Greetings and welcome back to the Dev Diary!
Last time around Emil was kind enough to walk the community through Oxwall’s general plans for the year (check it out if you need a refresher), and of course everyone is now clamoring the details. Well, that’s what Dev Diary is for, so let’s get right down to business. Today we’ll take a look at the Admin Panel and what we’ve been doing to it lately.
Navigation
One of the things that bothered us for a while in regards to the current Admin Panel is rather obvious – a lot of space is used irrationally, including –
- notifications cluttering up the top of every page;
- a multi-level horizontal menu absorbing quite an area;
- gradual accumulation of system settings (sometimes found in unexpected or not obvious places).
Apart from the visual aesthetics problem, the aforementioned issues can potentially disorient you or negatively impact your performance.
To fix that and optimize your work we decided to create a more user-friendly environment right in the heart of your site. To do so we’ll introduce a new vertical menu, and also restructure the settings. This allowed us to move all notification to the console and bunch them up under a single icon. Now you can access all available updates or necessary system settings at any moment on any page.
Dashboard
It’s been our goal for a while now to give all admins some sort of work areas. Think individual space to shape it up to your liking, where you can manage all the necessary site information in the most accessible form.
That idea was implemented as Admin Dashboard – a widget page with purpose-built stat tools like User Statistics (Registrations, Online), Content Statistics, Moderation Tools, etc. Most of the data is supplemented with accompanying graphs for your convenience. Meanwhile, third-party developers will be welcome to introduce their own Admin Dashboard widgets.
Responsive
Finally, the next ambitious step we took was the adptation of the current Admin Panel for the work on tablets. Without giving too much away, we can reveal that this segment is indeed important for us, and we are already hard at work on a brand new responsive theme. That, however, is a topic for an entirely new Dev Diary post.
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That’s awesome. The admin panel has always looked quite cluttered in my opinion. Can’t wait until this update comes out! 😀
This all sounds great and I do look forward in seeing them all working properly. But how about fixing ALL the issues the script has now? The first thing that comes to mind is the integration of the MAIL/CHAT plugin, this issue is a big bug that has really been going since 1.7.0 core update was introduced.
There are a lot of issues (just look through the forum) that need to be fixed before you can move forward with other features that truly need to be implemented at some point. Like the “FLAG” option that was a huge request by us developers…does not work right yet but has been implemented, now this brings one more issue that has to be worked out. Let’s get all the issues that are in effect now resolved, do a core update, make sure that versions is completely bug free as well, then move forward implementing other new options.
This way us developers would finally have a completely issue free version that we could work with using default plugins and themes.
Just my thoughts on this…like I have stated before, this script ROCKS and is the best out there in my mind and I do give thanks for the developers and support team for there on going work! Keep it coming!
Wilson
nice one oxwall team
Thanks that you guys are trying a lot for us. We are also always waiting something good from you. Please accept our warm regards. Take care.
Cool stuff guys keep up the good work, Can hardly wait to work in a much easier environment with less clutter and confusing navigation.
All sounds very positive. But when are you guys going to fix the messaging bug? 😉
Wow guys,
Really looks superb. Cant wait to test it out and deploy on the site itself! Keep up the development and great thinking.
Because its all about: our sites being powered by Oxwall…..
Thanks for your time, effort and energy. I eagerly anticipate each update and have been delighted with progress. Keep it up!
hello Oxwall team very good work:-) When will the update?
Will it in future also provide adjustments for user page? This really is also very confusing and difficult to orden.
But When are you guys going to fix the messaging bug ???
Please also for the future better user album sorting. How Private Photos ect. Now all images are by-side.
micha
Very nice work guys. I can’t wait to play with it and see what it’s capable of in flexibility of our design for each pages and having more options for settings. I think this new design you are planning for admin would be good if you can also create a responsive theme just like it for our website or front end. And aside from having a full mobile version and bugs, I think the other issue is load speed of the site or software. I’m not saying Oxwall is slow (i’ve tested others that are slow), but needs to improve more on load speed or response time still. Thanks for the hard work everyone.
Great work! i just hope this new theme is not ugly again! cuz all other theme’s are dark/pink/white etc… ugly as hell lol and give it 2 sidebars! instead of just one! i know its free but the only design which i like is my diary a great look for the eyes cant wait to see it! keep up the good work
All sounds great but admin section is not really something that needs work. would be nice to see other features getting some love other than admin section. after all the admin is only person that has to see and deal with it, and admins only spend minimal time in the admin section. the core focus should be on the front end and usability for the users/members of the site.
was excited about last post, but seems you guys have taken a step to the left a little bit with this admin section dealio.
all in all features are good and progress is great keep up the excellent work oxwall.
just my thoughts.