Feedback on WHM UI changes in 76
OK I just "upgraded" to v 76 and it is HORRIBLE. A HUGE step backwards.
In v74 I was able to hide the left hand navigation list and use the icons on the home to screen to navigate my way through WHM. It was easy to click through to find what I needed starting with the full list of icons CLEANLY displayed on the home screen. The icosn were laid out cleanly with a brief title for each.
In v76 the home screen has been messed up terrible. Now only a small portion of the icons are displayed, they are broken into two groups, there are group titles (100% unnecessary, just clutter) and lengthy narratives under each of the very few icons that remain (more clutter) and I have to turn back on the left navigation pane, hunt through it and hopefully find any other links I want to use. TERRIBLE DESIGN, TERRIBLE CONCEPT, USELESS MAIN HOME UI!
Please tell me how to reestablish my home screen so that all icos are there like it should be.
I have no idea who in the hell actually thought this was a better UI but whoever it was that designed and approved this should be fired immediately and never allowed to code a UI again.
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are there any decisions yet made? or just make somewhere a possibility to go back to old style the scrolling and seaching in the search field is really wasting obviously not only my time/nerves 0 -
Although @cPanelAdamF did announce that there would be a meeting about this on Monday (2018-11-12)
we don't know if the meeting actually ever happened. It would be nice to get some follow-up, even if the meeting was postponed due to a lack of coffee and doughnuts, or that no decision had yet been reached - please give us something to grasp onto. Perhaps an announcement with some really good news is winding its way through the PR machine ? (I am trying very hard to be positive, and not cynical here !!)0 -
I think a good home page for WHM would be one where you could simply 'drag n drop' links to your most used items/categories from the left hand column onto the blank page. That way everyone gets the page that suits them. 0 -
this should have been an option not mandatory or at least a "settings" page to allow this or not - i am now moving to a plesk server 0 -
this should have been an option not mandatory or at least a "settings" page to allow this or not - i am now moving to a plesk server
Little overkill don't you think?0 -
Update from the meeting: We are going to provide a link back to the legacy WHM index page for at least one major version for those who aren't yet able to adopt the new interface. Expect a link or toggle button to be added to the WHM Index page which you can click to set your preference. Once you specify a preference we'll return you to that index page style when you return to the index. The legacy WHM Index Page may go away as we iterate on the new WHM Index Page by adding third-party plugin support or customization support in future versions. There is a major scheduling issue, however, which will frustrate getting access to the legacy WHM Index page out to you guys. We have an upcoming routine TSR approaching on the schedule which will brake the roll out of new changes to v76 and potentially bump all this to v78. I don't entirely have a solution to this particular problem. We're getting the work done anyway before making that decision. What we need from you guys: Please consider participating in our EDGE release tier in order to identify issues like this and post your feedback far sooner in our release cycle. If you need more information about the EDGE release tier, hit up our blog post How and Why to Build an EDGE Server | cPanel Blog. Feedback is always welcome and we established the EDGE release tier specifically to provide a large window of time during our releases to gather it from you all. For those of you who do not wish to run an EDGE server and want to remain frozen on a specific version of cPanel & WHM for as long as possible, you may consider running one our latest LTS release. Find out more at cPanel Long-Term Support - cPanel Knowledge Base - cPanel Documentation 0 -
this should have been an option not mandatory or at least a "settings" page to allow this or not - i am now moving to a plesk server
Since Plesk and cPanel now have the same owners, I'm sure this generated a good laugh or two.0 -
I'm certain that your marketing department can give you an indication of how many servers your average WHM end user runs, but I expect it's around 1.2. Suggesting an edge release, which clearly shouldn't be exposed to actual customers, would mean a significant increase in cost. That is probably why you don't have so many edge users. As a counter-proposal, please consider asking your customers for feedback in a more structured way. You can do this early in the design stage, before going into product development. If you need more information on how to do this, hit up this article: webcredible.com/blog/focus-groups-how-run-them/ What we need from you guys: Please consider participating in our EDGE release tier in order to identify issues like this and post your feedback far sooner in our release cycle. If you need more information about the EDGE release tier, hit up our blog post
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I always thought Edge was more for developers, people who design plugins for cPanel and what not and need a heads up on what changes are coming to cPanel. I never thought of Edge to be anything close to production ready. Although, isn't there also a developer's edition of cPanel? Maybe that is what it should be used for. Bottom line is, I think cPanel has way too many tiers and no clear path or incentive for differentiating those tiers. In my opinion, cPanel needs to some how incentivize using a more bleeding edge edition. I would propose something like: Edge/Developer edition - perhaps offer this free but some how cripple it to where it can't be used in production. Since the purpose for this is mainly for developers to see what is coming up next for cPanel. Current - Offer this release at a discount. Make it cheaper for users to use CURRENT - with automatic updates - so that there is an incentive to get bleeding edge changes out to the masses Release/Stable/LTS - I'm not sure if there is any difference here. I'd just make it one, and trim some of the fat from offering so many tiers. This is the bottom and where releases go after they have (hopefully) faced enough scrutiny in the Edge/Developer/Current tiers. The idea here being that plugin and cPanel developers that have a need for Edge or Developer edition would catch any major issues first. Then those that are using Current - who would probably be more than there is now, if there was a financial compensation or think of another incentive that would encourage more people to use Current - would find bugs as the exist in production environments. Then everyone that waits for Release/Stable/TLS would theoretically have a more stable product. I mean, this is really how the whole tier structure is suppose to work as it is. I don't have the numbers, but I would assume cPanel would (maybe?) of what percentage of total cPanel licenses are running Edge, running Current, running Release, Running Stable, or Running a specific LTS (or out of life) version. I'm assuming, from what I'm seeing throughout all of these forum posts (and it's not just this one... you'll find a ton when cPanel 74 reached Release, cPanel 72...) most people are running Release. In fact, what I'm seeing on the forums makes me question if ANYONE is using Current. I'm sure there are some developers using Edge, but I doubt those Edge versions are really being used in production or in environments where the person running it is ... isn't that tech savvy (If you're running Edge, you probably know how to operate the cPanel/WHM API and I'd venture a guess that you really don't pay that much attention to where the icons are in WHM). I can't speak for everyone... but I suspect that a large number of web hosting providers prefer stability over everything else... a cPanel interface or API structure or anything related to web hosting, that isn't changing every 2 weeks. I'm not a huge fan of the pace of which cPanel is pushing out all of these new "features" that seem to lack a complete thought process of what they are suppose to be providing. If I had my druthers, I'd have a cPanel interface with an API structure that remains the same for 2 or 3 years. But I will also admit that I may very well be an army of one in that category. But from what I can tell, the people developing cPanel aren't using cPanel. They aren't running their own hosting companies with cPanel, so they lack that element of foresight. (And to be honest, I totally get that. As a developer - although nothing to the scale of cPanel - I develop something and the interface makes sense to me... but when it gets out to public, that's when I start getting complaints about the interface and inner workings). And to be fair to cPanel, they set up a structure to provide testing environments for the new things they develop... I just don't think anyone is using them... because I don't see an incentive to do so. Maybe there are more people using Current than I give credit to. But if they are... their probably a bit more tech savvy themselves and can work around some of these problem. I don't mean any disrespect with this statement, but there are some web hosting companies that know very little about the underlying workings of a Linux system, operating on the command-line, coding/scripting/API development, etc. cPanel needs some type of incentive program that would encourage some of those users to reach back and try some of these more bleeding edge releases to find more potential issues before those releases reach the masses. I'm sure financial incentives wouldn't be the most popular move inside the cPanel boardroom, but maybe there's some other way to offer an incentive. I'm not pretending to have all the answers here. But refusing to acknowledge that it's not a problem, definitely isn't going to provide any answers. That's my 2 cents anyway. 0 -
Personally speaking, I love everything everything 76 has to offer, including the updated UI. I've always used the left hand side search feature to find features rather than the icons on the home screen, so it's really not concerning me. The updated installer is great, too - there were a lot of unnecessary options before (now nicely addressed). Good job team cPanel! :) 0 -
I was Googling for a solution to this myself and found this thread. I agree with OP; please at least offer an option to have it appear like before which is very useful as can just glance at the screen and immediately get to what you want with ease. Those who are experienced with the old layout know precisely which actions they want to use and get to it quickly and not want to be using the search bar and scrolling all over the place in the left-hand bar. The new screen is good for new users of cPanel as it does put the main features there, so they know where to start. But you need to add a theme for those who already know what does what and want to get to the feature as quickly as possible. We might as well be using the command line and sending a pigeon with a note on its ankle instead of emailing otherwise. I had to do emergency migration and me being presented with some new layout like that was very frustrating as I was having to scroll all over the place and was a nightmare! I prefer to see all the options at a glance. Like - Feature --subfeature - Feature -- subfeature That is standard with all types of sites and people are familiar with that, not what is there currently now. Please correct it or at least offer a different layout that customers can choose from. What if you gained customers because they loved the old layout... you just lost them to a competitor. It would be like me signing up for a VPS and after 2 years of receiving excellent performance it being changed to an email only hosting account. Ok, maybe a bit of an exaggeration haha but you get my point. In short, please don't make cPanel harder to use! cPanel is supposed to be user-friendly for everyone no matter the experience they possess. 0 -
Totally agree with OP. Don't fix it if it ain't broke. I understand that many use the sidebar, but many other not. Why reduce the options or different ways to get somewhere easily? I don't see any benefits from this. It's not like you are making a better use of that space. There's nothing (in plain sight) that makes me think this sacrifice is in favor of something better. 0 -
After upgrade 76.0.6 we have new interfece on home in WHM with root login only "Manage Your Accounts" and "Manage Your Server" Please return the old interface where all the controls were on the page. We believe that this is complete nonsense, to go on about one person. If you made it possible to customize the main page, then why change its appearance after the update, let all the elements remain as before, and the person who requested it would install it for themselves. Help me put all the items on the main page, as it was before. 0 -
This new UI is terrible!!! Critical response times are increased exponentially. I find myself searching in the menu bar for something that normally takes seconds. With the old UI I could quickly jump between vital system sections to resolve client issues almost instantly. This is absolutely awful, who wants to use a side bar anyway?? I thought it was great that I could close it up and only use if necessary! The main priority is speed with fast accesss to mission critical areas and fast switching between them. This is a joke!!! As others have said the designer of this UI obviously doesn"t maintain a Cpanel server on a daily bases, because how on earth could you have made these changes otherwise????? 0 -
I respectfully ask for the previous interface to be returned and the user be able to choose which interface they want. I realize you may not want to do this because you designed the new interface as a replacement and not as and option, but that is your fault. I HATE the new UI. It adds many minutes to each and every task. I am in and out of my cPanel/WHM UI 50-60 times a day. This is just awful. Not only is your new design poor, it was clearly developed by people who do not use cPanel/WHM, or are brand new users. Further, for you to redesign the home page WITHOUT allowing us to choose, is ridiculous. Nearly every other web ui platform in the world allows you to see and choose the new UI rather than forcing it on you. Even the giant Google allowed us to use or not use the new e-mail interface when they designed it. I hope you realize how many providers will quietly start putting all new accounts on other platforms as a result of this. It may take time, but this move will be very costly for cPanel. I just can't believe how short sighted the developers are. And the more I think about it, over the years, cPanel has made a move like this many times and there is always an uproar; yet they never learn from their narcissistic development mistakes. 0 -
I hope you realize how many providers will quietly start putting all new accounts on other platforms as a result of this. It may take time, but this move will be very costly for cPanel.
And therein lies the fundamental problem with your threat . The only other hosting panel that is currently anywhere close to being competition to cPanel is owned by the same investment group that has just bought a majority stake in cPanel - so threats to move from one of their panels to another of their panels provokes nothing more than a wry smile !0 -
And therein lies the fundamental problem with your threat . The only other hosting panel that is currently anywhere close to being competition to cPanel is owned by the same investment group that has just bought a majority stake in cPanel - so threats to move from one of their panels to another of their panels provokes nothing more than a wry smile !
I don't see a threat there, and I wrote it. A warning perhaps; and most certainly an opinion. But not a threat. Either way..." You make a good point. I didn't realize about the purchase.0 -
In spite of being asked to help us understand the motive for the WHM panel UI overhaul, cPanel have, so far, declined to enlighten us. Which leads me to conclude that either the change was one of "because we can", or that we are not considered clever enough to be able to understand the complex and esoteric nature of the corporate requirement for high-bandwith collaboration, and other equally trendy paradigm-shifting business double speak. That aside, I should like to take an opportunity to provoke some thought here (since it kinda-sorta has relevance in the greater scheme of things). Why do we actually use software like WHM/cPanel ? Is it for our own hedonistic ends, or because we can't be bothered to try and escape from the point and click environments that (most people; not as ancient as I am) grew up with, and who think that a command line was something that only happens in the Army. And do we spare a thought for the end user " the clients " without whom we wouldn't be here at all ? Surely it is only fair that we offer the users an environment that they feel comfortable in, one that is not so different from their home PC. So, from a personal perspective, whilst I do fervently dislike the change to the WHM UI, if it came down to it, as long as my customers were happy with their cPanel and web-mail interfaces, I would (unhappily and reluctantly) put up with nothing more than a terminal interface opening up when I went into WHM. Of course that would be a bit extreme. I am merely trying to put things in perspective, and bring back some rational into the arguments. I accept that many admins (and I consider myself a member of this group) will assert that a fully graphic GUI assists them in serving their clients better and faster, and for the most part I do agree, but conversely, those l33t wizards who are proficient in the command line will swear that they can achieve everything faster and more efficiently in a terminal. I respect the motivation to sign up and deploy EDGE servers as suggested by @cPanelAdamF but, as someone else very astutely pointed out, I don't see any incentive to do so. To make having an EDGE server worthwhile to see how changes might impact my production would cost me a fortune, with additional server rentals and cloudlinux and kernelcare licences etc even if the cPanel licence was free. All of this might be productive and economically viable in a big operation, but I should be curious to know just how much feedback that is not specific to the big hosting companies requirements, cPanel actually receive. And then there is the question of why the cPanel customers should be tasked with doing EDGE testing and QA for cPanel with no incentive other than hoping their own agendas might be taken into consideration. With that in mind, I should like to propose an alternative that might prove beneficial for both cPanel and their customers: How about deploying a demo server with the latest EDGE release on it ? It could be kept locked down to cPanel license holders, or collaborators, or whatever is considered necessary to keep the access/bandwidth/usage within acceptable limits. It could have the database reset every hour to return it to a vanilla representation after it had been played about with, and I wouldn't have thought it beyond the realms of possibility to ensure that it couldn't be used for anything malicious or nefarious by black-holing some of the obvious features like sending emails etc. and may even include a feedback form for testers to use. As a supplement to those big enough to run their own EDGE servers, and together with the reduction of the available version bands, I believe cPanel would get more useful feedback from an EDGE demo, than they would by only relying on EDGE server installs. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope it provokes some thoughts as was intended. And please don't bother by asking me to open a feature request - I am being punished by having my requests all declined because of my refusal to debase my requests to the "Are you sitting comfortably children? Then I'll begin - once upon a time, As a cPanel User....... " I honestly find that both controlling and demeaning towards the author of the idea, and how does it make the developers feel when they have to wade through the superfluous "story" - or don't the developers deserve any respect for their intelligence either ? 0 -
After a week of trying to get used to it / tolerate it / work with it, I'm sorry, but I absolutely can't stand the new UI and it is WASTING TIME. I am BEGGING PLEASE bring back our "sea of icons" that were actually USEFUL. The 76 UI is a start page with almost nothing of use regarding quick access, and I'm sick of scrolling / searching the sidebar for all the things that I do multiple times daily. Please give us back the 74 UI. Please. Begging. 0 -
I agree that the new welcome screen UI has lost its funcionality. New one has no usability and if you were used to using the old one, now you lose a lot of time. 0 -
Been using WHM/cPanel for years and literally joined the forum in recent days JUST to add my weight to this. When I upgraded a server to v76 I thought I'd done something wrong for a moment. Nope, that was the new GUI. Like others have said, I've used it frequently for a week or so now and I absolutely hate it. So much in fact that we've kept many servers on v74 for now. There was a post earlier in this thread suggesting we use an Edge server and feedback. But as I write this Release, Current, and Edge, are all on 76.0.7 so that's pointless. Also there's no incentive to use Edge, you still have to pay the same yet you run the risk of breaking something which is not good if you use it (unwisely) in a production environment with paying clients. To reiterate, it's not a case of being not keen on the GUI, I absolutely loathe it to the point that it's becoming very frustrating and annoying. That's a shame as the underlying product has evolved brilliantly over the past few years and this just knocked it all down. 0 -
Introducing changes in design and functionality is always difficult. Most people simply don't like change. I'm one of the people who like the new changes in design. Once WHM has been setup, we really don't spend most time in it other than to go to List Accounts, and that has a new shortcut, meaning I don't have to search for it anymore. I do think that I have a solution to what many people considers a problem: Allow the WHM user to select which shortcuts he wants to see on the homepage. This could be done by leaving a [+] or [-] next to the item in the sidebar. 0 -
I also prefer the old Welcome screen Mostly, because I don't have to scroll to get to categories that are further down the screen on the left. I work a full time job and do overtime then come home and help my partner with our hosting business. Anything that will expedite the process will help tremendously! Having a customizable screen would be even better! 0 -
The issue ultimately comes down to cPanel not getting adequate feedback earlier in the design process, which is what EDGE and CURRENT are suppose to do - but they don't appear to be doing what they are suppose to be doing. I don't know what the solution is, but ignoring it as a problem definitely isn't a solution. 0 -
[quote]but they don't appear to be doing what they are suppose to be doing.
You know, there's also the possibility that they actually liked the changes ;-)0 -
Well, it's really not just this design change. Go back and look at this forum any time a new version of cPanel reaches RELEASE. There's always a ton of "complaints" about some changes that have been made. I'm not really arguing that the "changes" are bad or ill-conceived or anything like that. But it's the fact that this happens every time a new version hits RELEASE, that tells me there's not enough Q&A going on before a version hits RELEASE. Now, from cPanel's perspective, they don't know there are issues or dislikes about their changes until people that use and depend on it actually start to use it. When you're writing an application or designing code... it all tends to make sense to you - the coder - so you remain oblivious to any issues. It's not until that product gets into the hands of people that are actually going to be using it every day that problems come up. Perhaps cPanel is using RELEASE as it's Q&A test factory. But that begs the question... what's the point of EDGE and (more importantly) CURRENT? Are issues being raised to the cPanel developers from companies that use CURRENT? Does anyone use CURRENT in a production environment? These are questions cPanel needs to be asking themselves. (I left EDGE out of that part of the discussion, because I really do believe EDGE is serving it's purpose... giving plugin developers a heads up. People that use EDGE probably aren't using it a production environment where everyday normal users are interacting with it and the administrators that are using EDGE are probably a bit more tech savvy. Could changes be made in all of these tiers to make this even better? Possibly). RELEASE probably is the most used tier that cPanel hosts use, so it's going to affect the most users and thus garner most of the feedback and complaints once a new version reaches RELEASE. But that's also telling me that there is no incentive for anyone to be using a tier that is closer to the still-in-coding cycle. By the time a version of cPanel reaches RELEASE, the developers are generally done making changes to it - thus that's why we're seeing this issue with this design concept. Developers can't just go back and do a design overhaul without affecting other functions in the code. So any hope of a design change probably won't happen until cPanel reaches cPanel 78. Perhaps cPanel needs to keep RELEASE open to still-in-coding changes (but again... begs the question, what's the point of CURRENT?) I'm not really seeing this as an issue of a UI change and/or flaw. I'm seeing this as a flaw in the way cPanel version tiers are constructed and how changes need to be made in that area. 0 -
The addition of a toggle to move back and forth between the new WHM index page and the old one has been submitted to v76. How/when it rolls out is going to depend on our release management process like I said earlier BUT here's how it looks: Be on the lookout for CPANEL-23788 in the changelog for when this arrives. (post update was updating the screenshots) 0 -
What is disturbing is what quick links were chosen to be on the home page: Reseller Center? Show Current Disk Usage? Transfer Tool? Backup Restoration? I know the above tools are needed periodically but do they really require their own quick access spot on the home page? Security Center would have been nice. So would have Plugins as well. This UI is terrible. cPanel, Inc. is starting to feel swampy. 0 -
If you notice the new UI is perfect for a new user to WHM because it does have the most commonly used functions for setting up a new server! I like it and if I were a new user to WHM would have found them icons that are there now to be helpful setting up a new server, well at least for the first several months or so! But for the oldskool folks who are used to old UI find it much each easier to get to where they want to and fast! Solution: the old layout will be available soon going by what @cPanelAdamF said above, i.e. admin will be able to choose between new and old layout. I would call the old layout "Glance" or "At a glance", "Clear" or something like that because you see the main categories at a glance and can go to the sub-category with just one more click. Anyway, I don't want @cPanelAdamF's job... especially not after all the feedback from here... not easy for sure. ;) 0 -
nah, Paper Lantern was much much worse than this. 0
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