Paper Lantern Feedback
Can anybody tell me what is this with latest paper lantern, for me this is big mess:
- On almost any screen you have big blank space on right !!!
- Sidebar is for me really stupid, you now need to just click more to see same information like before
- Same for notifications, why news are hidden, users again need to click more and in most cases large amount will not even click to see it, basically providers can not advertise now etc.
This look like doing all in wrong way after really nice style of paper lantern in 11.52+, at least you could keep 11.52 style (similar like for RETRO style) as I can tell large amount of people will not like this.
It look like bomb exploded and messed all, I really do not write much but this mess with theme is forced me :)
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UPDATE: I spent the day tinkering with the template & styling system and I was able to come up with a solution that removes the sidebar and adds a navigation bar at the top that includes account switching for resellers. I've attached an image of my solution here: 34511 This is not a hack, but instead follows the instructions in the knowledge base and I believe it will not be overwritten by future updates. If anyone is interested in the code for this, please reply.
Hi Stephanie, Great work! Very interested in the code you used to do this.0 -
I need to chime in as well. When I first loaded the new Paper Lantern I thought it was broken! I also agree that when customers are working (and cPanel is "work"), they mostly do so from desktop computers. Responsive design is nice to have, but not a must have. Here are my problems and suggestions. -The sidebar with the stats is vital information. I need to see the usage of the account at first glance. It's bad enough that the name of the hosting plan was removed with Paper Lantern. Solution: bring them back on sight. -Non-descriptive icons on the left with no name do not provide a good user experience. I don't want to "hunt and peck" for information, I want to see it. Having to hover over the icons, so I can see what they do, reminds me of playing Monkey Island, without the fun! :) Solution: visible text labels. -There's no clear difference between Dashboard and Statistics. Solution: pick one, and/or don't assign arbitrary stuff to Dashboard. I really appreciate the explanation behind these changes from @cPanelAdamF. However, if the features are half-baked, just don't roll them out yet! Also, do you really think that the three most important features that need to be present on every cPanel screen are "Statistics", "Dashboard" and "User manager"? Because that's what the current design is telling us. They would certainly not be my top choices. I humbly suggest that you guys re-read Nielsen and Krug, and run some real world usability tests with real users. That will tell you exactly what to do better than anyone on this forum can. I hope that my feedback is useful. 0 -
I agree. Why hide the useful information that was in the sidebar? This is very informative to clients, as they know the overall status of their account at a quick glance. In my opinion, the latest Paper Lantern updates make the interface less efficient and less of a desktop application. It was perfectly fine in 11.52.2 0 -
I would like to also add my concerns about the new Paper Lantern theme. - The way this change was introduced I find to be unacceptable, it is a very large change. I had expected x3 to be gone and users moved to Paper Lantern, this is not what I am complaining about (although I thought users on x3 would stay on the retro style, this does not appear to be the case, but never mind). However I had not expected such a massive change to the Paper Lantern theme, it REALLY impacts the workflow in cPanel. Such changes should be branched out to a new style so you can get feedback for longer time, similar to how you rolled out the initial Paper Lantern theme. Furthermore there are no information on the general release page of this change, I had to go into the actual Release Notes where the change is hardly visible. - As many users say, the informative sidebar is gone, it is a huge loss of overview and functionality - The dashboard is a rather bad substitute (for the sidebar), the stats is at the bottom, in a weird non-tabular layout that makes it much harder to understand the statistics (same goes for the statistics page). There are too few statistics, and I need to actually navigate there with a mouse click before I get there. I understand it is the plan to make this default, but it requires a lot of work before it can be used as default! - The sidebar icons really requires you to hover over them to understand what they do. Bad for usability - This is my biggest concern: I need to use many more clicks in order to do my tasks, i.e if I had a customer with mail problems, i log in to my reseller account, need to go into another page (click count: 1) to change to my customers account (click count 2). Then I need to start debugging why my user has problems receiving mails, lets imagine it is because of 100% disk usage. Before I would be able to quickly see the disk space is full, this I might not see immediately anymore. But okay, lets say I have an idea that this is the case so I click statistics right away (click count 3) to see that the user is indeed using 100% disk space. I need then to go back to home/"sea of icons" (click count 4), and continue my debugging (i.e using disk usage statistics and so forth) Before this could be done with 1 click (changing to customer account), I would immediately see the problem, and could continue my debugging (i.e using disk usage statistics and so forth). That is 3 clicks more for the new paper lantern version. That is a dramatic decrease in usability. - Yes it probably looks better on Mobile, but if you start sacrificing "Desktop usability" for "mobile shininess" then I believe you have your priorities wrong. We hardly see any mobile traffic to cPanel. - I understand the goal of the change, and what you are working towards, but this half-baked attempt to do it. It might be very nice when it is done, but now you have a half-finished version of that which has left your users with a version where usability of the layout is really bad compared to the previous version. - We also have had quite a few user complaints, especially regards to the lacking sidebar. We are considering forcing a change on all accounts to the retro theme. 0 -
UPDATE: I spent the day tinkering with the template & styling system and I was able to come up with a solution that removes the sidebar and adds a navigation bar at the top that includes account switching for resellers. I've attached an image of my solution here: 34511 This is not a hack, but instead follows the instructions in the knowledge base and I believe it will not be overwritten by future updates. If anyone is interested in the code for this, please reply.
Very great work! Defiantly interested in the code you came up with...0 -
UPDATE: I spent the day tinkering with the template & styling system and I was able to come up with a solution that removes the sidebar and adds a navigation bar at the top that includes account switching for resellers. I've attached an image of my solution here: 34511 This is not a hack, but instead follows the instructions in the knowledge base and I believe it will not be overwritten by future updates. If anyone is interested in the code for this, please reply.
me too, would be very interested to get the code for your changes. looks great and that's the way it should have been done by cpanel in the first place. can you please post your code here?0 -
I am having major problems with the new upgraded (paper lantern) interface to Cpanel. Specifically the 'visitors' log page is wildly buggy and unusable. To show what I mean here are some screenshots: Hopefully you will see that: a) the reporting columns are variable and different for each page b) even with a screen 2000 pixels wide they run off the page c) the format cannot be set up and saved, eg. add the 'status' column to the report once, not every single time. 0 -
The main problem with the Visitors is it's hiding the overflow of the columns which cause them to appear to go missing as you go page to page. If you add your own custom styles you can have it add a scrollbar when necessary with: .cjt_table_section { overflow: auto !important; }
You can then make sure it's using the most width within the cPanel set max widthdiv#latestVisitorsContainer.container { width: 100% !important; }
or if you want you can break out to full width:div#latestVisitorsContainer.container { width: calc(100vw - 80px) !important; /* the calc reserves the space used by the left menu */ }
However it appears that the IP column can expand really wide when the table content is not as wide as your screen. I haven't been able to override that style because cPanel has some !important styles that I can't change.0 -
Hello, I agree with all the thoughtful posts above. Missing the sidebar and have reverted my clients to x3...shame that is being made redundant as it is my only fall back. While I appreciate all the great work on paperlantern I cannot trust it to upgrade seamlessly and would appreciate if we could have 2 x paper lantern builds to switch between. (the only other solution is to buy a theme, while it has addtional costs for the purchase it would overall save me money as the recent changes have cost me a lot of downtime dealing with my customers. It would be a shame to do this as I was once so happy with paper lantern.) Regards, 0 -
I for once agree with this post. The 'new' paper lantern is so terrible I've signed up to this forum just to give voice to the problem, having used x3 and the old paper lantern for years. In short, the new paper lantern is completely different from the 'older' one. Here's a brief list of changes that are rather terrible to behold: - left hand column that had information is gone, to be replaced by icons - default page doesn't allow access to change themes. - default page doesn't allow you to change from one login to another (eg. if you're a reseller) Basically, you have to randomly click on the left hand columns, because you're not sure what's where (and it's not really logical). The original Paper Lantern was a breath of fresh air compared to x3. However, I (and everyone around me) prefers x3 to the 'new' Paper Lantern. We all prefer the 'old' paper lantern. 0 -
It's funny how you mention 'downgrade', when the newer paper lantern is exactly what we feel we've been given. It's less intuitive and useful in many ways. I would suggest for every 1 post you get here regarding the issue, there are probably several hundred dissatisfied customers. I'm back to using x3 as a result (like everyone else I know). Whomsoever is in charge of UX hasn't been doing their work. 0 -
UPDATE: I spent the day tinkering with the template & styling system and I was able to come up with a solution that removes the sidebar and adds a navigation bar at the top that includes account switching for resellers. I've attached an image of my solution here: 34511 This is not a hack, but instead follows the instructions in the knowledge base and I believe it will not be overwritten by future updates. If anyone is interested in the code for this, please reply.
Stephanie, nice work. In one simple move you've improved the disastrous update to Paper Lantern. Like others' comments if would be great if you could post your changes (and even better get cPanel to roll them into an emergency update and have them as part of the next update). It's not perfect, but it's definitely better than a step in the wrong direction.0 -
I for once agree with this post. The 'new' paper lantern is so terrible I've signed up to this forum just to give voice to the problem, having used x3 and the old paper lantern for years. ...
Same here, I have also signed up for the same reason. I wish I could downgrade to 11.52, unfortunately that is not possible, so I just want to say... please add the previous paper lantern disposition as an option / theme ASAP. Thank you.0 -
I dont understand why after over a year of this theme, cPanel has not listened to users? its absolutely terrible and you keep making it worse! The side bar needs to be replaced and functionality restored like other commenters have mentioned. left critical account info in the left sidebar is a must to have back. if you want the sidebar gone on mobile just use a media query for crying out loud. the amount of space used in the theme makes for a lot more scrolling, it the interface just looks bad. lastly, why was email moved down the list of items on cpanel, in my opinion its the most used section of cpanel and should be at the TOP. and I dont know why it's left to us to create custom styles just to get back the usability and easy of use of X3 (for example what Stephanie did, and Stephanie i would love to see that code too please) or what forrst did with redux (zurb.com/forrst/posts/Cpanel_Paper_Lantern_Design_Redux-Gk8 ) I am setting everyone to the retro style (if i can force that hopefully) until cPanel actually starts doing a bit of real word user testing on this and making it a usable theme because it is not in its current state. sure I know we can go customize things, but honestly out of the BOX this theme should cater to to the masses and the email box being below the fold is unacceptable. 0 -
Hi there How to have cpanel dashboard like in the demo picture from this link ? cpanel.com/assets/img/demo/dashboard-cpanel.png I cant find the option to activate General Information and Statistics. 0 -
WHM 56.0 (build 25) But lol Your demo is with 56.0 (build 25) also, only description picture is from next version. Ok . I will wait for STABLE release. 0 -
The demo is intended to be on STABLE I believe. And STABLE is: "The last tier to receive changes". :) HTH! 0 -
Last year, I designed a variant of Paper Lantern which made it a lot more visually rich. I also brought up a number of concerns which as far as I know have not been addressed, chiefly that if you want a graphic designer to help you design a theme, you must give them ROOT and SSH access to the server, which has obvious security concerns. I understand that the x3 control panel was completely untenable, however some kind of minimal FTP-like interface for trusted users to upload and download HTML, CSS, JS, PNG, and JPG files within the styled directories would be prudent and appreciated. The only reason I haven't developed a new "56" Paper Tiger theme is that my server is on CentOS 5 and is now blocked from all further cPanel updates. I wanted to give my ISP a break since they were buried in upgrade requests, but hopefully that backlog has cleared and they are available to do the upgrade now. Also Just a suggestion -- if you want to share a theme here, please just share it! You can post the CSS code right in the body of your message so everyone can use it, share it, and build on it! 0 -
Also Just a suggestion -- if you want to share a theme here, please just share it! You can post the CSS code right in the body of your message so everyone can use it, share it, and build on it!
Actually, we were discussing adding a sub forum specifically for sharing custom styles. I assume you'd be for that idea?if you want a graphic designer to help you design a theme, you must give them ROOT and SSH access to the server
How come your Web Designer doesn't have cPanel?0 -
no, you don't have to give them root/ssh access to design a paper lantern style. Having a cPanel end-user account and the ability to edit ~/var/cpanel/styled in that end-user's home directory is enough. They'll want to create a folder there for their style (with at least a styles.css file in it) and then select that new style from the 'Change Style' interface. As they work in their style's directory, they can hit refresh in their browser and see the changes in near-real-time. Once you're happy with their work, you'll have to move it to either your reseller account's ~/var/cpanel/reseller/styled dir (for accounts that you own) or to /var/cpanel/customizations/styled in order to deploy it system-wide. 0 -
Actually, we were discussing adding a sub forum specifically for sharing custom styles. I assume you'd be for that idea?
Absolutely. Please add tags for different licenses such as CC, GPL, or ND (no distribution).How come your Web Designer doesn't have cPanel?
AdamF answered my question. I was not aware that individual cPanel accounts could write their own style. I see it in the0 -
AdamF answered my question.
I was teasing you a bit to be honest. I thought everybody had cPanel by now. :-p Happy to hear you got this going. Keep an eye out for that new forum idea, I'm really interested in getting it going and seeing what folks in the cPanel Community come up with and share. :)0 -
UPDATE: I spent the day tinkering with the template & styling system and I was able to come up with a solution that removes the sidebar and adds a navigation bar at the top that includes account switching for resellers. I've attached an image of my solution here: 34511 This is not a hack, but instead follows the instructions in the knowledge base and I believe it will not be overwritten by future updates. If anyone is interested in the code for this, please reply.
Hey Stephanie, I'd be interested in seeing that code as well. Having one-click access to switch cPanel accounts is one feature that we use all of the time and it looks like you were able to bring that back, much thanks!0 -
Quick account switching is back in v58 with the return of the sidebar. You may simply have to update your installation of cPanel to get it. 0 -
awesome that is great news, but the sidebar is now on the right? anyways to move it to the left? 0 -
All of this is just more proof that PL is NOT ready to go live to the extent of eliminating the far superior X3. The weaknesses and short comings of PL have been reported MANY times yet very few of them have been addressed. I understand that a lot of time and effort has been used to get PL where it is now, but that does not in any way mean it is to the point that is should be forced on users. This is a perfect case of a company not listening to repeated feedback form its user base and it looks to be simply to avoid hurting the feelings of a development team who has failed to deliver a completed project on time. There is no doubting that PL lacks a lot of the functionality that X3 has (had), and the ability to customize it is extremely li9mited and highly cumbersome. Bottom line is that PL (in its current status) is a huge step backward from X3 and CPanel is doing is customer base a huge disservice by eliminating it in order to move on to a product that is no where near ready to go live simply to say "Look we have a great new UI", especially seeing it is not all that great in the first place. 0 -
Quick account switching is back in v58 with the return of the sidebar. You may simply have to update your installation of cPanel to get it.
Unfortunately for some of us on shared/reseller hosting, we don't get control over the cPanel installation. HostGator still has my reseller account on v54, and they have no timeline for when they plan to update. I'd love to know what Stephanie did earlier, any ideas? Otherwise I guess I'll be spending some time with the knowledge base to figure it out on my own.0
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