Not a fan of the new admin homepage

[nobody]

I loved WHMCS 4's styled homepage for the admin area - the flow was perfect and didnt require searching up and down the page for everything and looking though very long scroll boxes to see entire tables.

 

The new wigget-styled homepage is annoying, not very user friendly and i think there should be an option to use the older style.

 

Plus doesnt help that the v4 and the blend skin are both 100% width; on my 22" monitor it looks moot and is hard to use. What was it designed for? To be used on an ipad?

 

Also the top nav's aren't layered very well. Under the setup menu you find tools that you use very frequently in the middle and end of the list and then you have tools that you only really use once or twice in a year. (e.g. setting up database backup, general config, automation settings, support departments, ticket status')

 

I do agree with other comments i've seen here on the board about WHMCS getting a bunch of new features that don't really add or change any of its primary functionality. I would prefer to see changes with the support software (the ticket desk) than getting a new UI every few months.

 

"If it's the colour of gold - is it really worth more?"

[Blueberry3.14]

FWIW, I'm not a fan of the new admin homepage (the main section), either. The top nav menu is totally customizable, though I think that's one of the good changes. IMO, the other drop-downs were way too long, and I frequently had trouble when I had to access WHMCS from a mini netbook.

 

The main section of the admin homepage can mostly be reverted back, though a few queries seem to have changed, and will require a little tweaking. The two columns can be reverted back to the old look with a little CSS and/or HTML tweaks. It's doable...you don't have to be stuck with it as it is.

[nobody]

I have already made many changes to the nav menu and the actual homepage itself. my comments were about the native default fresh install. This board isn't just for the good ass-kiss reviews, its also for things WHMCS can do better in- otherwise feedback is useless.

[Blueberry3.14]

I have already made many changes to the nav menu and the actual homepage itself. my comments were about the native default fresh install.

 

Not knowing if you were comfortable making those kind of changes (not everyone who posts here knows CSS, HTML, or even the basics of hosting) I just wanted to let you know it's possible.

 

This board isn't just for the good ass-kiss reviews, its also for things WHMCS can do better in- otherwise feedback is useless.

 

And that's why I replied to your comment

[Matt]

I loved WHMCS 4's styled homepage for the admin area - the flow was perfect and didnt require searching up and down the page for everything and looking though very long scroll boxes to see entire tables.

 

The new admin homepage widgets are something you can drag/drop to arrange as desired, and enable/disable the stuff you do and don't want so it should be easier to get things exactly as you want them in this layout.

 

The new wigget-styled homepage is annoying, not very user friendly and i think there should be an option to use the older style.

 

The "previous" admin homepage design had a number of limitations that needed to be overcome, specifically: not degrading well for users who don't have permissions to view certain things, having to load and calculate all statistics prior to page loading which made it slower on large installations, not allowing for developers to add to it from their modules, and not being customisable to each staff member whose wants and needs vary per role in the company. Those are things the new homepage was designed to address, and with widgets, the possibilities are unlimited for what can be done with them. Plus they are all fully open source and customisable should you want to adjust sizes or such like.

 

Plus doesnt help that the v4 and the blend skin are both 100% width; on my 22" monitor it looks moot and is hard to use. What was it designed for? To be used on an ipad?

 

The idea behind this was just to utilise the maximum available screen space. Certainly for handling tickets etc..., which I guess is where most of us spend most of our time, the extra screen width available makes sense, as it means less scrolling.

 

I would prefer to see changes with the support software (the ticket desk) than getting a new UI every few months.

 

It may take a bit of getting used to, but the new admin homepage design was needed for functionality. And certainly the client area was. It had been 2.5 years since our last redesign so it's not like we do it all that often. But the support ticket desk also had work done on it, as did all areas of WHMCS: http://www.whmcs.com/whats-new/

[bigsean]

"The idea behind this was just to utilise the maximum available screen space. Certainly for handling tickets etc..., which I guess is where most of us spend most of our time, the extra screen width available makes sense, as it means less scrolling."

 

Hi Matt,

 

With the above statement I agree that more real estate is always great however I don't see your point on how it would help with the ticket system? I use a 24 inch screen and the input box for replies is massive (though I can use the resizer in the bottom right corner to make it smaller) the actual width is the issue. We have roughly 10k clients so we do get a lot of tickets and I don't think the width really benefits us in any way as scrolling is the same....everything looks too wide and stretched out. Is there a way to adjust the width in general?

 

Other than the actual width of everything, generally speaking I am happy with the new release.

 

Cheers

Al

[nobody]

Is there a way to adjust the width in general?l

 

Yes. you can change the css file in the skin you use (style.css) which is found in /whmcs/admin/templates/blend/ (or whichever skin you use)

 

i changed .contentarea to:

 

.contentarea {
   margin: 0 auto;
margin-top:10px;
   padding: 15px;
min-width: 900px;
max-width: 1200px;
   min-height: 300px;
   background-color: #fff;
   border: 4px solid #E2E7E9;
}

The above code changes the content to be centered and limits its width to 900px to 1200px

 

EDIT: the above is for the blend skin- this more than likely wont work for v4

[bigsean]

Yes. you can change the css file in the skin you use (style.css) which is found in /whmcs/admin/templates/blend/ (or whichever skin you use)

 

i changed .contentarea to:

 

.contentarea {
   margin: 0 auto;
margin-top:10px;
   padding: 15px;
min-width: 900px;
max-width: 1200px;
   min-height: 300px;
   background-color: #fff;
   border: 4px solid #E2E7E9;
}

The above code changes the content to be centered and limits its width to 900px to 1200px

 

EDIT: the above is for the blend skin- this more than likely wont work for v4

 

Thanks for posting, personally I use v4 so no good for me but appreciate the response.

[Matt]

With the above statement I agree that more real estate is always great however I don't see your point on how it would help with the ticket system? I use a 24 inch screen and the input box for replies is massive...

 

My point was simply that being wider, means less scrolling, because more ticket replies/messages fit on the screen at one time. The same applies to other areas too. But I guess it's personal preference at the end of the day as some people have commented about not liking long lines of text, whereas for me that would be preferable over the extra scrolling, but being templated, the great thing is it is something you can customise if desired.

 

Along a similar line to the above poster, to add a fixed width to the v4 template you just need to add the following additional CSS rules to the #bodyContentWrapper and #content_container classes in the /admin/templates/v4/style.css file:

 

    max-width: 1450px;
min-width: 1240px;

 

Hope this helps.

 

Matt

[michelle]

I'm hoping it will grow on me with time. I do like how you can move the boxes around. One thing I miss from the old design was being able to immediately see pending support tickets. From the new Admin dashboard, that's now located under the "Admin Area" and it does not stand out. I have to look carefully to see if we have pending tickets. It would be great if this could be highlighted somehow, like maybe instead of the brown background, make it red when there are pending tickets or list this to the left of the screen again like it used to be where we can immediately see it when logging in. Just a suggestion.