Posted by Mark Boulton on November 3, 2008 at 5:56pm
So, we've had the 'About' section in the prototype for a while now, and we're turning our attention to the content. We're seeing this section as a place for evaluators of Drupal to make a decision. But also, as this is software, there are things like technical requirements that need to be included.
So we need your opinion and feedback.
What do you think needs to go in this section?
Are we on the right lines with the current prototype?
What do you think the navigation items should be?
Comments
I actually like a lot of the
I actually like a lot of the content right now; it feels very friendly and welcoming. It conveys a positive "you can do it (with Drupal)!" attitude which embodies much of this community.
I think there needs to be a paragraph about the job services and Drupal-servicing companies out there. Showing that Drupal has a strong community and strong commercial support is important.
This probably has nothing to do with the redesign, but how is the hosted demo going to work? One of the problems I've seen with other demo sites is that they quickly become broken due to many users logging in at once. It would be really cool if you clicked a button, and got your own private Drupal instance for an hour or so. Also, I think the demo should include a screencast of installing a module and a theme. Then, actually do it for a specific module or theme behind the scenes (since you don't want to give demo users shell or FTP), so users can see how easy it is to add features or change the theme of a Drupal site.
Showcasing how well Drupal works with mobile browsers might also be worthwhile.
--Andrew
I think the About page is a
I think the About page is a good starting point.
One thing I find lacking is just a quick brief technical overview. What is Drupal written in? What do I need it to run? That sort of stuff. Right now the About page seems mostly a marketing tool for less technically inclined people, but it should also be a tool for the technical people out there who are researching various platforms and just needs requirements and specifications quickly. I found a few of these things in the current Features section of d.o, but that's not inherently clear.
requirements
This is a good point - especially since Drupal 7 is going to require PHP5/MySQL5 etc. For reference, the existing requirements page is at http://drupal.org/requirements
"Choosing Drupal" != About (imho)
When I went looking for the About section, I couldn't find it. Which is "About" in Iteration 7? Then I found it under "Choosing Drupal" which seems to me to not quite be the same thing.
The Choosing Drupal page seems a bit unfocused, but I guess that's the challenge. I too believe that we are missing the Drupal services on this page -- in fact in the entire redesign so far.
I think that the "What is Drupal?" block should go on the home page, replacing the paragraph about blogs and publishing, which seems to pigeonhole Drupal into a small space that hardly contains all that is Drupal.
The Get Started page I think is looking really nice design-wise. However, Requirements seem to be missing, and that is an essential. (PHP, database, etc.) Related to requirements: What tools do you need? -- e.g., a text editor will be very handy (but is not required for most basic installations). Omitting requirements makes it sound like all you need to do is download Drupal, double-click on it and an application will start up, like downloading Firefox. These may all sound very elementary, but when you're first wrapping your head around what Drupal is and isn't, these details can bring crystal clarity.
Laura
pingVision, LLC (we're hiring)
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
I agree that requirements
I agree that requirements are sorely needed:
PHP + version information
Choice of Mysql and Postgresql + version information (and space to add contrib drivers, SQLite when it comes etc.)
Apache / IIS / lighty/ngix etc.
Operating systems (doesn't matter, but we should say anyway somehow)
Should also mention some technical basics:
jQuery in core
Standards compliance
Modules and themes need a big mention, maybe namecheck Views and CCK since these have currency for new users (apparently).
Multi-lingual support and translations.
Automated update and security notifications
Something about how cool the APIs are, but that's hard to do in a short space without it sounding like marketing speak, so good luck with that ;)
If I look at websites of other projects, whether they get this sort of thing right can determine how seriously I take the project - if it's lot of bumpf to appeal to business managers then that's the impression I go away with. Some people looking at this page will be developers looking for a new platform, so we need to be sure we get the right balance.
General project stuff:
I don't see a mention of the security team anywhere in the current iterations, this is one place it should probably get a mention. At least to say that we have one, that we care about security, that we have a track record of dealing with security issues professionally etc.
Theme engines definitely shouldn't get a mention anywhere. theme engines used to be important around 4.5-7 - but by far the winner is phptemplate, which means we have a clear front runner for theme engines and don't need to tell people what they are, or that others exist, until they've been using Drupal for a good while.
Jay Batson mentioned somewhere else that installation profiles were featured prominently - again - we need to keep quiet about them, since 1. lots of them aren't maintained 2. they don't currently live up to their potential for ease of use since you still have to grab all the modules separately. When this situation changes, we can update the page, but we shouldn't raise people's hopes too much.
Not very organised but hopefully some of that's useful.
catch, can you explain this phrase?
I'd like to know what you mean by "namecheck Views and CCK since these have currency for new users."
In what way or why would mentioning Views and CCK be important to new users?
What do you mean they have currency for new users? Are you referring to prospective users? How would they know about them? Can you clear this up for me, please? Thanks!
Views and CCK are often the
Views and CCK are often the things people have heard of when they start researching Drupal. The Dutch/Belgium community is redesigning their own Drupal.nl/drupal.be site, research showed that Views and CCK are the keywords that people have read or heard about. We need to hook into that prior knowledgde is what catch means, I think.
Yes exactly.
I'm not sure exactly the information comes from, maybe top google search phrases, maybe something else - if I spot it again I'll link to it - but there's definitely indications that a fair number of people yet to actually try out Drupal have heard of CCK and Views. They're often mentioned in site showcases, in off-site articles about Drupal, and usually the first thing you hear if you ask someone 'Can I do $this with Drupal?'.
They're central to the project, and almost certainly better known than the 'node system', 'taxonomy module'by now, - which used to be Drupal's main selling points in the past (and still are to an extent, but not in the same monolithic way).
I personally downloaded Drupal the first time because I wanted to build a website which had articles categorised by author, subject and format (in different lists of categories) - and read about the taxonomy module on Drupal.org - I also had a need to publish books with dozens of chapters, so I think hearing about the 'book' module helped with the decision too - this was way back in 4.5 when I barely knew CSS and HTML and had a job that was nothing to do with web at all. I didn't know anything about the community, what sites had been built with it (I'm not sure even the Onion was up by then), I just needed some specific features to do a certain task, which other applications happened not to be any good for. While Drupal and the community around it has changed a lot since then, I'd like to see us highlighting real features that it has on this page (and linking off to more) - since for people evaluating it as software, this is going to be one of the things which allows them to quickly differentiate it from other CMSes/Frameworks. When I look at other system's sites, sometimes it's a bit like "I CAN HAZ AJAX?", which isn't useful information at all.
Joomla's, has pretty much no useful information at all, except that it's 'easy to use', stated several times.
Wordpress.com's features page is good - I could see update notifications and stuff in those slots.
In contrast, Wordpress.org's features page is close to what http://drupal.org/features would look like if it was up to date.
And Alfresco's is web 2.0/management/enterprise/dodgy grammar hell.
None of these have anything about the community though nor is it obvious on other pages), and the way the mockups so far include that is great, but it'd be nice to get a bit of the wordpress.com screenshot/feature list in there too.
CCK and views - custom entry, storage and retrieval of text, video, images etc. are killer features of Drupal which set it aside from other systems. Since we have some evidence that people are hearing about these things (and given they don't exactly have descriptive names, they're probably hearing them just as 'buzzwords' without much idea of what they do) - it makes sense to somehow bring them into the main site a bit more. While they might be highly ranked on the download and extend page, one problem a lot of people have is 'Which CCK do I want?" given there's about 30 modules each for CCK and views which integrate with them and are easily confused if you don't know what you're looking for.
Every two bit CMS can say that it has flexible APIs, hundreds of contributed modules etc. but those don't really tell you anything about whether it's any good or not, or help you differentiate it from the other systems that also have flexible APIs and hundreds of contributed modules.
I don't like the "Choosing
I don't like the "Choosing Drupal" title particularly. I think "About" was clearer. I understand the page is targetted at marketing right now, but I strongly think it should be a "get the gist of it all, right now!" type of page. This CAN include marketing stuff, of course. Most definitely. But I don't currently feel there is a clear place to go if you just want to find out a) what the heck is this Drupal thing, b) why should I choose it, c) what kind of cool stuff can it do. Et cetera.
I think "About" makes a lot more sense and is inclusive of everything we might want to put there.