In one of a series of guest posts here on the Alledia blog, Brian Teeman who follows on from Kyle Ledbetter of Joomlapraise.com who asked whether Joomla admin templates are worth the effort.

Joomla is great and does everything I want (well it doesn't make my coffee but we can't have everything). But there are times when I just tear my hair out at the poor usability of the backend.

If you find yourself looking for something over and over again or cursing a missing function then that's a usability issue. And as someone who has spent the last year presenting Joomla to over 1500 new users I can say that many of them shared the same issues.

For me usability is two-fold. Putting the functions I want right in my face and reducing the number of clicks needed to achieve something. I have my own personal issues but it would be great to hear yours.

1. Save and New Button. When creating a section/category/article/menu I usually want to create another one immediately afterwards. Wouldn't it be great if there was a "Save and New" button.

2. Save as New Button. To create content with a consistent style I usually create some base articles. Right now I have to "copy" the article before editing the copy and saving as the new article. Wouldn't it be great if there was a "Save as New" button

3. Control Panel Icons. These utilise the most important real estate in the backend and yet of the 10 icons I probably only ever use 2 of them. I'm not going to suggest replacement short cut icons as I'm sure the old 90/10 rule will apply. "90% of users will only use 10%.." of the icons but we all use a different 10%. Wouldn't it be great if there was an easy way to add/remove icons from the control panel.

Note: the most productive extension I have ever found for Joomla 1.5 is Mass Content. (Steve gave this an Extension of the Month award last year)