[2.0] Dashboard says "no entries"

[Manuel]

Hi there,

thank you for v2.0!

Everything appears to work fine for me, except for one feature: The entry list on the admin dashboard is empty. This has been the case ever since I installed the earliest version of s9y that came with the new backend (2.0-beta2 AFAIK), but I failed to completely realize the issue until I saw this screenshot just yesterday.

Although there are hundreds of entries in my blog by now, this is what it says on the dashboard:

keine-einträge.png (13.57 KiB) Viewed 14054 times

No issues with the comment section though, nor on the frontend.

Is there anything I can do about this?

Thanks in advance, and keep up the good work.

Manuel

[yellowled]

Everything appears to work fine for me, except for one feature: The entry list on the admin dashboard is empty.

You are right – it's a feature, not a bug.

This is not supposed to list your latest entries, it's supposed to list drafts and scheduled entries only. (Yes, I realized that it is not ideally labelled with “Entries”. I think at that point we didn't want to introduce a new lang constant for that, lang constants are kind of costly.)

So there's nothing to do here for you, but maybe for us.

YL

[Manuel]

Ah, that makes sense. Thank you for elaborating, yellowled – I'm just so glad nothing's broken after all!

Manuel

[yellowled]

This will be labelled better in 2.0.1, we just fixed that this afternoon.

YL

[Don Chambers]

I see this issue was closed on github. I think the solution is to add text such as "in progress", correct?

I would like to make an additional suggestion. The boxes for comments needing approval, as well as entries needing further action (future entries, drafts).. are both a "pending" status, so perhaps that is a good title for both boxes (comments pending, entries pending)... but regardless of the title, when no entries are pending, and no comments are pending, the boxes still appear, with the message "no entries to print". Regardless of the title of these containers, I think their mere inclusion on the dashboard when there is no pending action is also misleading. How about just not outputting the containers under that circumstance? Or maybe changing "no entries to print" to something more meaningful... "No action required"? "Nothing Pending" or perhaps "Nothing to see here.. move along"?

[yellowled]

I think the solution is to add text such as "in progress", correct?

I have already forgotten what we added there. Ah, “In Progress”. Literally what you thought.

(comments pending, entries pending)

I don't know about other languages, but there really is no good German translation for “Entries pending”. (My personal favourite was “In limbo”, by the way. No, not seriously.)

Of course, the same could be true in any language for “In progress”.

By the way, since you're about the only native speaker in English left in the project, what is the correct use of capital letters? “In Progress” or “In progress”? (Yes, it is very German to even ask that.)

How about just not outputting the containers under that circumstance? Or maybe changing "no entries to print" to something more meaningful...

I'm not sure if there's a smarty way to not emit the box, but I think we opted to leave it in to a) make layouting the dashboard easier and b) not to confuse people if the box is “suddenly missing”.

As for the message text, I think that is to save a lang constant (you know, those are kind of expensive). I'm not sure if we should introduce a new lang constant just for that. (Then again, we just introduced one for “In Progresse”, sooo …)

YL

[Don Chambers]

In Progress, or In progress. Doesn't really matter.

Which smarty template renders the overall admin view, as well as those two containers for pending comments and entries?

[Don Chambers]

Nevermind, I found it. /templates/2k11/admin/overview.inc.tpl.

The logic is already present within each container... simply move it to outside of each <section> to prevent that section from printing when there are no pending comments/pending entries:

for comments: {if is_array($comments)} and this for entries: {if is_array($entries)}

I think not having containers is a lot less confusing that containers that say "no entries to print".

[yellowled]

In Progress, or In progress. Doesn't really matter.

Americans.

I think not having containers is a lot less confusing that containers that say "no entries to print".

Not sure I agree. Personally, I'd rather change the lang constant for this. Also would like to here Malte's opinion on this (and others, of course).

YL

[Manuel]

I think not having containers is a lot less confusing that containers that say "no entries to print".

Not sure I agree. Personally, I'd rather change the lang constant for this. Also would like to here Malte's opinion on this (and others, of course).

YL

I agree with Don. The "no entries" message is rather disturbing. Why not always show the latest X published/pending entries (headlines plus first few words with edit/delete/add comment/publish links), so as to put the entries container to good use regardless of the entries’ actual status? Plus, that way it would match the comments container.

[onli]

Plus, that way it would match the comments container.

Not necessarily, since a new comment can mean a new action (to answer it), but a new entry means nothing for the todo-list most of the time.

I at first didn't like the idea not to show the boxes. But on the other hand, the comment box would still be shown almost always, and that might make it ok. So I'd be ok with that solution.

If that proves to be difficult css-wise, I'd settle for the proper language constant. "Nothing Pending" is a label that would make it clear (this thought is why I changed my mind about disliking hiding the boxes - a solution without a label is almost always better, and not showing the box is such a solution).

[Don Chambers]

Seriously, its a total breeze to implement... and has nothing to do with css.

I showed how above for comments: {if is_array($comments)} and this for entries: {if is_array($entries)}. Simply wrap the appropriate <section> with that logic, and it works beautifully. I patched my own copy earlier today and love it. If you do it, you can remove the {if is_array...} from within the <section> as it would be redundant.

[Manuel]

Not necessarily, since a new comment can mean a new action (to answer it), but a new entry means nothing for the todo-list most of the time.

True, but "old" comments do remain in the comment container, along with all the links for editing/deletion/moderation, don't they? So while comments never disappear, why should entries (or their container)?

[yellowled]

True, but "old" comments do remain in the comment container, along with all the links for editing/deletion/moderation, don't they? So while comments never disappear, why should entries (or their container)?

Any entry that is listed in the dashboard has as special status – it's either a draft or a scheduled entry. For entries, the entry status is a very clear value, because it is determined by the author only.

For comments, that's not the case. A comment might be marked to be pending moderation, but it might as well have passed the spam filter and you'd want to moderate it. So if the Dashboard were to only list the comments marked to be moderated by the system, users would very likely miss a lot of comments which actually require at least reviewing.

YL

[Don Chambers]

Because I am only running 2.0 on a sandbox/development site, I didn't notice this behavior of comments. I don't think all comments should show up in that container indefinitely. While it is true comments that have passed spam filters might need to be reviewed, s9y has already notified the admin via email of new comments. I think comments should only show up there if they require moderation, or if they are very recent.

Imagine a site that gets 50 comments a day, or one that only gets 10 comments a year. In both instances, that container isn't going to be very useful if it always contains all comments.