Re: [users] GUI improvement ideas

[Bill Shupp]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hello,
I'm really glad to know 1.0 will soon be out soon, and i thought i should
write about a few GUI improvement ideas i had while using vegadns since a
year now.
Keep in mind i know most of these will feel somehow useless to
"power-users".
Most settings resulting from changes i'm suggesting could be edited once and
for all from config.php..
Here they are:
. The abbility to allow or not, all users to change default TTL, SERIAL, etc
for their domains
(I had the case where people would set TTL of 1MS hopping that would improve
dns resolving .....)
 

Perhaps there could be separate limits on Users and Group Admins via the 
config file.  Senior Admins should not be limited.

. I saw logs save pretty much everything, I was wondering if on the "add
domain" form, we couldn't specify for how long the domain was registered..
Therefore we could have (based on the date the domain was added), an exact
idea of when the domain should expire..
How many times do we have to deal with people that don't receive warning
from their registrar (cause for exemple they changed email..) and wonder
"why, oh why" is this domain not working.. (of course we do take the abbit
of doing a "whois" first.. but not all clients know what a whois is ..)
 

Hmm, I see your point.  But this still seems arbitrary to me.  I guess 
you could have a display for the domain's date creation (the logs will 
keep time stamps, so that could be done easily), and then you'd know 
when it was created in *this* database, but not necessarily when it was 
registered.  You could also manually enter the registration expiration, 
but that would require manual updating when it was renewed, etc.  I just 
don't see an efficient way to store this information.  I wonder how 
feasible it would be to add hook to whois, and parse out the expiration 
date.  Is there any standard for registrars to display this info, or 
would it be text parsing?

. I (only) have around 35 domains in the db, and i must say, clicking
"domains" to only reach a domain starting with letter "Z" sounds a bit too
much..
I was just wondering if the alphabetical index, couldn't be displayed on the
startup page directly, rather than having to click "domains" first, to than
see the full listing and alphabetical sorting options.. (or some option like
the $per_page, but in this case would become $per_domain to select how many
domains to display per page, thus lowering the time needed to access the
alphabetical sorting options..)
 

Maybe a better solution is to just do away with "main menu".  Since all 
menu options are available at the top at all times, why not make "main 
menu" be the domain listing?

. The abbility to sort domains per domain extentions.
 

This should not be hard to add, although I've never personally needed 
it.  Anyone else have an opinion on it?

.The abbility to let users add or not subdomain or new domains.
I had a case where a someone tryed to add as many domains as he could.. just
for .. "fun".. Therefore being abble to just disable adding domains.. could
help in some setups.
 

My approach to this is to leave them "inactive", so a senior admin 
*must* activate any domains created by users or group admins.  I think 
this is sufficient.  If  you have a user playing with the dns software 
"for fun", they should probably not a user anymore.

That's all for now, maybe more will pop in my mind..
 

Thanks for the feedback.
Regards,
Bill