Drupal administration interview 9

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Amazon's picture

"amazon" How would you describe yourself as a Drupal administrator?
"interviewee" Wet-behind-the-ears, enquiring
"amazon" Have you installed Drupal?
"interviewee" Yes
"amazon" have you worked on more than one site?
"interviewee" ... with Drupal?
"amazon" yes
"interviewee" Yes
"amazon" How frequently do you administer your Drupal site?
"interviewee" For the first site, maybe once a fortnight - less since the administrator switched to Drupal, actually. For the second, it's a brand-new experimental installation, so not frequently
"interviewee" not at all, really
"amazon" How long do you administer your Drupal site in a single sitting approximately?
"interviewee" 10mins
"amazon" How does Drupal help you accomplish your goals as a web site Administrator
"interviewee" good question...
"interviewee" one i'd like to ask myself...
"interviewee" So I'd have to answer simply: it lets me publish news stories
"amazon" anything else?
"interviewee" re-edit them
"amazon" Why do you use Drupal?
"interviewee" Site 1: Because the main site administrator chose to roll it out. Site 2: because i'm investigating its viability
"amazon" ok, with site 2 why did you initially think it might be viable?
"interviewee" because it lets visitors become contributors with their own account - that's a good idea for those who want people to participate but not anonymously
"amazon" I see
"amazon" that leads into the next question
"amazon" How does Drupal help the users of your Drupal site?
"amazon" How does Drupal help the users of your web site?
"interviewee" of Site 2?
"amazon" both
"interviewee" Site 1: it lets them respond to stories and create their own blogs
"interviewee" Site 2: it's not helping anyone at the moment
"amazon" ok
"amazon" What are some common Drupal administration tasks that you do?
"interviewee" create content > story
"interviewee" enabling full html on those posts
"interviewee" that's about it
"amazon" What are some infrequent Drupal administration tasks that you do?
"interviewee" making posts sticky or not sticky
"interviewee" re-editing a headline
"interviewee" monitoring comments.
"amazon" When you administer your Drupal site, you find it is easy to?
"interviewee" no, not at all
"amazon" you don't find it easy?
"interviewee" no
"amazon" could you give some examples?
"interviewee" Drupal gives the appearance of a powerful content publishing system under the hood... a very thick hood, clouded with complex terminology and impenetrable concepts...
"interviewee" taxonomies/categories/tags/vocabularies/thesauri... ?
"amazon" so everything is a challenge?
"amazon" or understanding it is a challenge
"interviewee" yes... understanding the concepts that I hope makes Drupal powerful is very challenging
"amazon" can you give an example of how you came to understand a particular concept?
"interviewee" i'm by no means a luddite, and i'm experienced in using CMSes, but Drupal's complex terminology built in to the system, plus the way in which those concepts are expressed in the documentation, makes things a challenge
"amazon" ok, do you have a particular example in mind?
"interviewee" on your second point, an example - the stage i'm at right now with Site 2 is to create a site-wide structure... but the sheer number of ways in which this is expressed means i'm unclear on exactly how to do this
"interviewee" an example of where i have come to understand something is the terminology glossary
"amazon" ok
"amazon" When you administer your Drupal site, you find it hard to?
"interviewee" yes
"amazon" -understand the concepts
"amazon" -structure the site
"amazon" any thing else that is particularly hard
"interviewee" i haven't properly come to custom theming yet, to be honest, but my impression is that this is a little more complex than theming your usual blog platform... just a footnote though
"amazon" before we move on, were there any parts of adminisiter Drupal that you found to be easy? If not we can move to the next question.
"interviewee" yes, the main "settings" section
"amazon" can you give some examples
"interviewee" yes - /admin/settings/ - the general configuration options there are familiar to me, ie. titling your site, setting date output options; this is reasonably easy to grasp
"amazon" ok good
"amazon" What are some other important Drupal administration tasks that we did not cover above?
"interviewee" probably all kinds, giving its extensibility...
"interviewee" comment moderation, for example
"interviewee" that's not something i do regularly with drupal
"interviewee" there are several things i want to do and am currently investigating
"interviewee" adding/removing "menu" options was self-explanatory as well
"amazon" what are the thing you want to do?
"interviewee" http://drupal.org/node/******
"interviewee" i want to create a site that aggregates news from various sources, displays it in various categories, allows registered users to respond to and rate items, as well as post their own stories alongside
"amazon" ok, anything else
"interviewee" on what i want to achieve?
"interviewee" well that's broadly it... couple of queries in my forum post
"interviewee" i'm essentially trying out drupal again to see if it can accomplish this...
"amazon" got i
"amazon" it
"interviewee" i'm disappointed by how convoluted it can be to achieve goals in drupal, and i'm not certain yet that it”s for me
"amazon" explain convoluted
"amazon" how could it be better?
"interviewee" concepts need to be expressed more simply
"interviewee" images could be used in the handbook documentation, and examples
"amazon" ok
"amazon" what else?
"amazon" what else is convoluted?
"interviewee" ok, when you create a story, say, you're shown a preview of the above-the-fold article, then a preview of the full article, even if you never created that "more" division - then you can post... unnecessary
"amazon" I see
"amazon" so it should just preview what by default?
"interviewee" preview/submit option... and when you preview, you should just see it all straight away, not have it repeated

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