Category: Admin Interface (UI)

This was tested on Tiki26 using Classic Bootstrap layout with Unified Admin Backend enable, fixed width enabled and a value for "Layout width" (1920px) wider than the available space in the admin display for a screen width.

IE: The site don't use a left column and is designed to use most, but not all, of the width available but in the admin view we have a 268px aside dropdown set.

In that case the footer goes under the Unified Admin Back-end col.

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On a Tiki25 when I go to tiki-admin.php I can see the control panels tiles and the last one is "Orphan Preferences".

If I select a control panel that then displays the adminanchors small icons the last option is never "Orphan Preferences" but is changing for the panel I'm actually on.

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My understanding is that the adminanchors small icons should displays the same option (if enabled) as the Control Pnael admin page.

On a control panel I navigate to a specific tab.
I do some change and apply. The page reload and display the first tab of the page, not the tab I was looking at.

This is wrong, I should be seeing what I was seeing before I submit the changes.

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The link displayed in a alert alert-warning pref_dependency highlight, an error we can see if a preference is missing or required, is not very good by default.

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Keep it optional - even activating something just to see, how you admin it!

Is there any reason this has to be this way?

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In a new 24.x vcs master installation the tiki-admin_modules.php UI is broken.
The UI is kind of cut-off below the module zone tabs and there is no button to add new modules. The interface seems to have been reorganised, but not finalised yet.

When activating and deactivating (playing around) the tabs / no tabs buttons the button appears.
--I will try to confirm with show.tiki.org-- confirmed
There seems to be a conflict with two variants of the tab toggle (tab view / no tabs) and and a duplication of the admin module tabs. See attached screenshots.

I assume a template issue {sign user="Torsten" datetime="2021-12-06T07:09:50+00:00"}

On the admin page to enable/disable plugins (tiki-admin.php) paymentlist is missing the checkbox, instead only this text is displayed: "paymentlist: Show details of payments. The payments considered may be restrained by user or date.".

The result of this bug is that the plugin Paymentlist cannot be activated or de-activated! Whatever the setting is on your Tiki installation, you cannot alter it through the Admin UI.

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The admin pages layout preference selection doesn't seem to have any effect in master. I selected an admin theme first (which is a prerequisite) and set the admin layout pref but it isn't used. As a check, I set that layout as the global pref, and it does get used for the whole site. I'll submit a bug report.

I guess with the new unified admin backend, it doesn't matter much what the layout choice is because of how the content layout is imposed by the UAB CSS, etc. or whatever replaces that, but the pref could have some role with UAB. Anyway, it should probably be fixed for Tiki sites that don't use UAB. I didn't check earlier Tiki versions yet.

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I haven't tested this carefully, but it seems to me the admin sidebar tends to be collapsed when I first load an admin page. I normally don't collapse the sidebar or leave the admin section with the sidebar collapsed, so this doesn't seem right. If anything, IMO the sidebar's default display should be expanded for best useability, but I realize this is subjective, depending on the size of the admin's screen, etc. so at least the display state should be remembered, if possible.

tiki-admin.php?page=textarea#contentadmin_textarea-2 had its main section (Plugins) changed in r61597. It mostly works now, but there is still a problem when searching for short terms, i.e. those under [https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/server-system-variables.html#sysvar_ft_min_word_len|ft_min_word_len] (for MyISAM; the limit for InnoDB tables is controlled by a different variable).

If the query contains nothing but terms under the limit, all plugins are displayed. If the query contains at least one sufficiently long term, the too short terms are ignored.

One solution would be to display a warning about short terms next to "Plugins found containing: foo".

I am however wondering if we couldn't just go back to the previous code, which didn't have this problem (adapted to not show all plugins by default?). I guess one important reason for the change was to speed up page load, but page generation takes about 7 seconds here, which appears to be the same as, for example, Admin Profiles, so the gain is not obvious.

Trying to revert the change causes important conflicts.

Related: issue 6307

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Currently in master ([https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki/-/commit/fa7d91ee2af2f24cc5a4c6ffecb0438dfdd138cb] - March 4) the admin option for site theme has no effect. Instead, the admin theme is used for the whole site. Because the global theme can't be set, the theme-switch module also has no effect.

I would say this is a release blocker, as it's essential to be able to set the site theme (and not just by using the admin theme option).

By default the Admin Filter Preferences is set to Basic.
Trackers can be turned on if the Admin Filter Preferences is set to Advanced.
If so the Admin Trackers tabs "Field Types" will be empty.
The field types will appear only when Admin Filter Preferences is set to Experimental.

This is too much. :)

The Admin Trackers tabs "Field Types" should appears only if Admin Filter Preferences is set to Experimental __OR__ the field types should be displayed when Admin Filter Preferences is set to Basic __OR__ a message should say "You can view the field types only when Admin Filter Preferences is set to Experimental __OR__ both should be displayed when the Admin Filter Preferences is set to Advanced.

Also, user doesn't appear in filtered list after being added

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Admin warning about the scheduler (that didn't ran) shouldn't be displayed when the scheduler is not used.

On the control panels, Editing, Plugins, right after installation, the GUI for the list plugin for several options and preferences has a "turn back" icon, "Reset to default value". (wrong as this is the default - thing was changed)

While it visually do the job (it reset the field or selector value) on Apply (Save) things are back to what they were.
Unchecking manually a checkbox seems to work.

Check the instance.
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On Tiki24 to rebuild the unify index you need to go to the Search feature page and click on the rebuild-index button.
It is a commonly used function and it should be available from the admin-navbar on the top of the admin dashboard/area.

On a Tiki24, I encountered an error about "security setting"

I went to the Admin, Advanced, Security control panel at tiki-admin.php?page=security there I found a "Tip" remarkbox.
"Please see the Security page on Tiki's developer site. See Security Admin for additional security settings."

There is 2 links;
# ((Security)), an (almost) empty page that certainly doesn't help the admin if he has an issue ?
# Security Admin (tiki-admin_security.php) that goes to a list of activated wikiplugin (and a path) and 2 other links that take further into a wrong direction.

In summary we are not helping the admin with documentation or tools.

Candidate pages;
* https://doc.tiki.org/System-Configuration (helped to find hidden preferences)
* https://doc.tiki.org/Security-Admin (outdated) ?
* https://doc.tiki.org/Security (documentation need improvement)

This was tested on Tiki26 using Classic Bootstrap layout with Unified Admin Backend enable, fixed width enabled and a value for "Layout width" (1920px) wider than the available space in the admin display for a screen width.

IE: The site don't use a left column and is designed to use most, but not all, of the width available but in the admin view we have a 268px aside dropdown set.

In that case, the Tiki footer is under the left admin col.

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At tiki.org, I wanted to switch to a particular user's account to check what his permissions were. I clicked "Switch to this user" in the Actions popup (over the wrench icon) and got an action confirmation dialog that I confirmed, and when the page refreshed, I was still logged in as admin, not the user. I didn't check yet at other sites to see if this problem is limited to tiki.org or general for branch 20.
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Just noticed the same on another site and i think it's when there more users than -+user_selector_threshold+- so you get a search object selector. {sign user="jonnybradley" datetime="2020-02-25T10:22:10+00:00"}

The jQuery dialog boxes used on the Admin Modules page for assigning modules aren't showing up properly.

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It would be lovely to set some new user defaults at
* Admin (home) > Login > User defaults, and/or
* Admin > Groups > (Edit a single group)

The ability to Subscribe/watch/monitor new users in the site or to that specific group, to specific Tiki objects.

Which tiki objects?: I would say, in this order:
# specific forums
# specific blogs
# specific calendars
# specific newsletters (ML: we can already subscribe groups to newsletters)
# specific wiki pages
# specific structures
# specific trackers
# specific categories
# new articles

This is specially useful for new users of the site, where they don't know yet how to subscribe to specific areas, etc. Very needed for educational scenarios, but I can see many other places where new users are a bit lost for some time while they learn how to use the Tiki site.

Related:
*[wish988|Forum: Let forum admins/moderators add groups and/or users as watching the forum]
*[tiki-index.php?page=Business%20Plans|Let small business start ups access collaborative sharing where the document being shared is not visible by anyone else]


Anywhere there is a watch eye, it should be possible for an admin to have group members watch this category

On a Tiki26 I searched for "payments" and this is the results displayed.

The feature payment is not yet activated (default).
Enabling the payment feature (Payment payment, features advanced) is the first step and a quite important step in the process (if not enabled, all the rest is not relevant)
However this preference is not the top result but buried somewhere in the middle of the results.

This is one example and I guess there may be worst case.

My results should have displayed the __Payment payment, features advanced__ checkbox at the top of the results.

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Many too big "un-needed" warning are displayed and this added to the preference type (advanced in my screenshot) add confusion to the already dense Tiki preferences and admin options.

I mean, what is good for a big warning about "Exchange rate for types of credit to use" if the user won't use "Tiki user credits" and even "Payment" ?
If there were one warning from time to time on a page it would look important and relevant.
As there are too many warning displayed, it is just noise and people tend to skip them.

I'm not sure what should be the right solution, but I'd like something like a more discreet warning, the yellow warning icon - Requirements not met, and ONLY upon user action (mouseover, click, tooltip reveal, etc) to see the complete message. That way, the user is not submerged with warnings he doesn't need, and only when he need to see the verbose got the exact warning.

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The layout templates are filtered for the selector on Look and Feel admin, so "layouts/internal/" and "layouts/layout_plain.tpl" aren't shown, but the selector on tiki-editpage.php doesn't filter them. If one of these "internal use only" layouts is selected and used, the wiki page display is broken.

In Opera and IE7 (didn't check yet in IE6), all sublevels of the Tiki Magic admin menu display all the time. Sublevels aren't top-level item sensitive as in Firefox.