Dashboard Boxes v1.0.0

Dashboard Boxes v1.0.0 - the Zen Cart 3.0.0 admin dashboard for Zen Cart 2.0 through 2.3, as an encapsulated plugin

Plugins Library: (to be determined)
GitHub: https://github.com/dbltoe/Dashboard_Boxes
Zen Cart: 2.0.0, 2.0.1, 2.1.0, 2.2.0 through 2.2.3 and the 2.3 branch. Installs on 3.0.0 and stands aside because that release's own dashboard is this design.
PHP: 8.0 through 8.5
License: GPL-2.0

What it does

Replaces the panels on the admin home page with the set that Zen Cart 3.0.0 ships, laid out as a strip across the top, a wide main area, and a sidebar:

• Today at a Glance: orders, revenue and new customers since midnight, and reviews awaiting approval, each card linking to its page.
• Sales: revenue and order count per day for the last 30 days, as a chart.
• Recent Orders: the latest orders with a status badge, a products popover, invoice and edit links, and quick-filter pills for Pending and Processing in the heading.
• Traffic History: sessions and hits per day from the store's counter.
• Orders by Status, Top Sellers, Who's Online, New Customers, Sales and Specials and Store Snapshot.

Drag any panel by its heading into the top strip, the main area, or the sidebar. The arrangement is saved as you drop it, for you alone; every admin keeps their own. A Reset layout link puts the defaults back.

Order-status colors set under Localization > Orders Status (Zen Cart 2.2.1 and later) show as badges in the Recent Orders and Orders by Status panels.

Encapsulated. One folder under zc_plugins/, installed from Plugin Manager. No core file is changed, no core table is altered, and nothing is loaded from a CDN. Uninstalling drops the plugin's one table and hands the dashboard back to core.

Where it comes from

The design is ZenExpert's Modern Dynamic Dashboard, which the Zen Cart team merged into core for 3.0.0. Full credit to ZenExpert for it; portions of the panel code carry his copyright. ZenExpert also offers the same dashboard for 2.x stores as a set of replacement admin files, and if that suits your store, it is a fine choice. This plugin takes a different route to the same screen, and that route is what it adds:

• Nothing in admin/ is replaced. The panels come in through the notifier that the stock dashboard already fires. A Zen Cart upgrade cannot overwrite it, and Plugin Manager's Uninstall restores everything.
• Each admin's layout is kept in the plugin's own table, so no column is added to a core table.
• Chart.js is bundled and served from the plugin directory; jQuery UI and Bootstrap are copies that core already loads. No CDN, no second copy of anything.
• One package for 2.0.0 through 2.3, verified on each release branch, with no branch to choose.
• Admin profiles are respected panel by panel: an admin without access to Orders sees no order panels, and the Today at a Glance strip drops the cards they may not see.
• Other plugins can add a panel of their own through the plugin's notifiers, or replace the layout about to be rendered, without editing this plugin.
• A width per box (full, two thirds or one third of the page) is carried with the layout and rendered as a wrapping row, ready for a layout controller to set; in this free plugin, every box is full width.

Installing

1. Upload zc_plugins/DashboardBoxes/ so it lands at <store root>/zc_plugins/DashboardBoxes/v1.0.0/.
2. Admin -> Modules -> Plugin Manager -> Dashboard Boxes -> Install.
3. Open the admin home page.

The full documentation (readme.html) is inside the plugin and linked from the Plugin Manager panel: the panels, arranging them, order-status colors, admin profiles, customizing, upgrading, uninstalling, troubleshooting, and compatibility.

Customizing

The Recent Orders panel honors the same site-specific overrides the stock widget does ($recentOrdersMaxRows, $recentOrdersWidgetOrderStatusIDs, $show_status_pills, $includeAttributesInPopoverRows). Styling goes in admin/includes/css/site-specific-styles.php; every panel wrapper carries data-dbx-widget="<Name>" so a single panel can be targeted.

Not included

A controller page for widths, per-profile defaults, and locked layouts, plus additional panels, is a separate Pro edition built on this plugin's notifiers. The dashboard for Zen Cart 1.5.8 is not covered: that release's admin home has no notifier to hook.

Reporting a problem

Please include: your Zen Cart and PHP versions, whether the store is behind a CDN or a caching proxy, and what the admin home page shows. If the panels are there but sit in three equal columns and will not drag, the plugin's stylesheet or script did not load; check that zc_plugins/DashboardBoxes/v1.0.0/admin/includes/css/index.css opens in a browser. If the dashboard looks like the previous version after an upgrade, hard-refresh: browsers keep the plugin's stylesheet for an hour. Anything else: look in logs/ for a myDEBUG-adm- file from the moment of the problem and attach it.

Dashboard Boxes Pro is available.

The free Dashboard Boxes plugin gives every admin the same starting dashboard and lets each of them drag the panels about. Pro puts the store owner in charge of that. A Controller page under Tools decides, for everyone or for one admin profile at a time, which boxes show, in which zone, in what order and how wide, and a lock pins a profile's layout so its admins see exactly that.

Five more boxes join the free ten:

- Period Compare - this period against the last, at a glance.

- Payment Methods - where your orders' money comes from.

- Low Stock - what needs reordering, before you run out.

- Top Customers - who is worth the most to your store.

- Unfinished Carts - the sales you nearly made.

It runs on Zen Cart 2.0 through 2.3 and requires the free Dashboard Boxes 1.0.0 or later to be installed and enabled first. Single Store License, in three tiers, with a year of updates and support. Details and purchase:

https://myzencartzone.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=20

The free plugin stays free and unchanged. Pro adds the Controller and the five boxes.

A small correction to the Dashboard Boxes Pro announcement above: two of the five boxes go by their plugin names, This Month vs Last Month (this month so far against the whole of last month) and Sales by Payment Method, not "Period Compare" and "Payment Methods". The boxes themselves haven't changed.

Dashboard Boxes v1.0.1 is out

v1.0.1 changes one thing: the Plugin ID in manifest.php is now 2461. On 6 October the Plugins Library team let us know the ID the listing had been given, 2263, already belonged to an older plugin, so Plugin Manager's update check was being answered with that plugin's details instead of ours. They gave us 2461, and v1.0.1 carries it.

There are no code or settings changes, and your saved dashboard layouts aren't touched. Dashboard Boxes Pro works with v1.0.1 as it is. You only need this release if you want Plugin Manager to tell you about future updates.

To upgrade, put the v1.0.1 folder beside your current one in zc_plugins/DashboardBoxes/ and click Upgrade in Admin > Modules > Plugin Manager. On Zen Cart 2.2.0 and later, that's all. On 2.0.x and 2.1.x, Plugin Manager keeps the ID it recorded when it first saw the plugin, so also run this line in Admin > Tools > Install SQL Patches (it adds your table prefix itself):

UPDATE plugin_control SET zc_contrib_id = 2461 WHERE unique_key = 'DashboardBoxes';

Download: https://github.com/dbltoe/Dashboard_Boxes/releases/tag/v1.0.1