Posted by Amazon on August 6, 2006 at 3:44pm
"amazon" How would you describe yourself as a Drupal administrator
"amazon" ?
"beginner2005" You mean my level of experience and Drupal qualifications?
"amazon" sure
"amazon" beginner2005: do you want me to clarify?
"beginner2005" well I'm certainly not an expert and my username is still beginner: http://drupal.org/user/23181 I maintain the phpbb2drupal.module, and take care of www.reuniting.info and www.wechange.org . I am starting to know well how works in the inside, which makes admin tasks easier to grok.
"beginner2005" yes, if I didn't reply your question properly :)
"amazon" no, that's a good answer
"amazon" How frequently do you administer your Drupal site?
"beginner2005" At least several times a week, if including recurring admin tasks (viewing logs, etc...).
"amazon" How long do you administer your Drupal site in a single sitting approximately?
"beginner2005" 10-20 mins in average
"amazon" How does Drupal help you accomplish your goals as a website Administrator
"beginner2005" I am more worried about updates. ....
"amazon" could you elaborate?
"beginner2005" If I modify core, then I have to worry about keeping up to date with each new Drupal release...
"beginner2005" so,
"beginner2005" if I cannot get the function I want into core by supplying a patch...
"beginner2005" I like the idea that I can create a module to satisfy my needs and update this module separately from core or other contrib modules. I have not much used this possibility much yet, but i know I can if I really need.
"beginner2005" For the rest ...
"beginner2005" my answer would be pretty standard, I guess: Drupal gives me a set of tools allowing me to create the kind of web sites I want fairly easily (integration of blogs, forums, menus , etc.)
"beginner2005" ok?
"amazon" yes
"amazon" Why do you use Drupal?
"beginner2005" :) to create web sites?
"beginner2005" !
"amazon" sure, but you could use html, or another CMS
"amazon" or write your own
"beginner2005" Actually, I did start writing my own CMS a few years back, but never went very far. Using a mature CMS is a no-brainer, today, especially if you want to createinteractives/communi ty web sites.
"beginner2005" I think your question should be: Why did you choose Drupal and not another CMS?
"beginner2005" Was that your question?
"amazon" How does Drupal help the users of your Drupal site?
"amazon" yes, that answered the question
"amazon" How does Drupal help the users of your web site?
"beginner2005" If you look at the two above web sites, there aren't many active users yet, and given the topic of our sites, they are not always technically savvy, so I still need to make sure that they know what they are doing.
"amazon" how do drupal help in making sure the users know what they are doing?
"beginner2005" I still need to improve the introduction to the site's features....
"beginner2005" A few Drupal function are a bit confusing like...
"amazon" can you give some examples
"beginner2005" using the login from another Drupal site (i.e. login at wechange.org with you user@drupal.org login)... this is a confusing information for some, but...
"beginner2005" another example: input formats and in a collapsed field and users tend to miss it and are confused about how to use certain input formats...
"amazon" ok
"amazon" do you get feedback where users find Drupal helpful
"beginner2005" but those are details, and mostly, it is not Drupal's responsibility to
"beginner2005" ... tell the users how to use the web site, but the web site's owner: he/she has to introduce the site and its features based on the modules installed.
"amazon" ok
"beginner2005" Feedback? nothing specific to Drupal yet.
"amazon" do users say that anything about the website is useful?
"amazon" we can move on
"beginner2005" tracker was commented upon. Other than that, reuniting.info is for the users mostly a forum (standard features: login, create new topic , create reply) , and wechange.org is still young so I don't have many users giving feedback yet.
"amazon" ok
"amazon" What are some common Drupal administration tasks that you do?
"beginner2005" Dealing with spam :)
"beginner2005" (trackback, comments, forum posts...)
"beginner2005" check user activity, reply where needed, improve menus, create and organize content to introduce the site...
"amazon" anything else?
"beginner2005" all the routine stuff.
"beginner2005" ...
"amazon" care to elaborate on routine? or we can move on to the next question
"amazon" What are some infrequent Drupal administration tasks that you do?
"beginner2005" The sites are still fairly new, so I still spend some time improving the themes, planning for features I would like to introduce, checking modules out, and testing/providing patches to fix problems or missing features ...
"amazon" ok, great
"amazon" What are some infrequent Drupal administration tasks that you do?
"beginner2005" and sometimes I think I spend too much time coding and not enough creating content and promotting the site!
"beginner2005" Infrequent tasks...
"beginner2005" (thinking!) :)
"beginner2005" no. I can't think of anything specific I haven't already mentionned.
"amazon" ok
"amazon" When you administer your Drupal site, you find it is easy to:
"beginner2005" yes, no, no and yes.
"amazon" ha ha
"amazon" Care to associate some tasks with those binary responses?
"beginner2005" Can't: my crystal ball just froze! I have to reboot it!
"beginner2005" fire your questions :)
"beginner2005" (I mean ask your question )
"amazon" what parts of administering Drupal are easy
"beginner2005" Ooops. sorry. I misunderstood your question. I was waiting for you to complete your question "When you administer your Drupal site, you find it is easy to:" with a list of action to which I would reply either yes, or no...
"beginner2005" it seems you were waiting for me to fill in the blanks. Sorry my bad!
"beginner2005" let me think...
"beginner2005" theming: it is easy with phptemplate to change the layout of the template, and add some php where needed. Too bad I am a poor designer!
"beginner2005" ...
"beginner2005" Creating menus, blocks, promotting nodes, etc... are frequent tasks that are easy to perform...
"amazon" ok, great
"amazon" When you administer your Drupal site, you find it hard to?
"amazon" : fill in the blanks
"beginner2005" :)
"beginner2005" user permission. Drupal's permission are great and generally more performant than that of other CMS, yet I find I'd like more fine-tuning. A permission is site-wide (edit all nodes in the whole site, but not of part of it, for example, which is the motivation for ...
"beginner2005" this patch, for example: http://drupal.org/node/65319 ...
"beginner2005" also...
"amazon" go on
"beginner2005" allow users to edit one menu but not others, etc... (generally speaking, I'd like much more fine-tuning possibility for permissions. Another point...
"beginner2005" , editing the weight of menu items can be difficult bec ause you cannot edit all the menus items at the same time (like you can adjust the weight of all the blocks on the same page...)
"amazon" let's switch to hard stuff then
"amazon" When you administer you Drupal site, you find it hard to?
"beginner2005" Assigning permissions on admin/access can be a pain if you have many modules, many roles with long names...
"amazon" got it
"beginner2005" That was the hard stuff, already.
"amazon" ok
"amazon" What are some other important Drupal administration tasks that we did not cover above?
"beginner2005" Well, I purposefully didn't mention a few tasks because I know there are modules for them that i have not tested yet (node moderation, workflow, etc.)
"amazon" what tasks are those module designed to help with?
"beginner2005" I mentionned spam earlier. Any web administrator knows it is a plague.
"beginner2005" I would like my site to be open for comment and posting by anonymous users,
"beginner2005" but I had to turn that off when faced by scores of spam.
"beginner2005" trackback.module makes it easy to delete bunch of spam in one click.
"amazon" ok, that's good feedback
"beginner2005" I would need the moderation module to accept comments by anonymous users, that I publish or delete after verification.
"beginner2005" There is also referrer spam, and registration spam...
"amazon" go on
"beginner2005" though I patch I provided was committed that makes registration spam less likely.
"amazon" very cool
"amazon" any other important Drupal tasks that we didn not cover above
"beginner2005" There are still a few patches in the queue that should make fighting spam easier.
"beginner2005" registration process/workflow.
"amazon" can you give an example
"beginner2005" again, it's also spam related. wait...
"beginner2005" ok. here is one issue for a module to prevent the logs to be flooded by irrelevant spam registration: http://drupal.org/node/70617
"beginner2005" and the registration workflow:
"beginner2005" could use some META user roles http://drupal.org/node/64861 so that if registration requires admin authorization...
"beginner2005" the admin is not asked to make a decision to authorize or not an account if the email registered is bogus... (i.e. user should confirm email is valid before admin even sees that a new users awaits for authorization...)
"amazon" ok, interesting
"beginner2005" All of this is spam related: how to fight it and deal with it more easily, without requiring the admin to spend too much time on it.
"amazon" this is really interesting