Have you noticed how crowded control panels look? Yet, you don't want users to have to "click, click" to go to a tool such as webmail either, so I've come up with a brainstorm of an idea for a control panel which may be novel.

What if a control panel was built that allowed control of what was viewed on your control panel? That way you can customize your control panel like a desktop.

For example, let's say you are using C Panel 5, but you rarely use the features XMB Bulletin Board, Agora shopping cart, or the Network Tools. Wouldn't it be great if you could only have the tools that you actually use, show on the Control Panel, with the ability to change your "control panel desktop" at any time? BTW, I'm copyrighting the name CPDesktop. :)

Also, why does programming a control panel have to be so complicated? Can't you just use shell commands to implement each tool on a control panel?

Why go through all the complicated hassles of customizing your control panel?
Why not just have one that knows you? One that knows what I want without even needing to speak?
Who needs some fancy schmancy custom panel; when my virtual cp does everything for me?

Originally posted by SoftWareRevue
Why go through all the complicated hassles of customizing your control panel?
Why not just have one that knows you? One that knows what I want without even needing to speak?
Who needs some fancy schmancy custom panel; when my virtual cp does everything for me?

My point is that you can make it as simple or as complex as you want.

A customized control panel "desktop" would have 3 advantages:
1. Loads faster
2. Easier to read/find things at a glance
3. Easier navigation

I believe that this idea has been discussed. The idea of a CPanel with modifiable available features is a good one. This allows the reseller to offer a range of particular 'optioned' plans to their clients with minimum to maximum features. The 'modified' CPanels could be 'optioned' in the WHM.

Your control panel desktop idea is an intersting one. It hard to tell if what you gained by making the "desktop" customizable would be worth the extra coding effort. I imagine many users wouldn't bother customizing features if it was just a on/off option. People do however like to customize things if it can reflect their personality/creativity in some way. That would nifty if you could pull that off :).

I agree that control panels like CPanel look crowded, but I think its mostly because of unnecessary feature bloat.

Also, why does programming a control panel have to be so complicated? Can't you just use shell commands to implement each tool on a control panel?
Ah, spoken like someone who has never written a control panel :). Indeed, I once had the same thought. Some of the issues that come up are who does the script run as? root? Security alerts should be going off now. Once you pick a user, you'll find that certain scripts need to run as a different user to do their job, and the confusion sets in quickly. How you deal with editing files (like httpd.conf) is another question to be tackled. The reasons start piling up when you sit down and start working on it :)

Paul

BTW, I wasn't just talking about C Panel, though I did give it as an example.

Yeah, that's why I put my shell question last, since I figured it was the lamest. As a perl programmer, I understand security, and should've thought about that. All my perl programs would be 1/10th their size if I didn't have to write security into the scripts.

You are correct. I've never written a control panel, or had a server with root privileges so I'm sure there would be some configuration issues.