Drupal administration interview 5

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Amazon's picture
    "amazon"    How would you describe yourself as a Drupal administrator?
"interviewee"   I am a head admin for a robotic's team website
"interviewee"   Dosn't mean much, but I am (at least supposed to) lead the sheep
"interviewee"   ;)
"amazon"    got it
"amazon"    how would you describe you skill level with Drupal
"interviewee"   Pretty good, I have installed roughly 30 modules and I am completley conftorable with the installation
"amazon"    any development?
"interviewee"   I also have done a bit of code hacking.. I can read and edit php, but I just started develop my first module
"amazon"    ok, great that's helpful to know
"amazon"    How frequently do you administer your Drupal site?
"interviewee"   Wow, probably every day
"amazon"    How long do you administer your Drupal site in a single sitting approximately?
"interviewee"   Hm. Depends on how bad things are screwed up. I write a lot of the content (which I assume dosn't qualify) so probably between 30 minutes and a few hours (if I am updating or configuring modules)
"amazon"    yes, writing content with Drupal qualifies as administration
"interviewee"   Hm, well in that case probably wayy too long ;). Probably between 2-4 hours
"amazon"    and for non-content administration?
"interviewee"   30 mins to an hour... assuming something isn't wrong
"amazon"    that 30 mins to an hours how frequent is that?
"interviewee"   probably every other day
"amazon"    ok, great
"amazon"    How does Drupal help you accomplish your goals as a Drupal Administrator
"amazon"    let me rephrase
"amazon"    How does Drupal help you accomplish your goals as a website Administrator
"interviewee"   please do
"interviewee"   Well, everything is web-based which lets me get work done faster
"interviewee"   and as this is kindof a temporary position it makes the task of passing on my duties much easier
"interviewee"   Good bit lower learning curve
"amazon"    Can you describe the work in terms of getting it done faster?
"interviewee"   Well, Drupal lets me do lots of things I wouldn't of attempted otherwise, such as the watchdog or module functionality... if I had to write that functionality by hand I probably wouldn't of bothered
"interviewee"   It really depends on what you are comparing drupal to though
"interviewee"   if I was using a html site content would probably would have to be created by myself
"interviewee"   *all content
"amazon"    Ahh, I see
"amazon"    so it allows for collobaration
"interviewee"   but if it was another php backend such as joomla or postnuke, its just much easier to modify and teach users how to understand
"interviewee"   exactly
"interviewee"   rather, I meant to say that *drupal* is much easier to modify and teach
"amazon"    why is it easier to modify and teach, this is very interesting?
"interviewee"   well, the php code is so much cleaner, coding novices like myself can get our hands breifly dirty if we just want to change something simple
"amazon"    ok, drupal's clean code makes it more accessible to modify
"amazon"    do I have that right?
"interviewee"   yes, correct
"interviewee"   as far as teaching, its basically just alot simpiler
"amazon"    can you give an example?
"amazon"    an example of teaching
"interviewee"   Hm. Well, the way things are layed out makes alot more sense to me in drupal... bringing all content creation to one page makes it easy for our users to say "Ok, this is where I need to write a story/blog/page"
"amazon"    ok, that's good to hear
"amazon"    Why do you use Drupal?
"interviewee"   instead of digging around in menus... I don't even know if its possible to let end users create content on joomla systems
"amazon"    ahh, I see
"amazon"    I know we have talked about why you use Drupal, but feel free to summarize
"amazon"    or I can take what you have said so far
"interviewee"   Hm. When I first started workign with CMS's back when PHP-Nuke was the popular thing, my next progression was to find a better, more extendable CMS... I tried mambo and a few other cms's... drupal just clicked and seemed to fit my needs
"interviewee"   Feel free to combine what I said before if it sounds better ;)
"amazon"    Let's see if I can discover what "clicked" through the following questions
"amazon"    How does Drupal help the users of your Drupal site?
"interviewee"   I guess the main thing is it implements features that would of never existed on our fairly simple site without drupal and contributed moduels
"amazon"    Can you give some examples of features that help your users?
"interviewee"   such as tagedelic... I would of never taken the time to write something like that with much more important things, but I installed the module quickly/easily and users now see it as a great way to navigate content
"interviewee"   or the entire taxonomy system in the first place
"amazon"    ok, so easy to use and self generated navigation helps your users
"interviewee"   for example, it would of been more like a blog where news posts are just... there. They wouldn't be catigorized or sorted... while still easily accessable, its not pretty or convienient
"interviewee"   yep
"amazon"    so empowering your users is critical then
"amazon"    to help in the administration of your site
"interviewee"   Well, I wouldn't say critical as the site would still be informative otherwise, but it certainly helps attract users
"amazon"    ok, thanks for correcting me
"amazon"    can you explain how it helps attract users
"interviewee"   This might sound offtopic, but a friend of mine has written articles for website administrators... he says that you have roughly 5 seconds to capture the attention of your visitor. Otherwise they will just move on to your compeditors site. Things like the tag cloud and easy navigation (hopefully) help keep them finding what they came for, on our site
"amazon"    got it
"amazon"    ok, next question
"amazon"    What are some common Drupal administration tasks that you do?
"interviewee"   Monitor the watchdog, add users, change permissions, install and configure modules, modify themes...
"amazon"    What are some infrequent Drupal administration tasks that you do?
"interviewee"   modify existing content, ban users, remove spam posts, moderate comments
"interviewee"   modify navigation system as well
"interviewee"   thats all I can think of that I don't do that often, but the problem with not doing it often is you might forget about it
"amazon"    good point
"amazon"    When you administer your Drupal site, you find it is easy to?
"interviewee"   What exactly do you mean by "administer"
"amazon"    Let's keep a broad definition any thing related to your website
"interviewee"   In general I guess its fairly easy
"amazon"    got some specifics that are easy
"interviewee"   Uh.. well one big one is things that need to be run from time to time are done automatically (cron)
"amazon"    anything else you'd like to see automated
"interviewee"   Thats really a tough question
"amazon"    ok, let's move on then
"amazon"    When you administer your Drupal site, you find it is easy to?
"amazon"    whoops
"interviewee"   I do have one thing tho first
"amazon"    ok, go ahead
"interviewee"   the main thing I would like to see automated is major revision upgrading
"interviewee"   I know the core drupal can handle itself
"interviewee"   but my problem is contributed modules
"amazon"    are you using Drupal 4.7?
"interviewee"   I am still using 4.6.x because some modules haven't been updated for 4.7
"amazon"    ahh, I see
"interviewee"   which is perfectly acceptable, the authors aren't required to work on their modules 24/7 or even maintain it at all (though its nice)
"amazon"    It's automated for Drupal contributed modules too
"interviewee"   Well, not as far as I understand.. really what I am specifically looking for is something that can tell me what modules have not been updated for 4.7 and will not be enabled, in advance
"amazon"    oh, I see
"interviewee"   so I can determine what functionality will be lost by the upgrade (allthough I understand that the positives far outweigh the negatives, I would upgrade if there wern't certain modules I need)
"interviewee"   you can move on to the next question if you wish
"amazon"    this is imporant what you are bringing up
"amazon"    When you administer your Drupal site, you find it hard to?
"interviewee"   hm. another tough question
"interviewee"   really most of my gripes with 4.6 are fixed in 4.7 or are being fixed in 4.8
"amazon"    ok, I see
"interviewee"   so really only the updating of contributed modules
"amazon"    that's good to hear
"amazon"    can you give some examples of these things being fixed in later versions
"interviewee"   Mainly installing new modules or versions... the drupal installer is being worked on for 4.8 and 4.7 has those install files that lets modules administer the database tables without the admin having to edit the databases
"interviewee"   also hiding extranious controlls on content creation forms with ajax is a nice touch
"amazon"    great
"amazon"    What are some other important Drupal administration tasks that we did not cover above?
"interviewee"   I can't really think of any
"interviewee"   There is stuff I would dream of having, but its not anything like a current issue
"amazon"    go for it
"amazon"    dream a little
"interviewee"   Heh... well, being to browse & install contributed modules completley through a web frontend would be really neat
"interviewee"   also displaying drupal headlines in the admin home would be informative
"interviewee"   such as security updates and reminders to upgrade modules
"interviewee"   AH, that would be somethign really nice... if drupal could notify you new versions are available
"amazon"    ok
"interviewee"   don't plan on seeing that in any time soon tho and its not a priority ;)
"amazon"    ok, well it's easy to do
"amazon"    and probably a nice touch
"interviewee"   as long as I don't have to do it ;)
"interviewee"   *have to write the code for it
"amazon"    got it
"amazon"    :-)

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