Paper lantern Feedback

[PCZero]

The following observations are for Paper Lantern

1) The main menu items should be modified.

Home - Addon Domains - File Manager - Email Is a rather obscure series of links for the main menu, especially the second items. Addon Domains should be dropped by all means and perhaps File Manager as well. A better selection of main menu items would be Home - Email - Contact Us - Help. These are by far the things users will want to find in a hurry if the case arises. Currently Help and Contact are stuffed way down at the bottom of the page which is no very user friendly.

2) Documentation.

Get rid of this link. It is not useful to end users and it will lead to a LOT of confusion and unnecessary tech calls form clients. The info provided in that documentation area is far far above the level of the client user. Nothing in there is of any relevance to the users.

3) Trademarks.

This page pops open in a new window full PL window so that when clicked the user now has a second window open. I have noticed that quite a few of the PL links do this and that after testing one session I ended up with NINE PL windows open. All windows (except MAYBE external links) should open in the parent window.

4) Change Style.

The change style is hidden in a drop down by clicking the user name in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Maybe that can be moved to be a combo box similar to the change theme combo. MUCH easier for people to find and use.

 

[ndhosting]

I like paper lantern, but everything for me is to big and spaced out, x3 was better space and size wise.

 

[PCZero]

It is the newest "we changed just to be able to say we changed" convention of many web designers referred to as 'flat'. I personally think the flat layout is very unappealing and not very usable. It is a layout that is geared 100% towards tablet devices and touch screens which, unfortunately, most site admins do NOT use those devices to work on web sites. I do agree that there is a huge amount of wasted space, but that ship[ sailed when they made the previous UI change in WHM a while back with its very spaced out icons all of which have huge square/rectangle around them.

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello

You may want to consider opening feature requests for these design changes via:

Submit A Feature Request

Thank you.

 

[PCZero]

Thanks Michael. Its just feedback to the design team. I figure they would read anything related to the project and take it how they deem appropriate. More observations/suggestions than a request.

 

[mezzohost]

A better selection of main menu items would be Home - Email - Contact Us - Help. These are by far the things users will want to find in a hurry if the case arises. Currently Help and Contact are stuffed way down at the bottom of the page which is no very user friendly.

I agree, though File Manager is still an useful tool.

 

[Infopro]

Feature Requests shouldn't be linked to until they are reviewed and approved by the cPanel Feature Requests Community Team.

Thanks.

 

[mezzohost]

Feature Requests shouldn't be linked to until they are reviewed and approved by the cPanel Feature Requests Community Team.

Thanks.

Oh thanks for letting me know. I actually just logged in to remove the link because I realized that the links don't show up at all if the tools are absent from the feature list / package for the client's account. I was worried that someone without addon domains would see the link and be upset for not having the feature.

So that said, I love this theme!

 

[PCZero]

What does it mean when a suggested modification has been "accepted"?

 

[cPanelAdamF]

we moderate posts to the Feature Request system to manage spam and abuse. Having a post accepted on that system just means one of us scanned it and said "nope, not spam and not abuse"

 

[PCZero]

we moderate posts to the Feature Request system to manage spam and abuse. Having a post accepted on that system just means one of us scanned it and said "nope, not spam and not abuse"

Awe man I thought I was going to get paid royalties or something!

 

[PCZero]

Additional Comments on PL:

1) The preferences section and all of its option are gone. These options are used by a LOT of users and removing them is a HUGE step backwards. They really need to be restored and put in the main page as they were in X3.

2) The order of the sections in the main body of the page need to be rearranged. Email should be one of the top two sections as it is the most often used by a vast majority of end users.

3) Provide a way for us to add multiple branded styles in the manner that X3 did.

4) Provide a way for us to disable the 'basic' and 'retro' styles thus limiting users to our custom branded styles requested above.

 

[stormy]

We just switched our customers to Paper Lantern (we had been using rvskin), and we got a couple complaints about the interface. Two customers said that they have to scroll too much and the interface is too big.

Maybe it's something to think about...

 

[Infopro]

How does it look on their mobile device?

 

[LostNerd]

Personally, I like paper_lantern. On my Samsung Galaxy Note 3, I can finally manage my clients accounts on the go!

 

[PCZero]

OK well now that I am at the latest version of WHM I have additional feedback on the PL concept.

1st - The new method of developing custom themes/styles is a HUGE step backward form X3. The live editor was very simple to use. The new version takes a minimum of 10 to 20 times longer to create a custom style as it all has to be done manually and even that does not work fully. In following the steps outlined at https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/PLD/Develop+a+Style the step that shows the css to "return your custom style's buttons to the default bootstrap buttons" has zero impact on the PL at all. It changes nothing. This whole gyration of creating numerous directories and manually editing files is way too cumbersome.


Having said that, I do see that PL has some possibilities of being at least usable, but there are many shortcomings still that should be addressed.

1 - I see no way of customizing the menu (Home, Addon Domains, File Manager, Email).
2 - I see no way to return the configuration items (Password, Language, Style, Contact, reset) to the main body of the page. (They are now hidden in a drop down in the nav bar.)
3 - The 'change the logo' procedure does not work.
4 - As described above, at east some of the css options do not work.
5 - In the Retro style, the news box has zero padding so that the content is crammed all the way to the edge of its border making the news very hard to read.
6 - I see no way to customize the footer links.
7 - I see no way to clone an existing style (such as the Retro) and use it as a start point for a new theme with custom graphics and icons.

If any of these are already addressed please advise. Until such time as they are all addresse plese do not delete X3. X3 is so easy to use and PL is so difficult that the step backward (in the as is condition) will be a deal breaker for many users.

 

[PCZero]

Just noticed that there appears to be no way to have a different logo.png for each individual custom paper lantern styles.css. I have six different color schemes in X3 and I have a logo that is designed to fit each color scheme. Can't do that in PL from what I can find so far.

 

[joako]

Webmail in paper lantern is totally broken

 

[LostNerd]

Webmail in paper lantern is totally broken

Can you elaborate? Have you tried running

/scripts/upcp --force

Just in case the upgrade hadn't completed successfully?

 

[Donna McMaster]

I just bumped into the new Paper Lantern theme. It does look nice but I must say I have some of the same concerns as PCZero. I'm a web developer and host about 70 sites on my VPS, so I'm interacting frequently with cPanel, mostly Databases, Files (Backups) and Email.

The first thing I do when I set up a new hosting account is to log into cPanel and rearrange the sections for efficiency. Files first, then databases, then email, and close all the rest. I tried to do this with Paper Lantern, and found that I can no longer move sections. I closed the irrelevant sections, but as soon as I left the page and came back, they were all open again.

Like some other commenters, I find the extra large icons and white space to be inefficient for me. I assume I can address some of that with CSS but am not so sure about the icon sizes.

In summary, I would love to hear about ways to:
- close sections and make them stay closed
- eliminate unnecessary sections from WHM
- rearrange the order of the sections

Thanks!
Donna