Important "Active List" will be discontinued and replaced by "Dynamic List" starting March 2024

[Peter Debik]

Today Plesk has announced that the "Active List" will be discontinued and replaced by "Dynamic List" starting March 2024. You already know "Dynamic List" and it is already the default on many Plesk installations.

We have prepared an interesting comparison between these two user interface views for you here:

Dynamic List vs. Active List: A Comprehensive Comparison

A Comprehensive Comparison between Dynamic List and Active List. Learn all you need to know right here.

www.plesk.com

If you are among the few who still prefer Active List, this thread is for you: After going through the above article, please let us know what you'd like to see in Dynamic List that it can become your favorite new user interface view. Simply post and discuss your ideas in this thread.

 

[weareimpulse]

I dont get why this is being dropped - "Active List" is much eaier to use "Dynamic List" - everything at your fingers tips in a clearer GUI.

Why cant Active List just be left as a secondery option, what harm would it be to have both?

 

[Peter Debik]

Why cant Active List just be left as a secondery option, what harm would it be to have both?

It will need to be maintained, which will double the development costs and test times for each new Plesk version. It also means that new features cannot be added or only added at even higher costs.

 

[HHawk]

I also hate the fact that "Active List" will be discontinued. A lot of our customers are still using this...

But it's good to read that Plesk license prices will be lowered! As this change will reduce the development costs obviously, as stated by Peter Debik.
Because, truth to be told, Plesk licenses are becoming very expensive. And every year they increase the pricing. See here and here.

The price increase are justified by Plesk because of product development and I quote:

We are adjusting our prices to ensure that we can continue to invest heavily in product development and grow our partner ecosystem.

So because "Active List" will be dropped completely and according to Peter it will reduce development costs, we can expect a decrease in Plesk license prices. Which is really great. Our (server) customers will be happy with a lower price for their Plesk licenses.

 

[Peter Debik]

Sorry @HHawk, Dynamic List is a big step forward and took a lot of development effort. We also ran several user surveys and adapted this new view to users's needs several times. I've also never suggested that licenses will become cheaper. But we need to see that keeping outdated software in the loop would increase development costs even further, which is something noone wants.

 

[HHawk]

Yeah, I was being sarcastic obviously. Prices will increase every year nowadays with Plesk. Our customer base declined with 40% the past 4 years or so. Luckily, for us, we could keep the majority by offering them an alternative. In which we both benefit.

The only really good thing, well most of the time, is Plesk support. Something which is lacking with the competition. Though customers only look at the pricing and what they need... With Plesk it's more gimmicks nowadays, instead of really useful stuff...

Yeah you have that vote/opinion thing. But that's one big joke imho.

 

[Flind22]

I dont understand why the active list will be discontinued.
The most Users will still use the active list, i think.

Problems and lacking features the new Dynamic List, in commparision to active list

• dynamic list requires much more space
• dynamic list requires much more time to open a database (in dynamic list you have to make two clicks and a site change to open a database. in active list you dont need the site change)
• link to Node.js is missing
• in general you need more clicks to reach what you want, cause its grouped in sub menus.
• every opening of a website dropdown is loaded lazy, so it takes much more time to reach what you want.

 

[Tobias Sorensson]

well i can only wait for the 100+ calls from our clients that asks WTF happend to there UI..

as the person above said it takes more time to get to the stuff that they needed. the license cost is getting out of hand and as people said we are losing costumers becouse of it. if this price continue to increase we will have to look for other solution

 

[scsjcm]

I totally agree that the active list is the best option and faster to use.
I also don't understand why they are going to eliminate it. The dynamic list is much more difficult to use and does not have a clear GUI.

 

[Michael Pratt]

I will also jump on the bandwagon for Dynamic list is < Active list. And not just because it is more difficult to use. It also has at least ONE massive bug.

I am not sure what others use it for, but I manage all of my clients sites for them. So I am contstantly logging in to WordPress from the backend. Not only does Dynamic make it HARDER adding extra clicks, but also makes it unuseable since Plesk has had a bug where WP Toolkit will not allow you to login from the admin for half of the websites. Surprised to see that issue was still not fixed actually, but hear we are with it trying to use Dynamic lists...

Hard to explain though, so I made a short video:

(video is how it could be improved as well as the WP login bug that makes dynamic lists 100% unusable for me)

Why Plesk Dynamic List Sucks

By Michael Pratt | Duration 10min39s

video.getwaas.io

 

[Peter Debik]

@Michael Pratt , thank you so much for your big effort doing this video and your highly valuable comments here and on the video! I watched it all and also forwarded it to the Plesk Product Managers. This helps us a lot to understand your concerns and requirements.
In your video you also mention, that Plesk support gave up on the WP login issue. If possible, would you mind to send me the ticket number where this has been logged? I'd also like to check the ticket, because it is very unusual that we don't have a solution or cannot find the root cause of an issue. We'll definitely check this again internally and see what we can do about it.

 

[Michael Pratt]

@Michael Pratt , thank you so much for your big effort doing this video and your highly valuable comments here and on the video! I watched it all and also forwarded it to the Plesk Product Managers. This helps us a lot to understand your concerns and requirements.
In your video you also mention, that Plesk support gave up on the WP login issue. If possible, would you mind to send me the ticket number where this has been logged? I'd also like to check the ticket, because it is very unusual that we don't have a solution or cannot find the root cause of an issue. We'll definitely check this again internally and see what we can do about it.

Hi Peter,

The ticket number is: 95037697

It is from 7 months ago and it is marked as solved. There were actually several issues going on at the same time.

It appears that I was temporarily able to fix the problem by switching from PHP 8.1 to 8.2... But obviously didnt check all of the websites.

Also, I only access the sites as shown in the easy way (and way it always works) from the video.

All of my sites now are on 8.2.

BUT I am also still getting the error about cache that Plesk support sent me in the ticket, I just looked at one earlier for all of the sites and is similar to that JSON error I get when trying to login through WP Toolkit directly.

 

[Peter Debik]

Thank you, @Michael Pratt, our WP Toolkit experts will have a look at this soon.

 

[Stas Yuriev]

@Flind22 thank you for the feedback. I will bring it to the development team and discuss how we may address the issues in the Dynamic list. But I need to clarify some details first.

dynamic list requires much more space

Could you please elaborate on that? Because we believe that the dynamic list is much more compact compared to the Active list. On my own Plesk instance in the Dynamic list, one domain takes only 60 px in height when collapsed and 780px when expanded. In the Acrive list, the same domain takes 840 px.

dynamic list requires much more time to open a database (in dynamic list you have to make two clicks and a site change to open a database. in active list you dont need the site change)

I can only say, that in the Dynamic list, you can open a database in 1 click. The corresponding button is right in the domain row.

in general you need more clicks to reach what you want, cause its grouped in sub menus.

Indeed, some options take more clicks to reach. This is how we try to unclutter the domain card - we had loads of feedback from the customers who had a hard time finding the right option in the sea of icons. But we do our best to make essential options available with 1-2 clicks. Could you please clarify, what options are essential for you but take too many clicks to reach?

every opening of a website dropdown is loaded lazy, so it takes much more time to reach what you want.

Could you please make a recording of the loading process for the Dynamic and Active list? This would be a great artifact for me to bring to the development team.

 

[mmc]

Today Plesk has announced that the "Active List" will be discontinued and replaced by "Dynamic List" starting March 2024. You already know "Dynamic List" and it is already the default on many Plesk installations.

We have prepared an interesting comparison between these two user interface views for you here:

Dynamic List vs. Active List: A Comprehensive Comparison

A Comprehensive Comparison between Dynamic List and Active List. Learn all you need to know right here.

www.plesk.com

If you are among the few who still prefer Active List, this thread is for you: After going through the above article, please let us know what you'd like to see in Dynamic List that it can become your favorite new user interface view. Simply post and discuss your ideas in this thread.

PLease do not discontinue Active List that is SO MUCH BETTER than the Dynamic List... You can see all on your screen and do not have to scroll down!!! waist of my time there!

 

[mmc]

I dont get why this is being dropped - "Active List" is much eaier to use "Dynamic List" - everything at your fingers tips in a clearer GUI.

Why cant Active List just be left as a secondery option, what harm would it be to have both?

I agree with you on this!

 

[Michael Pratt]

So as for my issue of not being able to open WordPress from the Toolkit, but being able to open it from Active List, it turns out that Elementor Pro (what I use for all of my sites) has ONE file with deprecated code in it...

Elementor basically said it is not their problem to be concerned with one click login from control panels... I have to agree.

I was told by Plesk support that the one-click login feature for WP works differently on the Active list (which has always worked) and the Dynamic list (which has never worked, at least with Elementor Pro).

Which means the the Dynamic List method is inferior since it is NOT predicated on some obscure file in a plugin. (There HAS to be other plugins with this issue for WP, see what the issue is below from Plesk support and confirmed by me when I made the change in the appropriate file to the new methodolgy for PHP).

It begs the question why what is installed on the site (outside of a security plugin) should have ANYTHING to do with PLESK/WP Toolkit being able to function properly? And I am skeptical of the claim below where they say it isnt them, it is actually WP-CLI... While it makes sense, it just seems like you shouldnt move away from the internal method, or at least maintain the choice until Elementor is forced to fix the issue.

Especially since there is DEFINITELY a method of one-click login that ISNT impacted if some obscure file in some plugin happens to have deprecated code in it...........????????

I know the natural reaction to bug reports is to find some reason to point the finger elsewhere, and YES Elementor should 100% fix this, but they will not, see their response below, but this could end up being a MASSIVE game of whack a mole where plugins and extensions to plugins that might have slightly out of date code, code that works perfectly fine still, and most developers will not be in a rush to fix over other things, and we just continuously end up with a relatively useless (at least for my use case) control panel...

Plesk should 100% figure out why their one-click on dynamic lists breaks due to code in some random plugin (especially a plugin as popular as Elementor Pro) is deprecated. As THAT seems like a significantly bigger issue and I suspect that once users of Plesk figure it out once the change is forced, they are going to get a significant amount of support requests.

According to the August 2023 WordPress statistics:

20% of all new WP websites use Elementor
Elementor currently powers 8% of ALL WP websites online

Elementor Support Response to Issue:



Issue Plesk Support Found with both of our responses:

 

[Dave W]

Not too bothered which UI is used as long as it works. Just wanted to chime in about the voting for features system. This is fundamentally flawed as a vote from a user with 1 plesk server = a vote from a user with 1000 plesk servers.

Not to mention its a big fob off when your told to vote for a feature that makes common sense.

/rant

 

[stefan.knaak]

Please do not discontinue active List!! I need much more clicks with DL for the work I have to do!

 

[Peter Debik]

@stefan.knaak, it will be helpful if you could please describe what work that is and what click path it requires.