Please let us browse to the file to edit in the "Edit web pages".

Hi, Don!

Totally agree. I can not do this in a theme (or shouldn't do it for sure). I will pass this issue to Joe.

It seems to me very easy to do and I think it will be there very soon.

Yes, this is a great idea! We should maybe re-think Edit Web Pages entirely...it's a very old feature, and has some big limitations. I think maybe the best thing is for the current web page editor to go away entirely, and be replaced by something more generally useful that is integrated into, or with a plugin for, file manager. File Manager could get an HTML WYSIWYG editor (maybe the same one we use now or maybe something more modern), and the templates could get there own little module. I've often wanted to replace the very limited templates in Virtualmin with some other static site generator thingy, so there's more flexibility, but also more modern templates and features. I dunno.

We should talk more about it, and figure out where we want it to go. I know we don't want to embark on some major project; people who need complex websites need a CMS or a blog or wiki or something, which Install Scripts provides. But, still there's probably a useful niche for very basic web pages (landing pages with analytics, a contact or signup form, and other tiny stuff built in for example; there's a couple of companies out there offering that as a SaaS, and making money doing it, which is silly, because it's so simple to implement).

So, if a WYSIWYG website editor found its way into File Manager, without doing anything about the templates (i.e. templates either disappear or stay as they are), would that solve your use case? Or are you using the website templates, too?

FYI, the Edit Web Pages feature was really just created to provide an easy way to create a domain's initial index.html page. The File Manager is a better bet for more advanced file navigation and editing.

What do you mean by nice editor? :) There is already nice editor with line numbers and highlighting the code?

Don, I think it should be done on Virtualmin side.

At the moment in Authentic you can see highlighted editor with line numbers, same as in File Manager, for example. Isn't good enough?

Or you need hotkeys for creating tags, like Ctrl+B -> < strong>< /strong> and etc? Or you wish to have one like in Dreamweaver (WYSIWYG)?

Don, I will report this issue to Joe for discussion. I believe it shouldn't be done by the theme, as it's the part of the module's logic.

I agree that the Edit Website functionality is barely useful, as is...really only good for placeholder and landing page type stuff, before getting a real website launched. I think what we probably ought to be doing is looking at integrating something else (either into File Manager or replacing the Edit functionality entirely); some other Open Source tool that does the same sorts of jobs. But, I haven't looked at the current state of that world lately.

Don, I'm gonna re-open this ticket, but re-assign it to a different category, as it does need changes in Virtualmin rather than in Authentic Theme. But, I'm still not clear on what the path forward looks like in Virtualmin. Your follow up sounds like browsing straight to File Manager would be a more useful first step, so maybe we need to add a WYSIWYG HTML editor to File Manager, as well, in addition to the CodeMirror code and text editor.

Ilia, is there a plugin for CodeMirror that does WYSIWYG, or do we need to check out other options? (Current editor is Xinha, which works well enough, but there are probably much better newer alternatives. Xinha doesn't seem to be actively developed for quite some time.)

Adding a file browser would be plausible. I'm not sure what a "good" website creator and editor looks like in current times. So much is so easy with WordPress or other blogging/CMS tools that it almost seems like we should focus on making those things easier and more intuitive for users. Though I guess static sites still have appeal for being very low resource users and very very fast even on tiny hardware.

Joe, the first look says that there is one, example:

https://www.froala.com/wysiwyg-editor/docs/examples/code-mirror

..but it seems to be paid..

May be for HTML extension files, load WYSIWYG editor in File Manager?

Or maybe write a HTML editor module for Webmin, that would act like Dreamweaver or something like that?

Don, is there really a direct need for that? Do you really wish to edit HTML files with WYSIWYG editor?