Make paper lantern theme for WHM to stay consistent with cPanel.

Too true.

The idea of bringing WHM closer to PL is in and of itself a no win situation IMHO.

Agreed re a guided tour of WHM. Definitely something we're interested in doing. For so many of our users, WHM is the first impression they have of the product (during the trial period, for example).

I love this idea. Too, the general request already exists here: https://features.cpanel.net/topic/improved-service-status-page

Thanks @Benny.

I'll add my feedback there.

There's no complaint there on allowing users to make their own UI changes, I couldn't agree more. Even an option in the interim allowing a user to choose which landing page the should see would be positive advancement.

:rolls eyes:

However I think your perspective is a bit skewed. You do realize you're using a GUI interface to manage your server and you can not get anymore lazier than that. If you think adding a bunch of metrics on a landing page to help give a user intel on what's going on from an at a glance view because they are "lazy" to click the links then you should probably just uninstall cpanel and stick with going old school and manage your server through SSH commands. I'm already lazy for using cPanel to begin with and if I'm not mistaking cPanel is designed to help administrators do their jobs a lot more efficiently. I don't need cPanel to manage a server it's makes managing a cluster of servers easier.

Looking good.

• Will this new theme be a separate X theme or will you be replacing the X theme with this one?
• Is it possible to add a hoverable tool tip that can summarize what each of those icons purpose are.
• I think a key feature could be to offer different viewing arrangements and allow a user to set which they prefer.

Currently this is simply an update to the icons in the X theme. Not a brand new theme (though we'll be likely doing something akin to how we did Paper Lantern for WHM at some point in the future....opt-in for a while, then migration period)

Hoverable tool-tip? yes it's possible. That's a great simple next-iteration for this interface, actually.

re Configurable viewing arrangements - it's funny you should bring that up. My team and I were just discussing a few ideas for where we could go with the WHM interface and one of the notions was to be able to pick a 'workspace' (akin to Adobe Illustrator) for your use case. For example, something like

Update: (I hit post too soon) -- So this is just a quick access menu that has the common lower-level navigation links in them suited for specific use-cases. Obviously these groups aren't final, nor are the links in them picked particularly well...but the idea is at least illustrated with them.

Awesome, thanks to you and the cPanel team for the hard work! I'm really excited about the removal of frames - that's one of my biggest annoyances in WHM right now.

The frames aren't going without a fight, trust me.

Out of curiosity, why are the frames there in the first place, and why will it be such a pain to remove? It seems like a bit of a "strange" design to me. I understand if you don't have time to type out a detailed answer, but if you get the chance, I'd love to know.

The design decision pre-dates me, so I'm not sure. Ever since their introduction, some apps inside WHM have grown to expect (or even rely) on the presence of frames for various reasons.

For example, the load averages found in the top navigation are actually refreshed by javascript which watches events in the left-frame for when to update itself. It's really bizarre and we're having to scrap-and-rewrite it to not care about frames.

@Drumrocker365 The real challenge seems to be that while the WHM interface has received many coats of paint and modernized UI bits over the years, much of the underlying frame seems pretty much the same as it was eons ago. Web interface standards and UX expectations have evolved hugely since then, so it makes sense to me that the modernization effort will take time and a LOT of effort. Very excited to see that this is being tackled!

EPIC.

Wow, you aren't kidding! I've been a cPanel customer for "a long time" (in my mind), but really I've just been a customer for 2 or 3 years. I thought I'd seen a lot of changes, but that's pretty drastic! I see how the basic structure is the same though.

It's really easy to forget that cPanel is >20 years old. The codebase itself isn't nearly that old but different areas of any project develop at different rates. In retrospect, it took us close to 3 years to get the cPanel end-user interface where it is today (paper lantern) and there's always much more to do than time will allow. The hardest part of my job is telling my team "no, we've got to move on" ;-)

Thanks for this feedback, @ethical. I've got some replies below, but in general I know that larger UI changes can be disruptive and it's easy to be weary of them. We're intentionally proceeding very slowly through this so that we can remain open to concerns like yours.

Regarding mobile responsiveness

We have no intention of going 'mobile first' in our redesign effort and causing the desktop experience to suffer. WHM is simply too big and too capable to truly adopt mobile for all of it's use-cases. IN FACT, I'm willing to make calls like "this specific feature in WHM is not available on mobile at all." rather than create a terrible experience for desktop or mobile users.

Regarding the left nav

There's no chance of a removal of the left nav. It's far too well known and used for it to go away. Frequently I hear stories from users who say "It's muscle memory. I just know where to look or click." when I speak with them about the general navigation of WHM.

We are going to remove the FRAME that it sits in and relocate it onto every page of the user interface. Once this is done, you may very well not even notice anything as changed. That's the hope anyway.

I want to see a few changes in the left-nav, which I'm happy to talk about here:

• Where possible, I would like to see groups consolidated down in an intelligent way. For example, I have always wondered why "Account Information", "Account Functions" and "Multi Account Functions" have to exist separately.
• I want to see the merger of single-operation and batch-operation apps without loss of functionality. For example, we have already merged Account Functions » Terminate a User and Multi-Account Functions » Terminate Multiple Users down into just one feature capable of BOTH single and batch operations from the same interface. I want to see this trend continue where appropriate.
• I want the left navigation to be sortable. It's currently intentionally sorted to keep the things you should do during setup of a server at the top. There's frequent requests on the feature request site for this to be user-adjustable. Sorting setup tasks first should simply be one option. Others might include: "alphabetical", and "most frequently used".

Regarding whitespace

When we adjusted the layout of the icons to move the labels next to the images, rather than below it, it did create considerable spacing between icons, and thus more scrolling. It also provided for far more room for the text translations of these features.

For non-english users, the 'side by side' layout of the icons prevents feature names from spilling out onto nearby elements, or from artificially becoming hyphenated. In some languages, the concept of hyphenation doesn't exist at all or causes loss in meaning entirely. As cPanel's popularity in non-english speaking areas of the world grows, we consider the side-by-side presentation here to stay.

Something else that contributed to the whitespace between elements on the page was our general adoption of the grid-system provided by Twitter Bootstrap. We standardized the margins, paddings and font-sizes by relying on Bootstrap's specifications rather than configuring it all ourselves. Some margins/paddings/font-sizes went up, others went down but the amount of custom layout code dropped dramatically.

In the past, we have considered creating a "compact" optional style. If there's enough interest from enough people, we may yet do that.

Regarding quick access to search

Great suggestion with this one. We'll do our best. I hear positive feedback about the "quick-search" we added in the top navigation of the cPanel end-user interface that's right in line with your suggestion!

Our current plan involves bringing that quick-search from the cPanel end-user interface into the WHM interface as well so that both interfaces have it's advantages.

• "I want to see the merger of single-operation and batch-operation apps without loss of functionality. For example, we have already merged Account Functions » Terminate a User and Multi-Account Functions » Terminate Multiple Users down into just one feature capable of BOTH single and batch operations from the same interface. I want to see this trend continue where appropriate."

I think you need to quit explaining this so much when you change it though. I'm sit of hitting redirection pages and having to wait. Even setting a cookie would be okay with me to avoid them after the first time. I mean when I want to terminate an account manually. I don't go clicking on icons. I click in search at top left and type in: "term". Changing the name or the group it's located in is not going to deter me from going there to wipe an account as long as you don't change the main defining feature of the name.

• "I want the left navigation to be sortable. It's currently intentionally sorted to keep the things you should do during setup of a server at the top. There's frequent requests on the feature request site for this to be user-adjustable. Sorting setup tasks first should simply be one option. Others might include: "alphabetical", and "most frequently used"."

Doesn't even have to be sortable. Maybe after first 24 hours are up after install have a group called most used added near the top, could even figure out a way to display what menu group each originally comes from with their link gracefully as well. Not really an art person so I'll leave those ideas up to others. Then it could update that menu monthly, weekly, or daily on a cron settable in tweak settings?

duly noted regarding how we deprecate/move features around. We're never quite sure how tolerant our user-base will be about moves or consolidations so we err on the side of caution and take it slow.

Having an optionally displayed "Most commonly used" section of the list is a great idea!

Thanks Adam. appreciate the response. I am not sure you got what i meant on the whitespace issue, (i was referring to the area in PL such as editing or adding emails, or editing DNs zone entries, those pages are way to spread out in terms of space now) so if that can be kept in mind for similar areas on the WHM side of thigns that would be great.

makes sense about consolidating appropriate categories

I dont think sorting needs to be too high on the list really given that one can just type in the search function and get what they need pretty quickly.

thanks!

In regard to the scrolling issue, it has not been so much of a problem

in all honesty. The icon theme groups and labels were waaaay more digestible

UI wise. Yes scrolling is a minor inconvenience, but I rather not have dated 90s UI. The spacing and categorization of the UI elements allows for more breathng room for the onlooker, especially a learner that needs to comitt things to muscle memory. A compact mode to minimize icon usage and more list elements would be a more practical approach.