Joomla Developers: Make Useful Dashboards!
For some time, the majority of Joomla components with a dashboard have used it as a "landing and branding" page with little use other than to display some large buttons and perhaps company branding. I have to admit, we at Dioscouri have also been guilty of "the useless dashboard" -- our entire 2008-2009 line includes one. And in our case, we went so far as to call the big buttons "user-friendly" (disgusting, Web 2.0 malarkey. Sorry.)
The Informative Dashboard - Making it Useful
There is no need for buttons in your dashboard when the administrator submenu (or in our case, side menu) has all your component's links already available. So why put those big buttons there? It's almost as if we (as Joomla developers) didn't really know what to do with the dashboard, so we just threw in some buttons, branding, and extra links. Ech.
Well, our upcoming releases (all of which are currently installed on Dioscouri, so we can test them before releasing them) have an infinitely more useful dashboad. Take a look at some of these screenshots for AMIGOS, BILLETS, PHPLIST, and our unreleased e-commerce app, TIENDA:
** For the screenshots, please see the full blog post here: http://bit.ly/3JrfMS
They each follow a pattern: information in the main area, branding at the bottom. The main part of the information is a graphical representation of relevant data over a selected period:
* Today
* Last Seven Days
* Last Thirty Days
* Year to Date
So in the case of each extension, you get:
* Billets: Newly-Submitted Tickets
* Amigos: Total Referrals, New Affiliate Accounts, and Commission Totals
* PhpList Integration: New Newsletter Subscriptions
* Tienda: New Orders and Order Totals
Additionally, the right column of the dashboard displays additional information that doesn't fit as well in a graph. I'm not going to list all the details because you can just take another look at the screenshot, but you'll find them useful if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of your business.
Your site is collecting very useful information - we developers can help you reach and interpret it.
The Informative Dashboard - Making it Useful
There is no need for buttons in your dashboard when the administrator submenu (or in our case, side menu) has all your component's links already available. So why put those big buttons there? It's almost as if we (as Joomla developers) didn't really know what to do with the dashboard, so we just threw in some buttons, branding, and extra links. Ech.
Well, our upcoming releases (all of which are currently installed on Dioscouri, so we can test them before releasing them) have an infinitely more useful dashboad. Take a look at some of these screenshots for AMIGOS, BILLETS, PHPLIST, and our unreleased e-commerce app, TIENDA:
** For the screenshots, please see the full blog post here: http://bit.ly/3JrfMS
They each follow a pattern: information in the main area, branding at the bottom. The main part of the information is a graphical representation of relevant data over a selected period:
* Today
* Last Seven Days
* Last Thirty Days
* Year to Date
So in the case of each extension, you get:
* Billets: Newly-Submitted Tickets
* Amigos: Total Referrals, New Affiliate Accounts, and Commission Totals
* PhpList Integration: New Newsletter Subscriptions
* Tienda: New Orders and Order Totals
Additionally, the right column of the dashboard displays additional information that doesn't fit as well in a graph. I'm not going to list all the details because you can just take another look at the screenshot, but you'll find them useful if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of your business.
Your site is collecting very useful information - we developers can help you reach and interpret it.
Views: 463
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Comment by Mark W. Bender on October 20, 2009 at 10:57am -
Very nice article!
Looks like very nice features to have when you need to know "the business" of your "business"!
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Comment by Matt Thomson on October 20, 2009 at 3:38pm -
I agree, I never saw the point of dashboards, as most of the buttons are already in the standard toolbar, so it seems like the component loads with a small toolbar, and a dashboard, which is more or less a bigger duplicate of the toolbar.
My component just goes to the main category/gallery list on startup, so people can immediately get on with making/ editing the galleries, without the "usabilty" of the component getting in the way. The toolbar buttons are at the top if someone needs to go to the comments/ rating/ paramaters section etc.
Less is more is what I'm saying.
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Comment by Oleg Nesterov on October 20, 2009 at 3:49pm -
That is because "Hello World" tutorials as well as core components don't contain such (and frankly speaking any) dashboards and/or side menus. When you first come to Joomla, you see how it's done in the core and tutorials and use their practices (IMHO).
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Comment by Ahmad Alfy on October 21, 2009 at 10:27am -
Well, some developers create dashboards containing the big fancy buttons without the sub-menu items.
I remember sh404sef used a dashboard displaying both:
- links to components configuration on the left
- statistics about visits, errors ... etc on the right
That was really good.
Good think you're pointing that! I frankly never thought why dashboards never made like this :)
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Comment by Mark Simpson on October 21, 2009 at 11:03am -
Hehehe.... I reckon our NinjaForge dashboards are amongst the worst in existence :)
Like Rafael, we've seen the error of our ways and are slowly replacing them with simpler, cleaner ones. The overbearing branding was/is terrible too.
Love the charts BTW. The remind me of the Magento dash.
Tienda sounds interesting; I look forward to seeing a demo :)
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