Shuttle WorkShop 01 - Dashboard
I’ve been thinking about the whole situation and how some people might feel a bit left out of the whole design process with regards to Shuttle. So in order to get some more feedback, and hopefully get a few ideas that we might not have come up with ourselves, I’m going to start writing these WorkShops. Every Workshop we’ll be dealing with the specific aspect of the WordPress Admin section the Shuttle team is currently working on.
In this inaugural edition, as you might have guessed, our attentions is going to be centred on the Dashboard. Currently as it stands, we’re effectively showing exactly what is shown currently in the Dashboard, except we’ve gone and relocacted the various sections (to make them more user centric), given them some colour and generally spiced them up. The question open for discussion is whether or not we’re missing something fundamental that you’ve seen elsewhere or you think the WordPress Dashboard could use.
Just off the top of my head,- Is there any specific GPL stats plugins that you think would make a fine addition to the dashboard section?
- Would it be useful to be able to pick and choose what feeds are available to you in the WordPress feeds section?
- Any functions that you have running on your dashboard currently that you think should be included in the core?
Concentrating on one specific aspect at a time will enable everyone to take an active role in the development of the WordPress Administration Panel.
1. Yes, Shaun Inman’s ShortStats-plugin. But I wouldn’t want to have statistics on the dashboard. Well, maybe a few, or some, but nothing extensive..
2. Oh yes, it would. The opportunity to choose/customize/add your own feeds to the dashboard would be a great addition. If being totally free with that, would be too much, then I’d rather recommend setting up a dropdown (or something similar) in the options panel to choose from a list of pre-configured developer (wp-related) feeds.
3. Uhm, don’t know. Probably… ehm no!
I’m very happily looking forward to your first release. Do you guys plan to have some pre-release, beta-testing release, .. being available in the near future? Thanks anyway for your commitment to the wp-community.
28/9/2005
Just to clarify, I’m not saying just the above points I’ve made. Please feel free to add ANYTHING else you feel should be included. I’m not saying it’ll get in, just that within the frame of these conversations some good ideas might be generated.
28/9/2005
I’d also like to have the ability to customize what feeds get displayed on the dashboard. While I don’t mind the DevBlog feed, the Planet WordPress stuff at the bottom does absolutely nothing for me since I have several of the included blogs in my Bloglines feeds.
Also, if I ever use WordPress on a client’s site and need to give said client access to the admin system, the current Dashboard feeds will look like babble to them. :)
28/9/2005
Very good idea.
On my Dashboard, I would like it to be just what it says, a dashboard. I’d like to see things critical to my blog such as recent changes on the inside and outside of my blog. It’d be nice to be able to customize the feeds displayed. Some simple stats will be nice (eg. hits, posts, comments, reads, blocked spam attempts, invalid login attempts, etc).
29/9/2005
Yes, I would like to see an Info about invalid login attempts, too! And I agree with the other things Fernando has pointed out.
The dashboard as it is now is the worst part of the admin panel, especially this ugly grey feed buttons.
29/9/2005
I agree with Christian, but I would like it to have some compatibility with Mint.
30/9/2005
Good to hear you’re doing this series. I’ve mentioned it to Chris before, but I’ve been following the progress of this “reenvisioning” of the Wordpress backend since it was announced many moons ago.
While I like Tiger, I’d much rather use something that’s cross browser and strays from being “too proprietary”. Out of the box, the Wordpress backend UI is extremely ugly, but the functionality is superb.
Oh yeah, how about rolling Chris’s Notes plugin into the dashboard? I’d be nice to see recent notes shown in that area for reference purposes. Possibly using a bit of Ajax to add a note straight from the dashboard?
30/9/2005
I’m not sure there needs to be any feeds at all on the dashboard. I see this part of the admin panel as a snapshot of your site, not a traffic-builder for a small group of blogs. People will get feeds from those sites one way or another if they really want them.
1/10/2005
I really like the additional information provided on the dashboard. Having said that however it is true that WP isn’t only used for blogs anymore as more and more people are using it as the defacto backend for many simple websites that require the client to go in and fuck around with it all.
In that respect then yeah maybe an option to turn it on and off might be in order (although I really like how that list is getting styled).
Greg, I’ve installed the notes plugin but to be honest I just make a draft of the thing, but then I’ve got like 10 drafts which are a bit too outdated, hmm might need to give that one a think actually.
1/10/2005
I’d like to see a well styled list of recent posts for all wordpress blogs. Same goes for on the WordPress.org homepage. I’m quite getting into the WordPress.com dashboard popular list and recent updates. Pity thats not easy to implement wordpress wide. Unless ping-o-matic knows a wordpress blog from every other? ;)
It could list most linked to wordpress blogs based on services. A WordPress top 100 tab. :)
There could be a developer tab for developer feeds.
The main page could be customisable. modular. A feed reader tab could be included. One that plugins into available API’s like bloglines, newsgator.
Stats of course.
2/10/2005
Personally, I’m happy with the default Dashboard, though I do feel that it could use some visual “spice”. If anything, I think that the user should be able to activate or deactivate each element of the Dashboard as needed.
3/10/2005