Joomla! Admin Evolution (not much change since Mambo)
WordPress Admin Evolution (most changes over time)
Drupal Admin Evolution (biggest change with Drupal 7)
Observations from other Content Management Systems
Drupal has always been accused of having the least intuitive admin. With Drupal 7, they are taking a huge step forward. The Drupal 7 User Experience Project was formed to work with their community to fix the Drupal admin problem. The process itself has been criticised a bit, but the fact that tons of time and communication were involved shows that they recognized the problem and wanted to fix it. How did this start? Alternate admin tools and themes such as the Drupal admin menu which is the main feature of Drupal 7's new admin.
WordPress took another route and hired a professional firm for their admin update, but the fact that they addressed the problem as well still stands. WordPress has by far been the leader in the number of big admin updates. It's obvious that user experience is a priority, which is probably why you always hear that people think WordPress is "easy".
Innovation trickles into the core
We're interested in making Joomla! better, bottom line. We'd like to change the entire core Joomla! admin theme, but that could potentionally be very disruptive. Instead we've submitted our Activity Log extension to the core of Joomla! 1.6. The is arguably the most useful advance we've made and will be a nice addition to 1.6's admin. If we didn't create alternate admin templates, innovations like this wouldn't occur.
Debunking some myths
The largest opposition to alternate Joomla! admin templates has been professional Joomla! trainers and authors. Their stance is that alternate admin templates make the current Joomla! training books and tutorials useless. The only reason the existing training material may become useless is that Joomla! becomes so intuitive and easy with alternate admin templates, that the problem is fixed and training is no longer required. Once you learn Joomla!, changing admin templates just gives you a fresh look at the same content and workflow improvements. The only pain we've seen is when users have used our AdminPraise templates for a short while and must go back to the default admin. While they can still get around fine, they realize how much time AdminPraise saves them in their daily Joomla! usage.
Jen Kramer, a well respected Joomla! author and trainer has referred to alternate Joomla! admin templates as "dancing bears" in a recent post, implying that alternate admin templates are just for novelty and attention. We of course couldn't disagree more. Alternate Joomla! admin templates are an absolute necessity and are paving the future of Joomla! Would you rather the Joomla! admin never improve and stay the same for all time, just so training materials don't have to be updated?
User reviews of our free admin template AdminPraise Lite seem to think that alternate admin templates are a good thing and they don't really complain about screenshots not matching up to their Joomla! books exactly.
What do you think? Are we providing a necessary service to the Joomla! community with our Admin Templates or just providing an fun distraction?
P.S. This blog post was written using K2 and our Stainless admin template, optimized for K2 :)
