The Wagtail dashboard could be enhanced

The Wagtail dashboard currently doesn’t deliver as much value as it could do given, after login, that it’s the first thing a user sees.

I think this relates to ticket #575, and the idea of being a next step after https://github.com/torchbox/wagtail/pull/1891

No solutions here, and is based around what I would find beneficial when I’m working as an editor in Wagtail. I wanted to share these to start the conversation around this and what others felt should be on the dashboard.

Thoughts

Unpopulated

Populated

Annotated version

Unpopulated

1. Site name echoed, removing the string Wagtail CMS;
2. Changing icon for user without Gravatar. Personally feel the smiley is more gender neutral than a user represented by head and shoulder. Also everyone likes smiling faces right?
3. Guides to Wagtail
4. If Gravatar hasn’t been changed show a notice
5. Text to show if no recent edits made (would need some more thought)
6. Text to show if no recent site activity. I’m not sure it’s possible for there to never have been recent site activity (since we create a homepage on install) but perhaps we can work around that? It’s a quote from Clueless so it definitely needs some more thought
7. A block highlighting that this dashboard is extendable. Since this is a CMS for developers I think it’s good to make sure we clarify elements like this are extensible

Populated

1. Site name echoed, removing the string Wagtail CMS;
2. Gravatar (if populated) as main focal point to personalise the page for the user;
3. Editor and developer guides, along with Wagtail info, always visible;
4. Hover over to reveal action buttons. Information arrange vertically (rather than in columns) to aid scannability
5. Recent edits and recent activity have same height as one another for consistency and make arranging the elements on the page easier. I was thinking that clicking reveal more would show a maximum of eight recent items in total (e.g. three more than currently being shown here)
6. Vague representation of a user installed block modeled loosely on @tomdyson’s https://github.com/tomdyson/wagalytics

Populated version using existing style guide

Above a rough view of what it could look like if implemented using the existing UI styleguide.

[thibaudcolas]

For anyone wanting to work on this, we’ve recently discussed similar topics in a team meeting and @allcaps summarized our take in https://github.com/wagtail/wagtail/pull/1891#issuecomment-644839371.

To make progress on this issue in particular, I would suggest to treat the following separately:

• Creating new panels for the dashboard
• Improving Wagtail’s support for custom panels in ways that make what’s suggested this possible (if not possible already)
• Redesigning the Wagtail dashboard with its existing built-in and custom panels

In particular, personally I would find it valuable already to see a blog post / recipe / documentation on how to make a custom panel to start with.

[thibaudcolas]

I’m going to convert this to a Discussion now, to give this a bit more visibility, and reflect the fact there isn’t a really clear point at which this will be “done”.