Posted by stoob on June 24, 2011 at 5:46pm
I have always found the user management aspect of Drupal sorely lacking.
With all the other improvements to Drupal 7 I naively thought user management would make the list. Disappointment has come.
Why doesn't Drupal 7 Core allow you to do the following SIMPLE things:
- admin/people show you how many users you have, total, as well as census by:
a. role
b. status - admin/people allows you to not just filter by role/user/status but by username
Why? do you ask?
If you site has a large number of user (for instance if you use ubercart) it becomes rapidly cumbersome to track down a single user. People are often interested in how many users they have.
Before you say "well install X module" or copy me some PHP code, understand that is not the point! The point is that these basic management functions are useful and missing from core.
Thoughts?
Comments
On target!
Stoob, I agree that these basic functions should be incorporated into core.
Why hasn't it been done before? Well, because with Drupal 6 we had the first concerted and widespread effort, led by yoroy, to make Drupal as usable as possible. A first pass can fix only so many flaws, because there wasn't infinite resources or time. (Come to think of it, if there had been infinite time for the Drupal 6 release, we'd still be using D5. But that's another issue.)
Most of the usability effort focused on the installation process and the features of a typical website produced by a default installation—that is, an installation with no modules or themes other than those found in core.
There wasn't time to review the usability of Drupal when it comes to each of the administrative tasks involved in operating and maintaining a website, although I am pretty sure that at least some improvements were made in that area.
But you're right. We should do usability tests on the processes involved in managing users on a Drupal installation. We might think of other useful new features, and we might discover other obstacles to completing those tasks.
That would take time to set up, but I think there's another process you can follow right now to get what you want. It's called a feature request. If that isn't a familiar term to you, then you might poke around drupal.org for information on the issue queue, how it works, and how to request a new feature in core or, for that matter, in a contributed module or theme.
And it might be a good idea, come to think of it, to create a wiki or thread (perhaps this one?) where people could propose new features for site managers, discuss their ideas, and either refine them into feature requests of their own or discard them for whatever reason they're found to fail.
Great ideas! I'd love to hear more.
Filters on content, users,
Filters on content, users, paths etc. have been in dire need of a redesign for years.
As always, getting consensus in a way that does not discourage anyone from actually wanting to put in the work to do it is the main challenge :-)
Idea 1 of showing totals could be an enhancement for the "who's online" block
Idea 2 ties in to the greater scheme of having better filters/searches on admin listing pages: http://groups.drupal.org/node/18008 has some prior art.
Your suggestions are good, what can you offer (skills, time…) to help push this forward? Thanks for posting!
i can offer money
I would rather offer money to push this effort forward in Drupal 7.
I don't wish to get involved with the development efforts personally.
However if the existing team can offer a rough estimate $ cost of sponsorship of a programmer to make these enhancements, I would take the opportunity to pay for these enhancement to be included in core. The only thing that will surely eliminate my interest in sponsorship would be the announcement that these features would not be available until Drupal 8.
CiviCRM specialist
Well, there will be no new
Well, there will be no new features added to Drupal 7 core now that is is released, so for 7 you'll be dependant on contrib modules providing these. Contrib modules are easier to sponsor than core development, too!
well that's disappointing
I understand but that is unfortunate. I'm not interested in building or sponsoring contrib modules for Drupal 7. Maybe my suggestions will make it into Drupal 8, so I'll check back in a couple years.
CiviCRM specialist
.
If you check back in a couple years, you will likely find yourself waiting for Drupal 9. Features only get added during code thaw and I'd be surprised if that lasts a couple years.
Michelle
Views?
I agree that admin/people is somewhat lacking. In the past, I've created a View for my clients to help with management of users. Sided with Rules, you can have pretty complex workflows. Not all sites will have the same workflow as your site, and that's how Drupal sets itself apart from different content management systems (good or bad, that's for you to decide)... The only way to make Drupal Core how you want it to be is to get involved with the issue queue. Other than that, like yoroy said, is to use contributed modules.