nobody reads the news, but it's a nice feature and could be updated more frequently, and fills some space.  Support resources would be helpful to new admins.  Never looked at it before, maybe could use some cleaning up.

[Arantor]

Don't you think its odd though that only the older platforms bother to include news as a big ol' chunk of their ACP homepage?

Note that a big banner about "you have an update" is separate from the "here are the last updates we think you'll love to read every time you come into the admin panel" and that the newer platforms don't have that self-promotional blurb.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

You'd have to come up with something new, then.  Only other thing that's currently in ACP that I didn't use is credits, which isn't particularly useful.  Really just a matter of filling space until a menu option is selected, or using one (Features and Options, Server Settings?) as homepage.

[Arantor]

Go read post #4. I compared and contrasted other platforms, and outlined what I thought. When I wrote it, of course, it was the first post in the topic.

[Antechinus]

Here's an idea: make the package manager, or the news, the home page. Package manager is what you will want for patches or mods. News is something you are likely to use even if the rest of the forum is ticking along nicely.

IOW, instead of trying to think of (probably superfluous) stuff to fill an empty page, just start with a page that already does something useful, and add a couple of extra handy bits to it.

[Arantor]

OK, so taking the time to actually look at what everyone else does and go 'hmm, I wonder why they do it that way' was a waste of time, especially when looking at applications that put things on there that aren't available elsewhere and don't use it for plugins or upgrades.

[Antechinus]

I was thinking of a quick and easy option for SMF as it stands*, not a complete rewrite for a future version of SMF. Complete rewrites are a whole 'nother issue.

XF's content looks to be the most useful, out of those examples, although the duplication of the main menu sections (as "blocks") could be skipped.

*This in response to Sir Osis.

[Arantor]

I was talking about features for the next version, hence this being in the Feature Requests board.

[Antechinus]

Yes, I know, but there was a comment inserted about working with SMF as it stands, so I made a suggestion for him.

For future features: I'd be inclined to use something "nuts and bolts", like SMF version info + PHP info (and maybe) + load balancing. Stuff that is going to be needed in a hurry, when it is needed.

Things like stats and graphs I'd be inclined to put in a standard admin section (wherever they fit best). Which could work with your idea of ditching the standard forum stats page (because frankly, who cares 99% of the time?) and bunging that somewhere in admin.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Interestingly, all of the ACPs you posted above use sidebars, and some have news in various forms.  I don't see a big difference in some of them from what I posted.  What are we not agreeing on?  And as far as doing this for future versions, I'm 72, waiting for 2.2 or 3.0 is not an option for me.  Don't see why something like this couldn't be integrated into 2.1 via the usual upgrade route.  If I can cobble it together with my limited skills (or lack thereof), should be able to patch 2.1 to make it better.  Same with attachments.  I've got this stuff running on test forums, what's the big deal?

[Sir Osis of Liver]

If you wanted to do something a bit more original, you could use the cpanel menu from 2.1 core.  I don't like it because you have to go back to menu to select different option, but it's familiar to most users.  You could put whatever in right blocks. Something like this -

[Arantor]

Some of us have aspirations about a 2.2 being somewhat *less* than 'years away' and a desire to try to improve it for everyone rather than the few who will install yet more mods.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Why is it such a problem to update 2.1 core with some of these proposed improvements?  Do you really think 2.2 development will a whole lot different from 2.1?

[Arantor]

Because I think if we start doing that, we'll just delay 2.2 the same way 2.1 was delayed. I for one don't want that.

[Kindred]

Because 2.1 is released.
That means that the next branch with NEW features and redesigns is 2.2.

Point releases are bug fixes and security updates.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Flexibilty is usually a good thing, and somewhat lacking here.

[Antechinus]

Flexibility is good. Turning stable releases upside down and inside out is not good. That just drives themers and modders and normal admins and normal users up the wall, and makes them think it's not worth coding anything or using the unstable version until things are stable again.

If you want to modify 2.1 to suit yourself, nobody is stopping you.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I've done that for myself, and am satisfied with the results, but it's of little use to others who will have to deal with 2.1 as it now stands until 2.2 is released, if ever. 

[Kindred]

<yawn>

Obviously you are not someone who has ever worked in software release.

2.1 is released
New development of features and major changes gets done in the NEXT branch, not the point releases.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

New development of features and major changes

Not quite the same as fixing things that are screwed up in current release.  Some of the proposed changes are just css, or minor edits to templates or js.  Things that should have been addressed before release. 

[Kindred]

except that the ACP is not "screwed up"

The ACP is perfectly functional.
Just because you don't happen to LIKE it does not mean that it is broken or screwed up.

Redesigning the ACP is a feature change.
Properly, feature changed are next version tasks.

[Arantor]

The ACP front page is working as designed. There is literally no higher authority on the planet that can tell you that, because I am literally the person who designed it as a replacement to 2.0's, which had the same blocks up top, but instead of an overview of all the items, it gave you big fuzzy icons for 8 items of the admin panel, which were also things people didn't normally go to that often.

It has in fact been working as designed since I announced it publicly in November 2013 - https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=513789.0

This topic's purpose is an acknowledgement that I was wrong and that it can be improved, but that whatever you want to do with your own forum for your own purposes is *not* necessarily the same as what the next version of SMF itself should do.

Building it as a mod now means making the next version later. You don't want it to be years away? Neither do I but the only way to get there is to *not split the workload in the first place*.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I understand that, but this seems to be an exceptional situation.  2.1 was released in Feb, just a few months ago, after ten years of development, and we're already talking about 2.2.  We've seen this before with 2.0 updates, but 2.1 is a new branch, and there seems to be some agreement that it's seriously flawed.  Isn't there a better path to expedite fixes for the more obvious problems?

[Oldiesmann]

The more changes we make for 2.1 patches, the bigger chance there is that it will break a theme and/or mod. The whole point of patches is to fix minor bugs and security issues, not rewrite/redesign entire sections.

[davo88]

... because I am literally the person who designed it as a replacement to 2.0's... I was wrong and that it can be improved...

So if you were designing it again now, have you had any thoughts about what direction you might be inclined to take it?

[Arantor]

@davo88 It's funny, I thought I actually did that in post #4 (or, the opening post when I made this topic)

@Sir Osis of Liver, you deeply misunderstand my intent here. For normal platforms that have a healthy development process, you ship a version, then you collect feedback for it, then you plan the next version. The fact 2.1 took so long is the outlier here and trying to re-rail the project by getting people talking and thinking about how to improve it for *everyone* is how we get there. You see, normal projects with a contributor base this size ship a new version every 18 months, 2 years max. Hell, this project used to do that - SMF started life in 2003 and was at 1.1 by 2006.

Then again I am a bit concerned that in the 4 months since 2.1's release there doesn't appear to be much of a roadmap for anyone outside the team, which is a shame because it shuts down people like me who have time, energy and code to share.

[Steve]

When I wrote it, of course, it was the first post in the topic.

@davo88 It's funny, I thought I actually did that in post #4 (or, the opening post when I made this topic)

Just not going to let me forget I should have done the split differently, are you?  

[Arantor]

No, that's not what I'm getting at here - you're fighting a design constraint of SMF this time round. When you merge two topics, they get sorted by post id, not by logical order.

My snotty attitude here is "I did already cover this, plz read the topic", you're all good (it's just it's the second or third time I've had to point out that I did a study in what everyone else was doing, why, and what I would do with it)

[Steve]

I know. I was just kidding with you. Though in retrospect, I should have done it differently.

Back on topic ...

[Arantor]

If you're staying on topic in a forum you're kind of doing it wrong

But more seriously, I'm pretty adamant that the correct way forward is to not try to do things as mods, only to redo them if they become core, but to just fix core.

I think it's possible to build something cool into the ACP that is useful for people and makes the ACP landing page more useful - it's just that what that 'useful' is will vary for different people. Solving the notifications of updates problem is trivial - SMF *already does this* given that the upgrade message appears in the package manager as well as the ACP home page. (I think the solution is awful internally, but that's a completely different discussion.)

Thus the suggestion of making the home page more modular so people can add/remove the things they care about - as part of a larger strategy to make functionality modular and exposed to people in places and ways that make sense for them. Give them the tools to help their community; we're never going to know how everyone uses their community, so let's give them the tools to shape it how they see fit.

(This of course builds onto the strategy outlined in previous topics relating to pages and blocks.)

[FrizzleFried]

Should there already be a 2.2 dedicated sub-forum for things like this?  I mean,  I'd think that once a version shipped,  the a sub-forum for the next version should be created to start collecting ideas for the next "big" update?

EDIT: Wait... maybe that is what "Feature Requests" is intended for?  That said... it sure sounds like "Feature Request" is for the current version... but it seems SMF team doesn't want to add 'features' to 2.1... so perhaps a title change to "Feature Requests for 2.2" or in some way incorporate 2.2 in there would be in order?

[Arantor]

Feature Requests is 'things for a future version', it always has been. And there's a gulf between whether a feature might be 10 lines of code vs 10,000 lines of code but still be eligible for 'the next version'.

[Kindred]

yes, what Arantor said.

The problem is that 2.1 took so long (without getting into the reasons) that we did release some feature updates in the 2.0 branch and some people are ultra focused on exceptions from the past rather than looking at the future.

So, doing that again is not what the plan is going forward.
2.1.x are point releases to correct bugs, security and support
2.2 is the next release branch.

(and no, support does not include changing things that WORK AS INTENDED, even if you don't like the way it works)

There IS a roadmap/plan. The Devs have indicated do not feel comfortable sharing that publicly yet (and it is their call on what/when things like that get shared). I understand Arantor's frustration -- but, as a developer, I'm sure he also understands their point of view at the moment)

[Arantor]

but, as a developer, I'm sure he also understands their point of view at the moment

No, not really.

We're four months in from 2.1's release with not even a *hint* of what's to come. Not even to rule things out for the next version, to indicate 'this is not in line with our general direction'.

Especially since there's no indication how far off said roadmap is - it might be next week, it might be next year. And then you've actually got to build it.

At this pace, I'm betting it would be quicker to get from scratch to SMF 1.0 again that it would to get from 2.1 to next version - and that was ~18 months. Of which 4 months has been spent coming up with a plan.

So, no, I really don't understand the point of view. I'm also not convinced I want to be here by then anyway.


EDIT: The other choice is opening the roadmap up sooner rather than later with 'here's what we're thinking of, what do you think' and involving the community as soon as possible. This approach absolutely favours a quick iterative release cycle. If you're not going for that, though, a roadmap that is published is favourable - but I would argue that there needs to be more engagement with the community EITHER WAY.

From the sidelines, the silence is utterly deafening.


EDIT 2: Engaging with the community was the best thing to come out of Wedge. Every experiment, every thought, every idea whether implemented or not, we talked about it. If it didn't go down well, we didn't include it. If it did, we refined it.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

@Sir Osis of Liver, you deeply misunderstand my intent here.

No, I do pretty much understand, it's just the frustration factor of having tried to contribute some suggestions going back to alpha, all of which were rebuffed or ignored, and seeing some of those same things now being reconsidered when it's too late to do anything for 2.1.   There's also the time factor of being old and fading fast.

As for your original ACP, the only thing that was really wrong with it was retaining a lot of the 2.0 clutter and placing it above the new cpanel style menu, pushing the menu offscreen.  Wasn't kidding when I posted that didn't know it was there until a couple versions into beta.  There was no reason to scroll down looking for it because the dropdown menus were still across the top.  I prefer sidebars, but the cpanel menu is also a good idea, and something most admins are familiar with.  If you clean up and reorganize the page, something like I posted above, it works well.

[Arantor]

How small is your screen that you had to scroll to see it?

I also can't speak for what happened around here after I left the dev team because after that my life somewhat upended itself so any feedback that got ignored was... out of my control entirely.

But I hear what you're saying. I feel in much the same boat - that trying to actually sort out the right path is simply a waste of time.

Mind you, you're still missing my point - 'too late for 2.1' is 'must be in 2.2 which needs to be soon'. However I take your point that this doesn't seem even remotely soon.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I have a 23" monitor running at reduced resolution (1280x720), makes everything larger (poor vision).  This is what I see -

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If I rearrange it I see this -

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[Arantor]

Ahhh, I see what you mean.

What I will do is show you the *first* version of the design that was more than a full year before it made it into SMF (this was February 2012). The blocks were already gone in my world. I will also posit that, at the time, the whole PHP/MySQL version thing was so much less of a drama that it just didn't matter nearly so much to find this out in any hurry (and the other things that are on the support block... really don't come up that often)

As a bonus, here's also a second screenshot of an evolution I did that had a few 'you seem to be new, do you want to x' tasks, that you could hide.

Can't believe this was more than 10 years ago now. How time flies.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

That's pretty much what I thought when I first saw it, if you're going to develop a completely new menu system it should be featured prominently on the page, and get rid of the dropmenus, they're no longer needed.   Believe I posted some code on team board that did basically that, but no one ever looked at it.

[Arantor]

The dropmenus were there to prevent you having to go back to the front page every time, but also Nao was a huge fan of using them to drill down to whichever page he wanted.

Honestly, going back through my old screenshots on Wedge was a weird trip, seeing all the ideas I'd had back in the day, not all of which made it into production code.

[Antechinus]

The Wedge shots are a saner arrangement. Although they do still suffer from the text being less conspicuous than the icons, and centre-aligned. Something like cPanel's presentation is easier to scan, IMO.

The problem with colourful icons is that they may look cute, but they draw the eye, and nobody will actually remember all of the icons and what functions they relate to. So, although they may generate favourable reactions if you put it out there and everyone goes "Oh cool, look at the icons!" (which they will do, just because they haven't seen it before) when it comes to actually using it people will have to look past the icons and read the text to figure out where they want to go.

So, making it easier for people to read the text is going to make it more usable, in practice, regardless of anyone's knee-jerk reaction to seeing lots of pretty icons.

[Arantor]

cPanel looked like that in 2012 though (complete with even more unmemorable icons, and centered text). So did macOS (complete with more memorable icons and centered text). Those were the design cues I took from which I've never made a secret of

I dunno about the assessment of usability though. I think in hindsight I'm at the point where I don't really look at *either* consciously and go off some combination of vaguely recognising the combination (similar to people recognising avatars + usernames as a unified thing) and vaguely off muscle memory. Which is why I'm thinking what seemed like a good idea back then isn't now.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Have you seen the new cpanel ui?  They went from this -

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To this -

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[Arantor]

I remember when Paper Lantern was first announced (2013? 2014? 2014 blog post introducing it) and I remember that having more punchy colours and centralised text.

Honestly, I remember cPanel looking like the attachment. As I said, when I made this, it was very much in line with what was contemporary.

I'm not responsible for people not making it better in the 9-10 years since I made it and even I agree it could be done better now!

[Oldiesmann]

Since we're talking about control panels, here's how Plesk does things. Ironically, Plesk owns cPanel (and has for years) but the two projects are completely separate from one another. Note that some of the items here are plugins (Immunify, PageSpeed, Softaculous), but you get the point.

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[live627]

Here's WordPress. I really like how the menu section expands when active, revealing more options.

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I have a 23" monitor running at reduced resolution (1280x720), makes everything larger (poor vision). 

I do a similar thing, except do DPI scaling at full resolution... keeps text sharp. Too blurry/blocky when downscaled.