First impressions about the DH control panel

I have just signed up as a Dreamhost user, I am brand new and just had a couple of comments to make about my first impressions.

The first thing I noticed is that my control panel runs very slow, which makes things difficult to get all set up. Especially when every little feature is organized onto different pages and many of them I don't get access to. I don't get access to them because of the limitations of my account but they're all right there cluttering up my work area.

I have to say it's the ugliest control panel I've ever had to be looking at. Can you please go for a simpler design, get rid of the bevelled graphics and cheesy attempts at a business type of header. If it were just text that would be fine with me, perhaps it would load faster.

It is very hard to navigate, some of the help links don't even take you to the right place. It's even worse because the help shows up in the same window you were viewing, so afterwards you have to exit out and go back and watch your page load again.

Please do something about this atrocity of a control panel.

What the heck?

I was logged into the Control Panel when I came here to make that post. I figured I'd still have been logged in, I had to make a seaporate account for the forum.

I made that post. See this is what I'm talking about. I am very disappointed so far I can only hope my website gets set up by me in a timely manner and the pages load faster than this once my website is up.

Thank you for reading.

> If it were just text that would be fine with me, perhaps it would load faster.

That sort of thing has been suggested before. On the other hand, some folks would probably prefer the panel to run with flash. :-)

> It's even worse because the help shows up in the same window you were viewing, so afterwards you have to exit out and go back and watch your page load again.

If you use a decent browser like Firefox, then you can easily open links in new tabs or windows and avoid that problem.

> I had to make a seaporate account for the forum.

Yes, just like it says here: "Forum accounts are separate from your DreamHost NDN ID or user login accounts." 'Course it also says, "Users cannot post until they create an account, so you should register as soon as possible." which doesn't appear to always be true, so who knows.

> Thank you for reading.

Thanks for sharing. I hope things get better for you.

Regards,

BobS

Mainly I think I'm disappointed that there do seem to be problems with this web host but nobody has stood up and said anything about it before I signed up. This is of course considering my first impressions are correct or not. This could of course certainly go either way for me now.

Could you tell me how I set up my Crazy Domain Insane hosting account to point additional domains to sub-folders? I cannot seem to get it to work it says I need to upgrade my account but I thought I had three of these I could do don't I?

Any help is appreciated.

Have you read through the forum? There have been lots of complains (and complements/defenders), and dreamhost is very good about not deleting them.

Your account may not be in the "approved" stage yet (which is why many of your menu choices dont work right now). In the bottom left hand corner of the panel, there should be an account status.. It does take a few hours (or sometimes a day or two) to change over. then you should be able to add additional domains up to your limit.

-Jason

I40.com - Home Page
MP3Mystic - Personal Streaming Music server.
(No longer hosted with Dreamhost)

> Your account may not be in the "approved" stage yet (which is why many of
> your menu choices dont work right now). In the bottom left hand corner of
> the panel, there should be an account status.. It does take a few hours (or
> sometimes a day or two) to change over. then you should be able to add
> additional domains up to your limit.

This is usually the case when someone sees "unusable" panel sections. I was able to find jesusexc's account, and sure enough it was set to pending. I approved it, so he should be good to go now with our slow and hideously ugly web panel.

:>

- Jeff @ DreamHost
- DH Discussion Forum Admin

ya its slow and ugly compared to other CP's i used, which was cpanel and directadmin. Overrall, i rarely use the CP now and just let my site run. Everythings been cool though so theres no reason to complain.

GottaDeal.com Deals & Coupon Codes. Why Pay Retail?

Last time I saw a CPanel it was a page full of McDonald's cash register style icons, ack yuck bleh.

I can still read, and I *do* appreciate a nicely organized heirarchy.

Three cheers for the often-slow-as-hell DH web panel!

=]

jason

well, I have cpanel on my main site and have moved about 40 some odd sites here to dreamhost in the last two years. I do plan to move my main site over here (it expires in less than 15 days...so I will probably do it this weekend, just the thought of it being down scares me.)

I (mostly) like the way the panel works in dreamhost. I like its integration with the ease of granting permissions of other webids to my main webid. I like the way that portion looks and works. I technically don't see the slow speed. To get stats on my site that has cpanel, I find I need to get up, log on to cpanel, go make coffee, let the animals out, etc...then come back and sometimes it's still not up.

I will have to admit that it took a bit of fuss to find which web browsers works best with dreamhost's webadmin panel. found that in ie, os9 mac I needed to use mozilla cause ie just doesn't work. On OSX, I like Camino and Firefox...but haven't really delved into all the OSX browsers yet. On windows, I just gave up logging onto the internet...too much time wasted making sure AV software was up to date and working and downloadig all those microsoft updates!

All in all, I like dreamhosts webadmin panel and see new things cropping up weekly (yeahhh, they finally changed the rewards section...now I can see things so much clearer — as I use that area to see when clients signed up, etc.)

well, just my opinion. it did take a bit to get used to and I will admit I didn't like it in the beginning.

(Jason)

> Three cheers for the often-slow-as-hell DH web panel!

Not so quick! We're still processing the submission of the first cheer...

:>

(gonewthewind)

> I will have to admit that it took a bit of fuss to find which web browsers works
> best with dreamhost's webadmin panel. found that in ie, os9 mac I needed
> to use mozilla cause ie just doesn't work.

I find this interesting, as the last time we redesigned the panel IE on the Mac was probably one of the most well-tested browsers (mainly because that's what I was using at the time). What did you see?

FWIW, we're always willing to make changes to our rather ugly/scary/non-standard HTML to work with browsers, even somewhat "non-mainstream" ones.

Just the other day I made some changes at the behest of an Opera user, despite the fact that nobody here at DH actively uses it and it's not heavily used by our customers. While we're a bit beyond supporting Netscape v4.5 at this point (much to my relief), don't ever be afraid to let us know if something doesn't work.

- Jeff @ DreamHost
- DH Discussion Forum Admin

I'm curious---does the DH panel support alt tags and other Bobby-compliance-ness? If not, it'd be a great thing to add.

> I'm curious---does the DH panel support alt tags and other Bobby-
> compliance-ness? If not, it'd be a great thing to add.

Sadly, while there likely are some alt-tags, I wouldn't imagine that they are consistently used in any way that would be lauded by accessibility experts. To be honest, our panel HTML - some of which I had a part in writing, many many moons ago - is pretty ugly. It works in almost all cases, but it's not something I like to think about.

Simply put, it was written very much in the late 1990s tag soup tradition of web design. :>

My dream is that some day we would replace it with XHTML transitional compliant mark-up (with nice, lightweight CSS-based presentation!), consistent use of ALT tags for accessibility, etc. However, this would be a gargantuan job and there isn't much of a business case for it vis a vis all of the other things people ask for (and the amount of man power we can extend to these sorts of things) so it could be a while.

- Jeff @ DreamHost
- DH Discussion Forum Admin

um, I need to go back about 1.5 years to my support tickets...but I will let you (jeff @ dreamhost) know what was written about IE and Mac OS9. I got many (MANY) server time outs...still do, yes I still try on OS9, as this is my main computer and my employees get to play on the newer computers...They only allow me to sit behind this old G4...lol

I will post what was written in the support ticket results from dreamhost. But, I must add, (dreamhost) was correct about the browser issue and it works wonderfully on Mozilla in OS9 : )

Now, can i get VPN access for the Macintosh Yet???

it was..
Security Failure. Data Decryption Error which is what happens on internet explorer

Edited by gonewthewind on 05/04/05 09:10 PM (server time).

In reply to:
should be good to go now with our slow and hideously ugly web panel.

Haha it really is slow and hideously ugly.

I've got things running now and I think I'm pretty happy with my services after all. First impressions aren't everything in this case.

Also I've taken a go at XHTML Stricting (not Transitionalizing) the dreamhost webpanel. It's not perfect but it does help demonstrate that this wouldn't be so difficult for you to take on. Spiff up the CSS a little bit and add a few images you should be good to go.

http://www.milkcubedesign.com/dreamhost_test/

:)

First use of my new webspace. Thanks Dreamhost!

A lot of it really needs to be recoded, like adding membership to the forums with membership to dreamhost account. I think your biggest downfall is the number of items in that left menu if you could trim it up a bit and increase the legibility of the website I would be more happy.

On second thought better add a background color up on that thing I put together.

You know what would be really cool? If DH would open up the source for the panel and let some of the dedicated customers work something out, with a clause that DH may or may not use any part of the result to improve the actual live panel.

Would we the customers embrace such an initiative? (I think so.) Would we cooperatively work to create a good design in terms of a) technical functionality, b) functional and visual usability, and finally c) standards-compliant and attractive graphical design? (I'm not sure.) Would we be able to create something useful, valuable, extensible, and give it back to DH as their property? (I think not.)

Would DH support such an initiative? (I think not.) DH needs to provide specifications and requirements, and perhaps special access to some stuff(?), as well as publicize their proprietary we-hosting-admin code. The benefit to DH would come if and only if the customers can produce anything useful; the cost to DH would be to reveal their code and spend time on the specs/requirements/customer-questions/development-support.

TorbenGB

this is a good idea doing this though would open up the code too much for hackers. when the code is open to the public then they more easily figure out what needs to be done to circumvent security.

it's easier for one or two people to code a webpage rather than many in any case.

In reply to:

Also I've taken a go at XHTML Stricting (not Transitionalizing) the dreamhost webpanel.

There's no need for tables there!

Seeeeeeee, there's always somebody not satisfied ;)

jason

In reply to:
adding membership to the forums with membership to dreamhost account

Personally, I'd positively hate it if my DH account login were the same as my login here at the forums.

(gonewthewind)
> I will have to admit that it took a bit of fuss to find which web browsers works
> best with dreamhost's webadmin panel. found that in ie, os9 mac I needed
> to use mozilla cause ie just doesn't work.

IE 5.1.7 under Mac OS 9.2.2 works fine for me.

--garyblitz

.

In reply to:
Personally, I'd positively hate it if my DH account login were the same as my login here at the forums.

I'm positively curious why? Friendly forum-goer. :) why.

Earlier I really wasn't trying to discredit the open sourcing thing I truely believe this is a good idea. Not so much I have a problem with the security of the thing when this is finished, but while the project is under development it might be easier for accounts to come under attack from the old code.

Someone or a couple of people should take it under their wing to write the whole thing again, if it's not really liked by more people than just me. We could eliminate all tables if we wanted to and what not I suppose, though there'd be no reason not to use wonderful wonderful table structures.

There's enough geeks on this hosting service to pull it off. Now get to it everyone!

You know... If you guys want to.

I've grown rather attached to the way this web panel operates actually since the time of my first post. I hope you all might forgive the original designer of the panel like it was said this was put together a long time ago.

In reply to:
Personally, I'd positively hate it if my DH account login were the same as my login here at the forums.

My reason would be this...

I have multiple accounts w/dreamhost, about 15 separate webids. I really would rather not have to log out of one to log back in as another to get in to this forum w/the right username. Plus, my some of my webids are pretty cheesey...and short! Usually has something to do with one of the domain names under it.

In reply to:
(gonewthewind said) I will have to admit that it took a bit of fuss to find which web browsers works best with dreamhost's webadmin panel. found that in ie, os9 mac I needed to use mozilla cause ie just doesn't work.

(garyblitz said) IE 5.1.7 under Mac OS 9.2.2 works fine for me.

Yeah, that is what I have under Mac OS 9.2.2. I don't know how often you log onto your web panel. It doesn't always "not work" just sometimes it does not work. As I am writing this, I am on ie and have had no probs logging into the webpanel today. When it doesn't work, I can get it working using mozilla though, so I am not crushed : )

For me, it's because my DH site/server is for my employer. Yet when I post on this board, I represent no one but myself.

>In reply to:
>Personally, I'd positively hate it if my DH account login were the same as >my login here at the forums.

>I'm positively curious why? Friendly forum-goer. :) why.

In reply to:
I'm positively curious why? Friendly forum-goer. :) why.

Partly because I don't want to have my main ID out there all over the place. I know the chances of anyone being able to do anything nefarious with it without knowing my password are virtually nil, but I'm still not entirely comfortable with the idea.

But also for reasons similar to the ones other people gave. My main ID, the one I'm logged into the panel probably 80% of the time, is boring (it's a super-short abbreviation of my business's name--I have both business and personal sites hosted here) and not reflective of me personally :) so I prefer to have a more personal ID to post with. And those times when I'm logged into the panel under a different ID, it'd be a nuisance to have to log in and out when moving between the panel and forums during times when I'm working under a different ID.

Edited by daisygirl on 05/06/05 11:24 AM (server time).

Hey daisygirl, fyi, did you know that you can grant your webid all the permissions from your other webid and just work under your webid (they will be under "Active Account" after you grant yourself permissions.

The only thing *I* have noticed that doesn't work (at least for me) is when I need to read support questions/answers to that particular webid...which I have to do quite a bit...no matter what "Active Account" I am working on, I only see support questions/answers to my own personal webid. So, I have to log out and in as the other webid.

We very much appreciate constructive criticisms of our web panel and our software. We did write pretty much everything you interact with ourselves and we maintain it ourselves (and there's probably fewer of us than you would expect!). One notable counter-example is this forum itself which is just some off-the-shelf software we chose awhile back and use for this purpose. It may be possible to tie it into our own authentication system, but it's probably a bit of work. It's a good idea, still!

Note that we do realize our web panel needs some attention when it comes to standard usability and design and there is currently some work being done on that. I can't really say much more because we haven't made specific plans, but note that we are aware of some of the annoyances and limitations in our panel and we do plan to do something about it as soon as we can.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder

Why not create user accounts, one could use to manage many hosting plans owned by any one person.. Then the hosting plans webid's could be entirely private and it could tie in more functionally with the forum software.

Well I guess none of that really needs to happen. Now I'm just trying to make things complicated! Sorry. Thanks for your responses.

--Nathan

In reply to:
Hey daisygirl, fyi, did you know that you can grant your webid all the permissions from your other webid and just work under your webid (they will be under "Active Account" after you grant yourself permissions.

Nifty--I knew you could grant permissions but I'd only done it selectively. I don't know why it never occurred to me to just grant full permissions to the other ID so I wouldn't have to switch back and forth. Thanks for the tip!

First impressions about the DH control panel