Paper Lantern Feedback

[Infopro]

Looks good!
Please attach images to your posts.

I think you could do most if not all of that with a custom style the proper way.

 

[Infopro]

I'm just concerned that future changes will potentially cause further problems.

Custom Style is not touched during updates AFAIK, thats the whole idea. Down the road when there are changes made to Paper Lantern that you need, of course you'd want to update your Custom Style manually.

 

[brt]

I don't like to just come here and whine, but we're very much DISLIKING the new Paper Lantern (vs the old Paper Lantern - NOT x3). A number of clients have commented negatively as well.

With the sidebar gone, we're having to click 2-4x as much as we previously needed to to accomplish the same tasks. Not to mention, a lot more information is completely hidden on pageview until you switch to that .... tab?

Really hoping this is in-the-works and not final yet. If this is what it will be.... please let me use the old Paper Lantern instead.

 

[kualo]

You say the custom style isn't changed, however your recent change added a whole bunch of code changes to the building blocks of cPanel. i.e. a new left side navigation bar, replacing 'containers' with 'container-fluids', removing the left hand stats bar...

Unless I'm missing a trick, if you have a CSS style set, based on the paper_lantern HTML being wrapped in fixed width containers, when this changes and structural elements are added or removed, it's going to break that style?

 

[Infopro]

You say...

Well, I also mentioned having to update your Custom Style at some point as well.

Just like we do with forums, blogs, WHMCS etc. When things change in the code, we have to update our custom styles, yes.

 

[Stephanie Castilla]

I have to agree with many of the comments here. I found this thread while hunting the web for information on how to get the pervious paper lantern version back. Now I know it is not possible at this time and I am feeling frustrated and forced to invest time in modifying this.

I had already tested this theme and found it not to my liking, so I actually chose not to upgrade my cPanel/WHM to Edge 54 just to avoid it. Unfortunately my hosting company needed to run the update today, so I am being forced to adjust.

As mentioned by other users, my issues are driven by the fact that the informative sidebar is gone.

I log into my cPanel as a reseller and have 15+ websites I need to switch between. I loved being able to switch between my cPanel accounts easily on the left sidebar while I worked on things in the right main area as seen in the previous version of Paper Lantern.

Now I have to go to the "Dashboard" page, and even though it is slated to someday be the home page, I will still have to go to the home page first before being able to switch accounts.

If the sidebar is never to return again, I really need a header or a footer dropdown that allows me to switch accounts and follows me throughout the interface.

I hope you have some updates coming soon!

 

[Stephanie Castilla]

I have to agree with many of the comments here. I found this thread while hunting the web for information on how to get the pervious paper lantern version back. Now I know it is not possible at this time and I am feeling frustrated and forced to invest time in modifying this.

I had already tested this theme and found it not to my liking, so I actually chose not to upgrade my cPanel/WHM to Edge 54 just to avoid it. Unfortunately my hosting company needed to run the update today, so I am being forced to adjust.

As mentioned by other users, my issues are driven by the fact that the informative sidebar is gone.

I log into my cPanel as a reseller and have 15+ websites I need to switch between. I loved being able to switch between my cPanel accounts easily on the left sidebar while I worked on things in the right main area as seen in the previous version of Paper Lantern.

Now I have to go to the "Dashboard" page, and even though it is slated to someday be the home page, I will still have to go to the home page first before being able to switch accounts.

If the sidebar is never to return again, I really need a header or a footer dropdown that allows me to switch accounts and follows me throughout the interface.

I hope you have some updates coming soon!

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:



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.

 

[Rootz]

I feel a bit left in the dark by cPanel tbh. As said before we just updated our knowledge base with the paperlantarn and than we get this new them forced down our throat with no option to revert to the previous making my knowlegde base useless.

We spend a lot of time and money on that but nobody cares at cPanel does it. This is not a way of doing business no matter how urgent or critical the update is. Als 7 days notice ....

It's all going downhill tbh and i can not understand how this can go trough quality assurance forcing this theme change.

 

[Infopro]

Als 7 days notice

That's not exactly the case though. As has been mentioned here already, Paper Lantern has been coming along for well over a year now. From the start is was stated this will be the new default.

 

[Rootz]

That's not exactly the case though. As has been mentioned here already, Paper Lantern has been coming along for well over a year now. From the start is was stated this will be the new default.

We got a 7 day notice to roll the update out and no matter if paperlantarn is out for a year, you can not just change it like that. There investments done and time spend on the current theme. At least give the option to choose which version of paperlantarn to use. We do not like it and we have to go trough all the trouble again of updating our knowledge base. Customers do not like it and there slightly lost. You guys do not have to deal with all the support we get.

Sorry but this update and theme change is a poor show.

Please provide the option to roll back to the older version so we can upgrade in OUR tempo to the new version and respect our customers and make them aware with an up to date knowledge base.

Thank you!

 

[Infopro]

We got a 7 day notice

Not exactly, but I understand your point.

Do we get vote or something on all these cpanel changes?

 

[alanharris]

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:

View attachment 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.

 

[stormy]

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.

 

[alanharris]

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

 

[JacobHansen]

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.

 

[Nickhology]

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:

View attachment 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...

 

[smartrange]

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:

View attachment 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?

 

[kingbeard]

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.

 

[kdean]

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 width

div#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.

 

[MrCrom]

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,