"New" Control Panel sucks… ! or ? 🤔

ppo

Hi,
After that shocking title… 😂
Am I the only one finding that the previous version was actually better/clearer?

sean

ppo do you have any specific feedback that you'd like to share?

ppo

sean Surely too many. So would require a lot of time to transmit in a clear manner.
I know, not useful at all without that 🤷‍♂️ But if I'm the only one thinking that…

sean

ppo nah, you're not the only one 🙂 but if there are any particular pain points that you want to point out then feel free to share.

ppo

sean OK, OK 😂
Quick brain dump…

In general, difficult to find where things not listed in the left menu are. For example I had a hard time finding where shells users are. When I found where, OK, it makes sense… but from a UX POV, no, hidden/not obvious = bad.

Most annoying: double lists on the same screen with common search and pagination 🤯 #nightmare
1 page = 1 data type = 1 list = KISS
Moreover, you've half the screen available => you've to scroll even when half the screen is empty.
When filtering, the pagination doesn't change.

From lists, some actions opens in modals (of different types, shapes and sizes), some in full page. And it doesn't seem logical. Sometimes a lot of info in a small modal and very few in full page. Also a very wide modal for nothing (update application)

Some forms miss default values… and to be a bit smart. Like I've a single server so don't ask me to select it from a list! And then to select the only IP that is anyway associated to that server.

Have better defaults, and/or allow to configure our preferences. Like auto Let's Encrypt not on by default?

Dashboard: usage data are not clear at all, it's a mess! Disk & RAM, no scale, what's the max? What's the current value? No graph over time? Is that the current value or an average? On what period?

🤔 Well, I think I covered at least the most important things.

igor

ppo Most annoying: double lists on the same screen with common search and pagination 🤯 #nightmare
1 page = 1 data type = 1 list = KISS
Moreover, you've half the screen available => you've to scroll even when half the screen is empty.
When filtering, the pagination doesn't change.

For me, this is the worst thing about the control panel, it's just so out of touch with the way things are usually done.

sean

ppo awesome, thanks for the info! We've got internal tickets going for most of these issues already, I'll add your feedback to them 🙂

ppo

sean Is the control panel a custom dev, or is it based on an existing product/project?

Could you consider putting it in open source so that the community could actually contribute to its development?
The same for installers. I mean more than having separate "community" ones. And these could benefits using a shared library/SDK/API (cf. the CLI Control Panel I was talking about… that already exists here)

sean

ppo The control panel is not open source and likely will never be, but we'll continue to listen to feedback and evolve the panel as needed.

The installers are open source, and anybody is free to contribute PRs to either community or core.

As you pointed out, our REST API is out there for anyone who would like to make their own tools.

andywar65

Don't know if that is possible, but it would be interesting to know Disk / RAM usage per single application. It seems that RAM usage is split by shell user, but I use just one for multiple applications

sean

andywar65 it would be interesting to know Disk / RAM usage per single application.

Tricky but it might be possible.

I use just one for multiple applications

I advise against using a single shell user for multiple projects, especially if you're running WordPress. If you do and one app picks up some malware then that app will be able to infect every other app owned by that shell user. If you keep your projects in their own individual shell users then they'll be isolated from each other which mitigates that risk.

andywar65

sean ...and here is how to migrate apps from one shell user to another:
https://community.opalstack.com/d/268-best-way-to-move-an-app-to-a-different-shell-user

johns

The design motives behind the control panel are/were

Use alpine.js and tailwind.css
Reduce third party libraries to a minimum,
Be mobile and desktop accessible,
Minimize objects and interactions to get things done.

We break this convention when users give us enough feedback.
It is not based on any previous design. I took liberty with trying new things out.
The way other hosts do just about everything is very old fashioned and it is a stagnant market.
We are incentivized to try new things out, if they work we keep them.
I will try to make some changes based on this feedback after we roll out the OS update we are working on now. ETA maybe quarter 3 or 4 of 2023. It will take a lot of rewriting and testing to change. Some of these things are bugs I am aware of. The unified pagination was by design to reduce on screen objects. I will have to rethink that a bit to make it work.

OrangyTang

Since I've also had mixed feelings about the new control panel, I thought I'd drop some (hopefully useful) feedback here. In general I think it's an improvement (once I found where things had been moved to). I also dislike the double-lists on the same page (eg. email) but ppo covered that already and I appreciate that's a more substantial change, so my list is more smaller changes that I think would be easier to do.

Status Page

It's weird that the option to select this is my username, rather than 'Home' or 'Overview' or similar. I feel like this page is trying to do two things - account overview (change password, view invoices) - and a status board (disk usage, ram usage, server status). Would probably benefit from being split into two.
The pie chart has no title, so I have no idea what it represents. I think mailbox usage? I just have a single colour that says 'over'. A title would help. Since there's only one reading, the actual pie chart is useless. The bottom text ("Mailbox pool is based on...") doesn't tell me what the actual pool size is. The 'eye' icon top-right is really hard to see, and I didn't find it until much later. The pop-up that appears has no title so I don't know what that represents either. The eye icon should probably be a 'More..' button styled like the 'Add contact' button.
'Disk usage' and 'RAM' are both pretty useless as they don't have any numbers on, and because it's a white line on a grey line, I don't know whether it's 60% full or 40% full. Because my disk usage is full, the two lines actually merge into one and it looks like I have plenty of space left. Suggest putting these on two seperate lines and having a 'XX Gb of YY Gb' next to each.
Again, the 'eye' icon on the webserver panel is very hard to see.
The 'eye' icon brings up a graph, but there's no X to close it (unlike the overlay when you click the eye icon in the mailbox pie chart). That means you have to click back on your username to close it (which is weird).
The 'eye' for mailboxes brings up a per-mailbox breakdown, but the eye for webserver brings up a graph (with no way to change the reporting period). Would be useful to have a per-directory (or per app) breakdown instead/as well.

Domains

The '?' at the bottom-right overlaps with the 'delete' button in the sites list. I had to awkwardly keep resizing my window so the '?' got out of the way and I could actually delete the bottom entry.

Same problem with the '?' getting in the way

Notice Log

When I apply a filter, the pagination stays the same, so although I only have one page of results, I have 7 pages of empty nothing that I can page through, which makes it look like I have a lot more results than I actually have. And I can't tell if I've reached the end of the results without clicking until I get to an empty page.

Hope that is useful. I do like the new control panel, but it does have a couple of rough edges that could do with sanding down.

VVVOID

While I mostly like the Control panel design, I have a couple of recommendations / observations - I hope they are taken in the spirit I mean them, which is constructively 🙂

I have quite a few domains and the results are double columned and paginated - TBH I'd prefer a single column list to scroll.

I note that the email list doesn't paginate with 8 items, certificates paginates with 10 items, and domains splits into 2 columns with 5+ items.

Lastly, it'd be great if subdomains with the same main domain could be listed together - so www.mydomian.com, mydomian.com, dev.mydomain.com all all listed together, possibly grouped?

Thanks for your time!

overtime

Landed on this thread by searching for "scroll" 😉

I respect @johns POV of trying out new things. Can't find good without searching for it!

What I think gets in the way of usability is the unnecessary (IMO) pagination on the Apps and Domains views. Scrolling is much easier than clicking 1, 2, 3.... and pagination doesn't appear to carry any upside -- in my experience, pagination on the web is almost exclusively done to be easy on the server when possibly querying lots of data, but from a usability perspective "scroll" almost always beats it.
Despite using Opalstack since its inception, every time I land on the panel I feel like I need to re-orient myself a little: "Where is that app? I can't see in this list, has it been removed? Ohh, it's on page 2".

I agree with other critiques like mixing Domains + Websites in the same list, with one being multiple columns and the other being in a paginated list. While intellectualy jarring I can get used to that. But the pagination!

But in fairness, even if you decided to scramble the UI on every refresh I would still be a customer 🙂