AdminUIRevamp

Table of contents

• Meetings
• Background information
• Solution
• People
• Steps
• How to determine priorities?
  • Let's try
  • Let's avoid
• Timeframe
• Wishlist
• Screenshots of ideas
• Broad ideas for the future

Meetings

Proposal: 21:00 GMT Monday December 10th, 2007 for an audio and/or chat and/or a cardmeeting

Meeting notes: AdminUIRevamp20071210

Background information

Tikiwiki has more features out-of-the box than any other CMS or groupware package out there. Experienced Tiki admins know how great and efficient it is. All features are just a few clicks away. No need to find, download and install 3rd party modules/plugins. However, the admin panel is huge and confusing in some places. So you do need to hunt to find the right checkbox. For new admins that just want a wiki or just want a blog, they could be tempted to use a simpler package.

Historically, when Tikiwiki developers add new features, they often add the option (because it's one of our 3rules) somewhat randomly in tiki-admin.php?page=features For example, "Calendar manual selection of time/date" should be in tiki-admin.php?page=calendar instead.

We had a TikiFest and a CardMeeting session on this topic in June 2007. Some work has been done here in Tiki 1.9.8 (vs 1.9.7) but it was more to solve the biggest issues than a true clean up.

Many things were improved in 1.10 vs 1.9.8

• Most icons were updated to nicer ones
• Many aspects were cleaned up
• Assign permission is faster.
• etc

But we can still do better!

Solution

Re-work the admin panels to be easy, fun & intuitive for new Tiki admins. These changes must be fairly quickly added to BRANCH-1-10 (before the freeze) and before too many screenshots are made for the Tiki 1.10 documentation.

With new panels and a proper re-organization of the current admin panels, it should make it pretty obvious for devs to add their new options in the appropriate place (and for admins to find them!). It is OK to have a setting in more than one admin panel, when it's relevant to both. However, the admin only needs to set it once.

The focus here is on making it intuitive to administer which is a distinct focus than EditUIRevamp, which is how to make it more intuitive to participate to content creation. The focus is also different than InfrastructureRevamp, which is to improve install/upgrade/backup/security. AdminUIRevamp ideas assumes that install went correctly. Of course, some individual tracker items can overlap in more than one project.

This will include

• Re-organizing things in admin panels
• Icon work
• Adding tips and links to documentation
• Changing some of the default settings to more intuitive settings (what most people would use)
• WYSIWYCA (if someone uses Tiki just for blogs, it should be simple, without extra options/features)
• Hiding some more advanced/rarely used features in something like "expert mode"
• Possibly some interactive wizards to setup some features.
• Whatever you think is needed.

People who spends some time on training, documentation, forums and support know where new Tiki admins have questions. New admins are also great to give feedback on what was difficult to understand. If you don't have coding skills, don't worry. If you have a good idea, someone will code it!

People

• Luci
• Marc Laporte
• Dthacker
• You?

Steps

1. Decide how we will coordinate (hopefully dogfooding trackers)
2. Recruit contributors & facilitate input.
3. Scanning all tracker items on the wishlist and identifying & prioritizing the ones that relate to this project.
4. Get as many as possible of the items done, in order of priority (see below importance vs easiness).

How to determine priorities?

There will always be more ideas & feature requests than people available that can work on them. In this context, how do we choose what to do first?

Let's try

1. To involve more people so we can get more done.
2. To focus on things which affect the most people. So let's fix things in transversal features before things that are specific and not everyone uses. ex.: user administration vs tiki maps.
3. Pick all the low-hanging fruit first (Do the easy stuff)
4. To be pragmatic
5. To make optional a feature that should have been optional before

Let's avoid

1. Trying to be perfect. There are diminishing returns to investing more & more time on something. Perfection is the enemy of good enough (Voltaire). It will always be possible to improve later on. That's the beauty of a unified code base like Tiki.
2. Being dogmatic about "how it was done before". Yes, we want to respect the past. However, in many cases, things were done without much thought and the original author would be just as happy or even happier to have done it the way we'll do it now.
3. The temptation of adding new features. The goal here is to re-organize what we already have. It's a low-risk operation. Adding a simple option (checkbox to activate/deactivate something in an existing feature is ok though)

Timeframe

2007-11-23	project launched
Early December	Audio conference call of luci, marclaporte and whoever is interested to review all tracker items and discuss priorities
December & January	implementing the chosen ideas

Wishlist

To add things to this list, you can create a new tracker (you must be logged in) or edit an existing tracker item. In both cases, please make sure to click the checkbox "AdminUIRevamp" project.

Please base your suggestions on how Tiki 1.10 is done. You can test 1.10 here and get your copy here.

All items on this list will be evaluated, but not necessarily treated.

	Rating	Subject	Priority	Report type	Feature	Created
	2/2	Modules: if a feature is turned off, it should be hidden or somehow filtered + other ideas	9 high	Bug: Usability Feature request	All / Undefined Administration Modules Workspace WYSIWYCA (What You See is What You Can Access)	2007-08
	2/2	Testing if GD or Imagick works, via Tiki	9 high	Bug: Usability Feature request	Administration Image Gallery Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues)	2007-09
	2/8	Tiki site in a box (Profile Manager)	9 high	Feature request	Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues) New feature (not an enhancement to a current one) Profile Manager	2007-11
	2/3	Wishlist from Admin Interface	9 high	Community projects Documentation (or Advocacy) Feature request	Administration Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues)	2008-04
	-	Admin>Login>User defaults or Admin>Groups: Ability to Subscribe new users to specific Tiki objects	9 high	Bug: Usability Feature request	Administration Article Blog Calendar Category Forum Group Trackers User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning) Watch (email notifications of changes) Wiki (history, page rename, etc) Wiki Structure (book & table of content) Workspace	2008-04
	-	if use a chinese character in a page's name, can't use (()) to refer to that page.	9 high	Bug: Error Bug: Usability	i18n (Multilingual, l10n, Babelfish) Wiki (history, page rename, etc) Wiki Syntax (text area, parser, external wiki, etc)	2008-09
	-	WYSIWYCA for all permissions : feature_check in Table: users_permissions	9 high	Feature request	Administration Group Permission WYSIWYCA (What You See is What You Can Access)	2008-10
	-	Tips about tracker plugins	9 high	Feature request	Help System Trackers Wiki Plugin (extends basic syntax)	2008-11
	-	tiki-adminusers.php -> For admins to be able to validate a user and validate email	9 high	Feature request	User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2009-02
	2/2	Plugins admin interface to activate/deactivate plugins	9 high	Feature request	Administration Security Wiki Plugin (extends basic syntax) WYSIWYCA (What You See is What You Can Access)	2006-02
	-	Hide levels in tiki-assignpermission.php	9 high	Bug: Usability	Administration Templates (Smarty) User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2005-04
	-	User creation & deletion in tiki-syslog.php	8	Feature request	Administration System log User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-04
	2/2	Manual merge of July-August 2007 BRANCH-1-9 fixes to 1.10	8	Community projects	All / Undefined	2007-08
	2/2	Test if the db upgrade script has been run and put a note in tiki-admin.php	8	Bug: Usability Feature request	Database independence (Non-Mysql, ADOdb Postgres, Oracle, etc) Database MySQL Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues)	2007-11
	2/3	Dealing with high-volumes of data (drop-down lists become search boxes)	8	Feature request	User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-11
	2/2	Assign permission group filter bug (recently introduced on BRANCH-1-9)	8		User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-12
	2/2	tiki-contact.php 1-"from" field 2-copy of the message for the sender 3-Subject used in notification	8	Bug: Usability Feature request	Contact us Inter-User messages	2008-02
	2/2	Help URL's built incorrectly on tiki_admin.php pages	8	Bug: Error Documentation (or Advocacy)	Administration Help System	2008-03
	2/2	Install script should detect previous install (install instead of upgrade will wipe your database)	8	Bug: Usability	Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues)	2008-03
	2/3	Add a "Create New Calendar" button to tiki-admin_calendars.php	8	Bug: Usability Feature request	Administration Calendar	2008-04
	2/6	SMTP Configuration from inside Admin Interface	8	Bug: Usability Feature request	Administration Alert Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues) Watch (email notifications of changes) Webmail and groupmail	2008-04
	2/6	Workspaces: add to main Tiki code base	8	Community projects Feature request	Mods New feature (not an enhancement to a current one) Workspace	2008-06
	2/4	Modules use should be restrictable with standard permissions	8	Feature request	Modules Permission	2008-07
	2/4	WYSIWYCA & default settings for inter user messages	8	Bug: Usability	Administration Database MySQL Inter-User messages User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning) WYSIWYCA (What You See is What You Can Access)	2005-05
	-	Trackers:: field type helper	8	Bug: Consistency Feature request	Help System Trackers Wiki Plugin (extends basic syntax)	2008-10
	2/2	upgrading db with tiki-install.php breaks multitiki installs (removes /templates_c/ ...)	8	Bug: Error	Database MySQL Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues) MultiTiki	2009-01
	-	Custom javascript: a future-proof way to handle	8	Feature request	Ajax Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues)	2009-02
	1/1	RFE: admin interface 4 template message emailed to new users to a group (registered, or others)	8	Community projects Feature request	Content template Group New feature (not an enhancement to a current one) Newsletters User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning) Workspace	2009-03
	2/2	Easier theme management for Tiki admins	8	Bug: Usability	Administration Theme: Look & feel, Styles, CSS, Theme Control Center	2007-01
	2/2	Easier Inter-user message management for Tiki admins	8	Bug: Usability	Administration Inter-User messages	2007-01
	2/2	Easier "Contact us" management for Tiki admins	8	Bug: Usability	Administration Contact us	2007-01
	-	Easier menu management for Tiki admins	8	Bug: Usability	Administration Menu & PHP Layers Menu System	2007-01
	1/1	Easier category management for Tiki admins	8	Bug: Usability	Administration Category	2007-01
	1/1	Easier pagination management for Tiki admins	8	Bug: Consistency Bug: Usability Feature request	Administration	2007-01
	2/2	New admin panel: tiki-admin.php?page=text_area	8	Feature request	Administration Wiki (history, page rename, etc)	2007-01
	1/1	New "cache" section or admin panel	8	Feature request	Administration Cache	2007-01
	2/2	Add a group filter on admin users page.	8	Feature request	Group User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-01
	2/7	Send custom email (by admin to new user or user that has not connected in a while)	7	Feature request	Administration User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-02
	2/2	mod-adsense -> module needs to be updated to new google variable names	7	Bug: Error Bug: Regression Bug: Usability Feature request	Modules	2007-08
	-	Clicking Poll Icon on Features Page should connect to tiki-admin_poll.php when feature activated	7	Bug: Usability	Administration Poll	2007-12
	2/2	Make Wiki structures an optional feature	7	Bug: Consistency Feature request	Wiki Structure (book & table of content)	2008-03
	2/4	Menu & modules contextual to category of currently show item (wiki page, article, tracker, etc)	7	Feature request	Category Menu & PHP Layers Menu System Modules Templates (Smarty) Workspace	2008-05
	-	Easier setting of Sender Email	7	Feature request	Administration Inter-User messages User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2008-07
	-	Make admin_quicktags use a drop down box for the Category	7	Bug: Usability Feature request	Quicktags	2005-10
	1/4	Migrate binary files in between the file system and the database	7	Feature request	Database MySQL File Gallery Image Gallery Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues)	2006-01
	2/2	Refactor Login Settings page with separate tabs for Pear::Auth, CAS, Shibboleth	6	Feature request	Administration External Authentication (LDAP, AD, PAM, CAS, etc) Interaction (with the outside World) User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-06
	2/2	Help system: upgrade script should update to new destination on doc.tikiwiki.org	6	Documentation (or Advocacy)	Help System	2007-06
	2/2	Problem with duplicate menus when running tiki_1.8to1.9.sql multiple times.	6	Bug: Error	Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues) Menu & PHP Layers Menu System	2007-08
	-	Prevent image galleries from being enabled if a graphics library can not be found	6	Feature request	Administration Image Gallery	2007-09
	2/2	User status in tiki-adminusers.php	6	Bug: Usability Feature request	User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-11
	2/2	1-click access to be able to do certain actions (view a page, edit a page, edit user tracker, etc)	6	Feature request	Group Permission Trackers Wiki (history, page rename, etc) Workspace	2008-02
	-	MultiTiki doesn't work, or is impossible to configure per documentation	6	Bug: Error Bug: Usability Documentation (or Advocacy)	MultiTiki	2009-04
	2/8	New module: search page name, search text, edit page	6	Feature request	Modules Search Site Identity Wiki (history, page rename, etc) WYSIWYCA (What You See is What You Can Access)	2006-01
	2/4	Optional disabling on javascript stripping protection	6	Feature request	All / Undefined Permission Security Wiki Plugin (extends basic syntax) Wiki Syntax (text area, parser, external wiki, etc)	2006-07
	2/3	Multiple assignment of users to a group is not working under recent 1.10cvs	5	Bug: Usability	Group User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-11
	2/2	Reporting errors (to tikiwiki.org) system (like Firefox Talkback)	5	Feature request	Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues)	2007-11
	-	Fix usability of Features selection page	5	Bug: Usability	Accessibility (WAI – 508)	2008-08
	-1/-1	Intertiki does not work if Master is behind Apache Basic Auth directory	5	Bug: Regression Bug: Usability	InterTiki XML RPC	2009-04
	-	Enhancement: Use .htpasswd / .htgroup for user access & control	5	Feature request	Security User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2009-04
	-	Make it possible to have a message only visible on first run (ex.: u: admin p: admin)	5	Bug: Usability Feature request	Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues) Profile Manager	2009-05
	1/1	More intuitive admin interface	5	Bug: Usability Feature request	Administration Menu & PHP Layers Menu System	2005-07
	1/4	DefaultSettingsChanges in 1.10	5	Community projects Feature request	Database MySQL Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues) Profile Manager	2005-04
	1/3	Newsletter from address does not use Sender Email	5	Bug: Error Feature request	Newsletters	2006-05
	2/4	Display a comment in the html listing where each indvidual template starts and ends	4	Feature request	Templates (Smarty) Theme: Look & feel, Styles, CSS, Theme Control Center	2007-02
	2/4	Better protection against accidental site breakage with improper use of code in modules + template	4	Bug: Error Bug: Usability Feature request	Administration Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues) Modules Security Site Identity Templates (Smarty)	2007-04
	2/2	Trackback spam: better protection and easier to cleanup	4	Bug: Error Bug: Usability Feature request	Blog Spam protection (Anti-bot CAPTCHA) XML RPC	2007-04
	1/1	tiki-user_watches.php : add a note when list is empty (click on little "eye") ...	4	Bug: Consistency Bug: Usability	Watch (email notifications of changes)	2008-04
	2/2	Calendar shows Sunday as 1st day of week even if set to Monday, when prefs are 1.10-$prefs.feature..	4	Bug: Usability	Calendar Date and Time	2008-07
	1/1	articles needs aids to fight spam (e.g. admins see tiki-list_submissions.php at info.tw.o)	4	Community projects Feature request	Article Spam protection (Anti-bot CAPTCHA)	2008-08
	2/2	false positive at tikiwiki security error report	4	Bug: Usability	Security	2009-02
	2/4	Dealing with forgotten usernames	3	Feature request	Administration User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-04
	2/6	Add Google Analytics setup as an option in the admin panel.	3	Feature request	Site Identity Stats	2007-06
	-	favicon settings: 3 issues	3	Bug: Error Bug: Usability	Site Identity Theme: Look & feel, Styles, CSS, Theme Control Center	2005-05
	-	Number of displayed rows modification does not stick on Admin Groups Page	3	Bug: Usability	Administration	2006-01
	-	Custom language translation	3	Feature request	i18n (Multilingual, l10n, Babelfish)	2006-01
	-	Built it TPL editor removes Javascript from the Templates	3	Bug: Usability Feature request	Security Theme: Look & feel, Styles, CSS, Theme Control Center	2005-04
	2/2	Adding users to groups from tiki-admingroups.php	2	Bug: Usability Feature request	Group User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-11
	2/4	Blog options WYSIWYCA (especially trackbacks)	2	Bug: Error	Blog WYSIWYCA (What You See is What You Can Access)	2007-11
	1/1	Mirrord tracker does not store field Description	2	Bug: Error	Administration Trackers (mirror)	2008-07
	-	Need to load Administration page twice in order to see all icons.	2	Bug: Error	Templates (Smarty)	2005-06
	-	Admin Layout per section should be possible without activating it	2	Bug: Usability	Templates (Smarty)	2005-06
	-	since_last_visit_new module links to new users in not WYSIWYCA	2	Bug: Error	Modules Templates (Smarty) WYSIWYCA (What You See is What You Can Access)	2005-06
	-	255 characters limit in Meta Keywords and Meta Description	2	Feature request	Database MySQL i18n (Multilingual, l10n, Babelfish) Meta Tag Search engine optimization (SEO) Site Identity	2005-06
	-	Group Calendar is inconsistent in menu	2	Bug: Consistency Bug: Usability Feature request	Calendar Menu & PHP Layers Menu System	2005-04
	1/2	File Gallery: Batch upload (Unzip all zip files) should be optional	1 low	Bug: Usability	Administration File Gallery	2007-05
	2/2	Orphan pages should be optional (right now, they use feature_listPages)	1 low	Feature request	Wiki (history, page rename, etc)	2007-06
	1/1	When system runs out of disk space, Tiki user will not be able to login.	1 low	Feature request	All / Undefined Administration Installer (profiles, upgrades and server-related issues)	2007-07
	-	Harmonize "Similar" & "Like pages"	1 low	Bug: Consistency		2005-04
	1/1	Switch User (SU) from the admin user section	1 low	Feature request	User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-11
	2/2	Harmonize look & feel of browse categories and admin categories	1 low	Bug: Usability	Category	2006-01
	2/2	Use email as login		Feature request	Administration User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2007-04
	1/1	Lower memory consumption and/or have a <8 Meg mode		Bug: Usability Feature request	Administration Templates (Smarty)	2007-11
	2/2	Chanage Registration Validation Process & Be able to resend emails		Feature request	User Administration (Registration, Login & Banning)	2008-04
	2/2	Version Notice		Feature request		2008-04
	-	Files Galleries admin screen should allow to displace files like in the Images Galleries screen		Feature request	Administration File Gallery	2008-09
	-	Module windowshading/flipping not working		Bug: Regression	Modules	2008-12
	-	All Tiki Magic menu sublevels always display in Opera and IE		Bug: Usability	Others	2008-12
	1/3	Admin modules does not display available modules or provide easy method for selecting unused modules		Bug: Usability	Administration Modules WYSIWYCA (What You See is What You Can Access)	2005-11

Screenshots of ideas

AdminUIRevamp Screenshot Ideas

Broad ideas for the future

Next steps could include work on improving the installer and profiles. Ex.: Not for profit association portal, Classic corporate website, Wiki-centric community, Forum-centric community, Blog, etc Nicer admin panel + better Site Identity + better installer/profiles: I think could help a lot :-) Maybe we could maintain the definitions of profiles in wiki pages to make it easier for community contribution.

---