cPanel 94 and Welcome to your new hosting account

blue928

Member
Feb 7, 2021
5
3
1
United States
cPanel Access Level
Root Administrator
I added my support to be able to control the contents and visibility of the new Welcome area.

In the meantime, is there a way to create a custom features tab with a custom list of features? Basically I want to reorganize our most used / popular features just as cPanel is attempting to do with the new Welcome tab and display a set of features most relevant to our clients at the top (Add an email, Create a Wordpress site, knowledge base, etc). Is this possible, or do I have to create an entirely new theme? When I search for "Custom feature interface" information about changing the logo and other WHM area branding options are all that comes up, and that's not what I want.

Looking forward to having a Welcome area for new clients that we can customize, so excited to see that request and how this develops.
 

cPRex

Jurassic Moderator
Staff member
Oct 19, 2014
14,399
2,255
363
cPanel Access Level
Root Administrator
@stormy - at this time, no. The only thing I have to offer is to use the API call mentioned on page 1:

Code:
uapi --user=username NVData set names=xmainwelcomedismissed xmainwelcomedismissed=1
You can run that after the account gets created on the server, or you could create a custom hook to add that after account creation so it gets automatically applied to all future accounts that are created on your machine.
 

sneader

Well-Known Member
Aug 21, 2003
1,195
68
178
La Crosse, WI
cPanel Access Level
Root Administrator
Has anyone been successful in automatically running the disable command via account creation hook? And, if so, are you willing to document the steps you took to make this work? (no experience with hooks)

- Scott
 

Metro2

Well-Known Member
May 24, 2006
580
95
178
USA
cPanel Access Level
Root Administrator
@stormy - at this time, no. The only thing I have to offer is to use the API call mentioned on page 1:

Code:
uapi --user=username NVData set names=xmainwelcomedismissed xmainwelcomedismissed=1
You can run that after the account gets created on the server, or you could create a custom hook to add that after account creation so it gets automatically applied to all future accounts that are created on your machine.
@cPRex - I'm not "shooting the messenger" here, so please don't take me the wrong way ;)

Simply put:

A.) It's quicker and easier for us small hosts to log into the customer's cPanel (hopefully before they do) and click "Dismiss"

B.) As can clearly be demonstrated and proven throughout many years of posts on these forums - web hosts do not like executive decisions that take over what our customer's see and experience. It's usually more like "surprise! here's a new feature that is going to cost you hours of time mitigating while you're trying to just keep up with usual support work".

We've seen these community-wide reactions not only on the recent "Glass" notice to users and the recent "Welcome" notice, but going back through time we can see many instances when unwelcome changes are pushed. Maybe I'm overlooking something, but wouldn't it be wise to simply post a Survey thread here on the forums before implementing new "user experience features" ? Maybe a thread like "Survey - What would you hosts think about this?" with a brief detail of the feature that cPanel is thinking of adding, and then examine the survey results before investing the valuable time of your developers in something that might largely be unwelcome (and could also spare any hurt feelings on the part of the team who came up with the idea / theme / etc... by not having to see the rejection from the community toward something the team probably worked very hard at).

I hope that you'll take this post as constructive and not rude.

As a cPanel customer of over 20 years now practically back to it's infancy, I can honestly say that I think the cPanel staff and developers have done an amazing job over the years and have created an incredible product overall, and that the majority of changes have always been for the better, but there's also been the occasional "new shiny" addition or change that has been met with obvious disenchantment. My hope is that cPanel team & developers will continue to remain encouraged to innovate, but that a balance can be introduced so that important feature requests are addressed as a priority before precious time is put into aesthetics. If anyone were to take a close look at all of the feature requests, a lot of them basically scream "we want the ability to disable / enable any feature, function, icon globally from the Feature Manager, please!". But instead of giving us more control over what the cPanel end-user sees, as we have been asking in many of the feature request threads, what we often get is yet another "feature" that we cannot simply control from the Feature Manager, and ultimately it's counterproductive for everyone involved.
 

cPRex

Jurassic Moderator
Staff member
Oct 19, 2014
14,399
2,255
363
cPanel Access Level
Root Administrator
@stormy - I posted an API call earlier in this thread that will remove the banner from existing accounts:


I don't have an equivalent to keep this from showing up in general as the files get built during the account creation process.
 

LBJ

Well-Known Member
Nov 1, 2003
117
24
168
cPanel Access Level
DataCenter Provider
G'day All,

Specifically because of cPanel's increasing propensity over recent years to surprise clients with new features (Wordpress Toolkit, Switch to Glass Banner, Welcome to Your Hosting etc.) , without also providing an accompanying WHM option to disable or configure the item, we run our own modified theme on all our boxes with minor patches to remove unwanted elements.

When these new features provide clients with advice or tutorials directly in conflict with our own operating methods and protocols, it's particularly annoying. Waiting or hoping for cPanel to implement changes based on well-supported feature requests is completely unworkable for a living business.

On each cPanel version update, a diff runs detecting any relevant changes between the new default theme files and our active modified theme. We then sync our theme to match the new files, while still including our patches as required. Usually, for minor version updates, there's little or nothing to do. With major updates, there's usually a few patches which just need to be reapplied over the top of the changed files, and we're good to go.

If you also run your own custom theme (highly recommended for an easier life), a modification to the applicationList.html.tt file of the active theme will also solve the issue being discussed in this thread, for all accounts, existing and new.

Change the single occurrence of the Template Toolkit code...

Code:
[% IF show_welcome_panel %]
...to...

Code:
[% IF 0 && show_welcome_panel %]
Best regards,

LBJ