PW Design

[FvG]

Hey guys!

I have to admit that I'm a huge fan of good design. Today P&T have released their Craft CMS 1.2 and .. woow! It looks good.

I have tried that system as well but will stick to PW because it's the most powerful and flexible system in my opinion. But Craft just looks so much better.

So, are there any plans to re-design the backend any time? I know the backend looks ok. And yes, it works.

But design changes and for quite a lot of people, it's an important factor when it comes to choosing a CMS.

(Please don't come up with some "they have no ideas about it then" kind of stuff)

Why not stick to web design trends and update the backend from time to time?

I'd like to see PW both, most powerful and best looking CMS Craft might really be a great inspiration, what do you think?

And yes, re-designing might be some work. But finally it's part of the way you "sell" your product. Let PW be modern in the frontend as well

[kongondo]

http://processwire.com/talk/topic/4398-two-column-admin-theme-concept/

Ongoing discussion about PW backend...

[FvG]

Oh thanks, didn't see that

[pwired]

So, are there any plans to re-design the backend any time?

There are already a few good admin themes to choose from. You can also customize them yourself.

[FvG]

There are already a few good admin themes to choose from. You can also customize them yourself.

Yes. But that's not the point. I'd like to see an attractive default theme. So many people decide whether to use the system or not by "looking" at it: it's a visual process. Look at Craft: Is there anything you can do with it you couldn't easily using PW? No. But see how many attention it's getting, compared to PW. It simply offers a great visual experience, and I'm 100% sure this is a reason.

[Marty Walker]

It's getting attention because the developer has a loyal following based on their EE add-ons. One read of their license agreement (ie Plugins and Consent to Use of Data) put me off straight away.

[pwired]

I'd like to see an attractive default theme.

Have you at least compared pw's api with craft ?? Obviously you didn't check the available admin themes in the forum and on git. Yes it takes time to dig the forum to find them. Some pw users here made really great looking admin themes. And "beautiful" backend or frontend isn't the same for everybody, it's totally subjective. You are expecting to find a theme that fits your personal taste. It doesn't work that way. And especially not for PW that is designed to be functional internally (core) in the first place. The external is up to the user customizing the admin css and html to make it look anyway you want.

So many people decide whether to use the system or not by "looking" at it: it's a visual process.

Yes I was once one of them. Typical script kiddy and web builder wannabee hanging around in the scene. Going from one cms to the next only by the look and feel of it because of lack of judging the ratio between cms rules and functionality. Same like you would judge on how a car looks because of lack of understanding how the engine is designed that makes it run. However after trying enough different cms'es each with it's own frustrating wall of rules you have to adapt to, you stop looking at how a cms looks. You start looking for a cms without frustrating and silly rules but that adapts to you as a designer or coder on how to use it any way you want at any level of experience you already have or will develop later on. Welcome to PW unlimited

[teppo]

First of all, I'm a big fan of PW's current admin UI and also aware of other possible admin themes, but I'm also very happy about the discussion in that thread @kongondo linked above.. and thus also the opinions expressed here

Common argument here and elsewhere seems to be that PW allows you to swap the default admin theme to something else, but I don't think that people saying this are really getting it. There's a very special position deserved for default theme. It's an entry point, first impressions are based on it, and it also plays an important role when defining PW's external image, ie. what kind of message it wants to send.

I've evaluated a few CMS products myself and I must admit that for me first impressions are very important. I'm the kind of guy who first looks for screenshots and then reads the specs. That's just how my mind works and saying that it's "wrong" is, in my humble opinion, more than a bit arrogant.

Current default admin theme is very usable and I myself like it's simplicity a lot, but that two-column layout @Philipp presented in aforementioned thread was simply jaw-dropping. Just because PW is a flexible framework for building awesome custom stuff doesn't mean that it can't be pretty and sexy out-of-the-box, especially if that's what many (otherwise very capable) web designers / developers are looking for.

There are a lot of CMS products around that all claim to be flexible, extensible and usable. It's simply not an easy market to crack and thus I don't think that we should skip over any steps that can make PW's road less rocky.