Posted by eigentor on August 13, 2008 at 4:14am
If there can be any doubt, what users miss in core Drupal, have a look at this
http://drupalmodules.com/top-downloads
As the numbers of downloads rise beyond 3000, these relations start to get representative, or at least more so.
Just have a look at Dries "Wishlist" for Drupal (gosh, cannot find the survey results anymore! But i know a Wysiwyg Editor in Core was very close to the top, together with better image handling) and wishlist for Drupal.org http://buytaert.net/drupal-org-wishlist, at most prominent usability issues found at Minnesota and Baltimore and, er, some logical pattern shines through...
Comments
Slightly OT but CMSBox won
Slightly OT but CMSBox won a 2008 award for usability according to http://www.useit.com/alertbox/application-design.html.
A list of CMSBox's features can be found here:
http://www.cmsbox.com/en/system/features
Apart from WYSIWYG, a few of CMSBoxes features that if added could improve the OOBE are:
Built in newsletter publishing (while RSS Publishing is a plus, most users usually prefer to read E-Mails.)
A built in photo gallery.
install profiles?
Some statistics in d.o downloads: http://growingventuresolutions.com/blog/drupal-download-statistics-janua... It would be great to have a WYSIWYG editor in core, but do we really want something like TinyMCE? I think that it's really hard to get a module into core, if not CCK and Views would have been in core years ago, there needs to be a lot of testing and the modules need to be really stable. I think that one solution would be to make an "official" install profile that has views, cck, pathauto, image, a WYSIWYG or WYIWYM editor, and make it more prominent on the download sections. In the download box in the front page of Drupal there could be an additional item which is named Drupal - advanced features or something like that, and it would help a lot of beginners get their sites built quicker. Well these are just some ideas but I definitely agree that adding more features and functionality to core is a good thing!
Nicolas
http://nic.ipwa.net
--
Nicolas
I think a non-targeted quick
I think a non-targeted quick start profile which requires fundamental modules + oft-demanded ones would be a great idea - it'd also not be too much work to put together. There's not yet install profile packaging on d.o. - but when that's available it'd be a very quick install too.
Installation Profile
I agree that we could do this installation profile relatively quickly and I'm really happy people seem to support the idea. I think we should start discussing the modules to be included in this profile. I have made a preliminary list of some modules and some themes (if we end up doing the install profile with themes too) I had in mind. If you feel strongly about adding/removing/switching a module please leave a comment and hopefully we can make a very nice list of module and themes between all of us.
Essential modules:
I think there's no doubt these definitely have to be included, the rest are up for discussion.
Administration:
Content:
Spam:
Rating:?
Themes?
Nicolas
http://nic.ipwa.net
--
Nicolas
I agree that Drupal needs to
I agree that Drupal needs to have different versions/profiles for download like gallery do. Gallery have a bare bones, normal and fully featured download. Not everyone needs a WYSIWYG editor, but it's a common need for many people. It would be really helpful to new users if they could come to the Drupal downloads page and find:
-simple (core required)
-typical (all core)
-developer(developer modules)
-community package (forums, events, chat)
-commerce package (ubercart, ratings, recommendations)
and so on.
It would save time finding modules and make Drupal more popular. However distributions may fragment the community if they start to fork away from the traditional Drupal way of collaboration.
http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery2:Download#Packages
Here is Dries take on distos... http://buytaert.net/drupal-distributions
Couple things. I think Blog
Couple things.
Even like a "Drupal suggests" for 10 or so very popular and well established modules could help others fight through the "...what...modules... aaahhhhhgggggg" headache that new developers / users run into when they first hit d.o. Another interesting solution might be a question and answer kind of system such as a forked-path poll. Example:
A. Use the core optional module Blog and....
B. CMS - Use the core modules, you may want to also look into...
C. Configure permissions appropriately and download CiviCRM, A WYZIWIG tool like TinyMCE or FCKEditor, Five-Star, Userpoints, Radioactivity
D. Ubercart, Ratings, Recommendations
E. Configure permissions so that anyone can edit any page and turn on core optional project book so they can structure them in a book. Possibly download Outline Designer (selfish plug ;) )
You might want to look at the following blocks on the admin/build/blocks page as good starter blocks for your users: A,B,C,D,E recommendations.
This could piss some dev's off that D.o. isn't pimping their modules / direction but this could help get newbees up and running faster and with better solutions. I recall going down the Flexifield path b4 realizing that CCK was out there and then just scrapped my initial system and started over for V2. Dono... just an idea.
~!Bryan
"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro
http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
what needs to happen?
It seems like there has been lots of talk about this over the months and lots of concensus that it would be a great idea. What needs to happen for this to become a reality? I have written install profiles and it doesn't seem like it should be that difficult to at least get something up and on d.o if that is all that needs to happen. Can you currently have install profiles available for people to download that know to d/l all the modules it needs etc?
If we have identified that we should have some more options for users in terms of starting points, what needs to happen to get the ball rolling?
As Dires pointed out in his
As Dires pointed out in his blog drupal.org needs an infrastructure that supports ditros/install profiles so the community doesn't end up fragmented.
I've started trying to build
I've started trying to build a blog friendly install profile. So far the installation process and module activation is successful but pre-defining content type settings I have yet to figure out.
Install profile is based on 6.3
The add on contributed modules (sites/all/modules) as of now are:
FCKEditor, IMCE
Google Analytics
Views
Pathauto, Token
Poormans Cron
Simplenews along with mime mail can be added for e-mail newsletters (the install profile with the included modules currently is about 12 MB in size, considering hosting limitations, feedburner could be an alternative for most bloggers unless they decide on having multiple blogs.) Captcha with Recaptcha or Mollom can be added as well for anti-spam measures.
Additional settings I had planned to include:
-Free tagging
-Pre built category for pages
-Pre built category for stories/articles
-Shared category for Pages and Stories (Incase tagadelic is added for a site wide tag cloud)
-Pre-built forum containers (In the event that the blogger creates a sizeable following) for general topics, content oriented topics, etc..
great idea
ipwa: that would be a HUGE step in the right direction.
me 2
ipwa, I agree. I wouldn't call them "advanced" features, though, if the point is make things easier for beginners. :-)
(though to tell the truth, I would use that profile pretty much every time....)