JA Admin - Joomla Admin Template - Alpha version released

Hi again,

In our previous preview of our Joomla Admin Template, we introduced main features of the JA Admin template. Today we have improvement updates for you as well as the alpha version of JA Admin is now available for early adopters. Scroll down for known issues and we hope to have them fixed in the next version.

1. Style improvement

There are lots of changes in terms of style, we have added more preset color options, make the style consistent all over the template: buttons, font size, text color, etc.

Joomla Admin template style improvement

2. Login Page improvements

In the theme customizer, we added more options to customize the login page, one of the option is to update background for the page: color or background image.

Color & Image background for login page

3. Horizontal & Vertical admin navigation

As pointed out by many, the Joomla Admin template now supports 2 navigation menu: Vertical or horizontal.

Vertical & Horizontal Administrator navigation

4. Quick links For DashBoard Profiles

4.1 Quick Links icon

When building dashboard profile, you can enable or disable quick links, for each quick link, you can add icons to make the dashboard more friendly. The icon can be Font Awesome icon or uploadable Image icon.

Configure icons for quick link

4.2 Add button - Save & Close

Save & close option is now added and now you can quickly save the changes as well as close the quicklink modal popup with the button.

5. Module Manager Panel - (needs a better workflow)

5.1 Drag and Drop to change position

The grid module manager panel gives you more friendly working panel with modules, modules are grouped by position, you can drag and drop to change position of the modules. Must say, I personally feel that this needs a better workflow.

Change module position with ease

5.2 Add new or Edit module in popup

Instead of being navigated to other page, you can add new module or edit them in the very same window as a popup.

Add or configure modules in popup

5.3 Hide /show profile selection dropdown based on ACL.

The profile selection dropdown now is available only to superusers. For now, the quicklinks which are beyond the ACL of say manager or administrator would still be listed but not active (proposed workflow), so the superuser know what can be pushed to manager or not. Play around with this and let us know if the workflow can be improved.

Show or hide quick links corresponding to user's permission

6. Mulitple Theme color

8 color themes for now and these would be improvised over the next versions.

Up to 8 theme colors supported by default

7. More parameters to customize style

Customize style in real time

The theme customizer allows you to customize style easier, we added more fields to customize header, navigation, login page.

Upcoming features:

We are working hard to update more features for the template. Here is the features we plan to implement for stable version.

• Inactive quiclink that user group does not have permission to access.
• Group quick links, so as to have multiple Quicklink groups.
• Module manager workflow
• Custom preset modules for popular extensions
• Sidebar improvements based on the feedback
• Option to customize sidebar menu icons
• Overrides / manager admin menu items

Comments, Questions and Suggestions for the Admin template

The whole team at JoomlArt is thrilled by the encouraging feedback we have had from our preview blog post. I would like to answer some of the questions asked via comments with regards to JA Admin template.

1. Ronni K. G. Christiansen

Should be the new joomla Admin template as a default :)

Well, we would be glad to unconditionally handover this backend template project as well as ours JA Simpli frontend template to Joomla but I have to admit that nothing moves easily through the red tape at Joomla!.

2. Fotis Evangelou

Since the layout and design look very much like WordPress (if not a friendly rip-off), perhaps you should consider at least using some Joomla colors - like blue for example. And having the Joomla logo is no bad thing too. BTW, ditch the title at the header. Takes up too much space. Use it inside the page context and save some vertical space by also making the right parts a little smaller. Test on a 13" laptop and you'll see why.

Joomla colors & logo are now added as default theme. Title at header and vertical space suggestion are added to roadmap and hopefully implemented soon. Nope, its not like Wordpress, you can google "backend template" and you can see many similar looking styles. This is the basic style as of now, we would be adding better UI later on. Right now the focus is onto make it functional and not be a template but be a soution to issues faced by site admins, developers & Agencies.

3. Michael Smith Fotis Evangelou

It looks like a Fork of AdminLTE2 not neccessarily WordPress but an effective format nonetheless

Thanks, that gave me ideas on how to improve UI. I plan to have functionality so that popular extensions can have custom modules to be added to the dashboard. That ought to make the dashboard more functional and sexy too.

4. Ready Bytes

• Looks very sleek
• Should be white label and can be branded like customer brand (that's very important for all consultants and agencies)
• I do not agree with joomla'ish look as we don't want to impose joomla, we want to provide easy & clean backend.

Yes, It is very easy to whitelabel. I have had this in mind from day 1, when the idea was first discussed at Bangkok meet.

5. Tim Heeley

I've settled into using the Isis admin template. I find it very easy with the top menu. Could I suggest having the top menu style as an alternative, and would it be worth thinking about having the sidebar menu as 'off-canvas'?

Thanks, a very valid point that we missed. Both menu types (horizontal & vertical) are now available.

6. spignataro

One thing to keep in mind is that many components are built using a sidebar. Having a sidebar in the template will take away some valuable real estate. I would be interested to see how this would be tackled.

The side bar is collapsible. option to just have icons instead of text in the sidebar would be available in upcoming versions. Scroll below to see how the component's with their own sidebar are displayed as on now. I am sure, there would be lots of room for this improvement.

7. Mike Underwood

I would love to see some logging of who did what in the backend. That would make me want to switch over to this. So many of our clients have issues not knowing who did what, this would be very helpful.

I am all for it but the devs do not want to complicate the template. Logging should be a separate Joomla component. Anyways, I have added this to feature request and if easy, would develop the component to make the life of admins easy. I know how important is to know who did what.

8. brianpeat Aahz

I actually don't mind a side bar menu as most screens have more horiz space. BUT...what I hate is the accordion thing in a side menu. I'd much rather see a fly out second column. Why? Because you can never build muscle memory when the side bar changes every time an item is expanded. I hate that about Wordpress and I think it's bad UX. I have to hunt and hunt to find things in WP unless every item is closed (which rarely happens in WP). Yet every single side bar mock up of an admin template I ever see does the same thing: accordions in the side menu. It's just terrible and I hope we don't go that route.

Thanks. Added to the feature requests

9. jamjodesign

This looks great will it work well with components in the backend? Like easysocial etc can you hide and view them for different user groups etc?

ACL would be handled by Joomla core. We are not overriding that part for now. Yes, the links or modules would be visible / disabled based on the Joomla ACL level the user is on. Regarding hide and view (not ACL based) is easy to do with dashboard profiles. You can create ACL group and add users to them and make dashboard profiles for them. Only superusers can see all the profiles.

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