Posted by robertmills on December 5, 2008 at 5:25pm
Hi,
This week sees the release of iteration 11.
http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11
This week we have made lots of some smaller changes throughout the whole prototype, items that were delayed from iteration 10. For this release, we've paid particular attention to several pages:
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Marketplace
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Download and Extend
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Modules landing page
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Themes landing page
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Search_by theme
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Home page
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Dashboard
There has been a lot of great feedback on the iteration 10 post, thank you all for your valuable input.
Even though there are no more iterations for this current phase of work, your feedback is still valuable over the coming days and will be considered and fed into the documentation that is passed to the Drupal Association.
Thanks.
The Redesign Team
Comments
More thoughts on modules
Re: http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/modules_detail.html
A) Doesn't seem like hardly any of my Feedback on modules from iteration #9 has been folded into either #10 or #11, other than the reintroduction of color into the download table. I'm hoping that either you'll incorporate more of that into the final draft you present the DA, or give them a disclaimer about the module pages along the lines of what Leisa said: "I have to admit I've been less concerned with it because, as a community, you guys seem to be all over it and saying v smart stuff.". ;)
B) Yay for sparklines. However, it's not obvious what "activity" means here -- although by reading the fine print you see it's about "commits". Maybe it should say "Development activity"? Furthermore, by definition, only a "maintainer" can commit to a project, so it's not clear what the colors are meant to differentiate. I could imagine others sparklines, too. For example "Issue activity", maybe even "Release activity", etc.
Re: http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/download.html
C) Mostly, this rocks. However, the Drupal community has had a long debate about "golden contrib", with the general thought being "we don't have the resources or the means to review and select what makes the cut to be called 'golden'". So, I don't see what "Featured modules" is meant to be or how that's going to work. Also visible at a few other pages like the Modules landing page.
Re: http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/modules.html
D) This also looks great. However, as the module category card sorting exercise showed, we're probably going to have O(30) or more top-level module categories. I'm worried how this design is going to look and be usable with a pile of 30-40 checkboxes for categories.
RE: D) This could be a
RE: D)
This could be a collapsible area so it wont get distracting but still 40 checkboxes would be too much
Under each module name shouldn't it say
Developed by conortm ...
instead of designed by ?
GiorgosK
web development and marketing
GiorgosK
Web development in Greece
Meta: subsites?
Early on, it was agreed we'd have different subsites for different parts of the new d.o. It's not obvious from clicking around the current design iteration how those fit into the design.
A) The top navigation links aren't just shortcuts to each site, clearly. How do you know what the subsites are and how to get to them? Or do we not care at all, and if you happen to click on a page that brings you to another site, everything is so seamless integrated that the only way you know is if you noticed the URL changed?
B) Is there going to be any visual cue that you're on a different site at all, or are they all meant to look identically?
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks,
-Derek
seamless
I think it is up to us to implement them as subsites or one single site, it is not a point of the IA / design. As can be seen on the association, modules, etc. pages, these subsites will be seamlessly integrated, one will only notice they are on a different site with the URL change. We should have cross-site search and single-sign-on. See http://groups.drupal.org/node/17294
Front page
A) I know I'm way late voicing this -- but I also dislike the map and the animated news flashing by. ;) In general, I find animation distracting and annoying on sites. I also think it uses a lot of real-estate for little value.
B) "View this site in [English]" -- if you don't speak English, that doesn't help you. The choices should be in the native language ("Español" not "Spanish"), and should be visible without being buried in an English-labeled drop-down select. If we're serious about having translated versions of the site, we should probably just have a Footer with links for each available language. If you see English | Español | Deutsch etc across the bottom of a web page, I'd bet 100% of users would understand what happens if you click one of those links.
C) Refining search: what about a checkbox for "Issues", since that's where a TON of the discussion and action happens on d.o?
Agree to B and C. The design
Agree to B and C.
The design looks awesome and even though I d like to see a couple of more real people/pictures to make the design more friendly I think you've done a great job.
+1 for searching issues
I've already mentioned searching the issues here and here, but even though people seem to agree with me, no one is actually picking this up and implementing it in the design. On the other hand, it's not discarded either.
Usually, when I'm searching for the solution to a problem, I can't tell beforehand if the answer will be in an issue or in a forum post. That's why I think we should have just one checkbox saying 'forum posts and issues'. After all, too much options isn't user friendly either.
Important things that need to be added / altered
http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/homepage_notloggedin.html
The Build for Today AND Why Choose Drupal blocks of long descriptive texts are repetative, and takes too much of vital space - Please merge and make concise, scannable text ( see http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html )
Please bring back the DOWNLOAD block that has also the version numbers -
If its absence is meant to help any newcomer unable to or not needing download, there is actually not substantial text on the first page (if there are, what are those?) that helps also such a newcomer. The absence BREAKS user expectancy of both regular users as well as new users coming from other cms-es, badly and irrepairably
Flashing map do not work in all browsers, number of cvs or commits in above the fold homepage are absoluely redundant for regular users and CONFUSING and repelling to newcomers
HOW DO I SEE "DEMO" or feature list DIRECTLY FROM THE FIRST PAGE ?? Current drupal org has these very prominently. Some newusers may not want to "get started" or "download" but ALL WANTS TO SEE A DEMO. How do I know what the software looks like or what it does, surely not by reading long descriptive texts on front page or searching ??
How do I reach directly 'Translations' from first page ( current drupal org allows this) ? How do I help directly a fresher's forum post from first page ( current drupal org lets this do easily via the forum posts side block ) and boosts community participation
Lot of DISPROPORTIONAL white space in header area, theme is like many other sites and wordmark should have unique character of its own. I am not sure and may be wrong: has the majority of the users been satisfied with the wordmark or presentation of the word Drupal in the header area ? If we are meant to improve by this new design, have we improved in this particular aspect of displaying the word Drupal in the homepage?
http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/community.html
"Where is our community ?" The first link says Commercial support - this can come to at least second. The first link should be Forum ( or Forum and Issues ).
Drupal community may have been supplemented by commercial support but the first thing is the Forum ( and/or Issues ). Please do not discourage regulars by downplaying it or confuse newcomers by saying that commercial is the first place they need to go ( unless Drupal now wants to move in that direction) . It will not hurt Corporate new comers to find it from the second link, even there can be a prominet button or block for those who wants to straighaway use Commercial support.
Not sure what the superbig "Installing Drupal" button does. Please explain. This should be replaced or supplemented with the links to Forum ( or forum and issues ) The current iteration almost vanishes the relevance of the Forum ( and issues)
REMOVING play patch bingo or play bug bingo side blocks DISCOURAGES community participation and also adds to the number of issues or slowness of solutions.
http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/modules_detail.html
Please explain clearly in the page itself what are the things to be posted in Groups (as in Join Group) and what are the things to be posted in ISSUES ?
We usually visit a module page (post installation) to do bug reporting or feature suggestion or support request. Will these things be addressed in Issues OR in Groups ?? Please explain with a brief note, may be collapsible, in the page itself. Or better still, do away with the groups.
How do I directly - create one issue ( please see View open issues or create one issue in current drupal org ) or directly View all support requests or Search issues or Report a security issue ?? How to go to View pending patches directly ?
How do I find a list of recommended discussions related to the module? Please see any module page on current drupal org. This is very important and helps innumerable times.
http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/dashboard.html
We do not need Friends Update and Recent Follows Block. Lots of clutter of blocks and tabs. Confusing and unnecessary. The profile tab page can be used to have subtabs : all my forum posts, all my issues, my groups etc.
We need the ability to "star" or flag any relevant post or issue and need to see this
list from the dashboard. We also need to delete any item from this list which we no longer need.
Added advantage will be ( but not damn necessary) to color label or ajax sort this list.
Thus the dashboard can contain NEWS including security ones, one custom block where I can add any global or other links, and A LIST of my starred items, be it post, issue or person. This makes things easier and faster as dashboard is a transit area to go to other places.
Blocks like Drupalicon add to clutter - instead those who need it can add it from their account edit areas, imho.
OVERALL
Please include in iterations or final design pieces that :
lets an user star or flag any post or issue, also destar or unflag it
lets user see a list of related links of solutions when they submit a forum or issue post, before finally
submission is done
These are programming issues but many issues are programming issues (like Search) so it may be nice to make them a part of the iteration areas where there are form submissions or list displays.
Please keep a design of homepage minus the superbig Search - this I say because at times Search had to be closed in drupal org due to load issues. Unless there is 100% guarnatee that this won't happen ever again we need to have design plan what to show in that big prime area.
3 months of user testing
Minnesota, I can not tell if you are incorporating what we've learned in 3 months of user testing in to your feedback. Are you telling us what you want exclusively? If so, thanks for sharing.
But if you are making an argument that the design should be improved, then please refer the results of 3 months of user testing to support your recommendations. This design is on iteration 11, and has been tested with a wide variety of members from the Drupal community from novice, evaluator, business owner, hobby users, content creators, site administrators, site developers, module developers, and core contributors, and community leaders. The conclusions from three months of testing in many cases directly contradicts your feedback. Leisa has done a fabulous job addressing many of your points and providing a rationale for these design choices.
So, are you just stating your opinion?
Or are you actually incorporating what the design process has revealed, see the 46 blog posts on the topic, and you've just failed to reference that in your response.
Kieran
...........
I am actually incorporating all the feedbacks including mine to all these months of design process.
I appreciate and respect your statistics of surveyed users BUT stats has its own severe pitfalls.
Stats has dangerous trends of false positives and false negatives, particularly where sampling is LOW as in this case. A glass half full is statistically half empty but if it tumbles watery mess is 100% :)
I cared to use my time and tell everything in objective details in long posts : If you really go through all I said and what all others said you will find many of my concerns have been echoed by many of the responders in these pages again and again :
for example, issues on the header, too much cramming on first page, super big search. The decisions in this respect appears to be taken unilaterally under the veil of user survey. Many of what I said has not been just my opinion but opinion of many. If you will like I can quote those pieces here - it may take some time though. They are plenty and probably have not been paid attention to .
Some of these have been my concerns ( and I found leisareichelt not answering many direct concerns - you can see iteration 10 ) and some have been my direct questions asked repeatedly but with no answers. ( for example : can you answer what 'join groups' and 'issues' in modules page do separately and unless explained in the page itself how the user is supposed to know ? why there is no DEMO link ? )
If something is wrong and even if one logical mind finds discrepancy and another agrees, not just three month's even one year's work have been scrapped by many successful ventures. I know there has been many supportive cheerleading and I mean no disrespect : only things folks are missing the loopholes imho. In this case, its not just my logical mind, BUT of many as you can find in the posts so far.
( See some "references" below, if you want or havn't read those full list can be prepared :
Homepage IMHO is still suffering from heavy information overload - eigentor
Download totally lost - chx
so much being crammed into the front page - michelle
The forums are way too hard to get to - mimetic2
Doesn't seem like hardly any of my Feedback on modules from iteration #9 has been .. - dww
Utility of Join Groups on module page ... and many such ...
many of these responders have been new or fresh users too apart from old users)
Have you gone through what I wrote in all the posts without bias and with a clear, logical mind : I will like to know which of my point or points you find contradictory or not valid or not useful ?
My last words : I mean no harshness or rudeness and I apologize and it pains me to say this :
Your user surveys and design firm are not without pitfalls - some are deadly and even if pointed they are not being avoided on false assumptions.
What comes to my mind : big empires have a subtle start of decline and downfall.
Listening
The design has involved many choices on behalf of many audiences. Clearly, the most advanced users will not agree with design choices made to meet the needs of users unlike themselves, namely new users and evaluators. We don't claim that every issue has been addressed. We are not claiming this design is perfect. Choices were made, feedback was solicited, and the results were tested in many ways, but in particular they were tested live with users.
Let me be specific, and this will be my concluding commentary to your post.
1) Downloading: Your feedback is that we should bring back the download block with version numbers. I am sympathetic to this argument. However, when I look at Leisa's rationale for why they recommend a getting started button instead of a download button, it's based on real world user testing, and it's well reasoned. Your feedback does not address that rationale.
2) Search: Your feedback on the community page is interesting. You've accurately identified that the giant field in the middle of the page with the javascript typeahead circle is not obviously an answer help search field. But when I pointed out that the center of the page is meant to point to content the community has produced, you ignored that it was meant to be the highlight of the page. When I pointed to the secondary navigation you again dismissed my observation insisting that top right block was the main focus of the page. Rather than have a discussion about helping people looking for support find the community generated content which is the focus of the page, we are arguing about the 5th (Primary navigation, Search, Primary Tabs, Secondary navigation, Main content, Top right content) area of focus on the page. Sigh. In Leisa's post she addresses the fact when we we've tested with users we've found that Drupal.org is a searching site, and so the focus of Drupal.org users is frequently on searching for answers.
Your feedback is strong, and taken independently you in fact may be 100% right. But it's precisely that your feedback can not be taken independently, that it must be taken in the context of the the goals of the design, to LISTEN to a representative cross section of current and potential Drupal users as well as the designers where your feedback falls short.
Kieran
Thanks
Thanks Kieran. Please let me know if I am being troll. I will just stop.
I am more worried not about us, the regular users, but about the de novo new users and the new users coming from other cms sites.
Regarding "Download" its NOT just my opinion, but opinion of MANY. Those opinion has been voiced in these feedback pages already. Many of them are relatively new users too. As well as the fact we have been new users also not long ago. And new users cannot just take their own decisions well out of a survey unless they are guided by some experienced ones. No one is bothering to repeat so much like me probably because they already know certain unilateral things cannot be changed or they are just missing the future implication of this loss. With known surfers and friends when I have shown and discussed these iterations : almost all said the normal user expectancy is broken ( Imagine an email box with no inox link). Just fully new users or new users coming from sites such as Packtpub, silversprite etc will all expect a prominent download button. I have no idea why so much public opnion is being disregarded. Doing general market survey of users and doing something Drupal is different. Does this team have prior experience of handing such things of such a big cms ( which cms, please) ? If yes, I am sorry to ask this question. If yes, great !
Leisa's post have been read and appreciated as well as Mark's. I think : they are wrong in this ground :
.... see many of the responder's response to this issue
.... sampling is LOW and you cannot have a really new user generated in lab in the sense she or he is not coming by own but you are going to him or her
... how absence of Download can help users were not factualized or explained by them even after asking
... user expectancy, particularly of a new user, or users coming from another cms ( eg. http://www.silverstripe.com/, http://plone.org etc, http://wordpress.org ) is grossly broken. Were such users taken into the study?
... an alternate study may be done or a poll ( if the poll sampling is of reasonable number)
Incidentally if we are concerned with new users or new users who typically will not be doing things themselves, instead using managed services - look at Acquia Drupal - how it is addressing the needs of new user ( all new users whether at Drupal or at Acquia has the ultimate goal of making a Drupal based website ) --> Acquia Drupal uses (why??) DOWNLOAD prominently. Are we here fabricating or moulding things subtly or inadvertently so that sites like Acquia are used more directly for direct downloads ?
See this : http://acquia.com/files/HomePage_finalOption_B_0.png
Regarding your explanation on Search or rather the support page, I think we are going round. A different way of looking things : if Drupal has really turned into a Search site, instead of making superbig search area, we need to address THE ROOT : easy and detailed documentations, wikis, knowledgebase type of pre-submission auto-links to solution pages etc.; we need to address why people is searching so much :)
Anyway I apologize and understand all that you have to say on this second issue : My only short request is that put "Forum" link always before "Commercial" link. I do not think a single person here disagrees to this point.
You chose not to answer or discuss some more valid and clearer questions which is absolutely OK - no problem. And which are just not my own. But of the community's. We know perhaps none of us are perfect but these are serious policy issues where we are aiming perfection, atleast improvement from the current state. If one 'something' is 100% right as you said , it may be really good to go with that rather than going with plenty of insufficiently formulated research feedbacks! I faintly remember that it used to be said that Drupal goes with "merit" but that may be out of context here:) I will like to conclude with the words that I think the future will make things clearer.
Actually, I might disagree
It's arguable that the opposite is true.
Drupal's continued dramatic growth will undoubtedly cause it to grow beyond the do-it-yourself community. I personally hope that at some point the number of users outnumber developers - where "users" = a person or company who operates a Drupal site but does not do development for it. (In fact, I've said that I hope so.)
If this happens, it's likely that most of these users will have more $$ than time, and will be inclined to use that money to accelerate their success. This implies, in turn, that Commercial Support should live above Forum support in order to meet that "majority need."
In fact, you can take the next step and assert that if Commercial Support were more highly prioritized in the new d.o, Drupal might grow ("attract new users") faster. (And I do think most people here want Drupal to be the most-widely-used CMS....)
Therefore, in contrast to your claim, I believe it's valid to assert that Commercial Support should live above Forum.
However, I'm not specifically requesting this. What I'm trying to make clear to the community "at large" is the need to think about how our community can be more inclusive than just those who want to self-support. Making the commercial Drupal ecosystem more ingrained our thinking is key to this.
maybe
I would probably list my business in that commercial area, so I'm in favor of it, but...
People have been saying that for the past 7 years. But nobody's had good proof for the statement. Do you have any solid data or examples to back up the widely felt sentiment?
Without data or examples we're left with a philosophical battle that nobody can win.
--
Growing Venture Solutions | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Rabbit hole....
It's probably a rabbit hole to continue to chase this particular thread, particularly since I'm not advocating for a specific change in this point - more just to point at the principle of the degree to which commercial support of Drupal deserves more general love on the new d.o.
I would, however, suggest the following things provide data. I don't have (or don't want to disclose) actual numbers; but I can stand behind the general propositions:
Though this isn't a full, PhD-grade analysis, the statistics are suggesting Drupal is already moving beyond developers.
I disagree
Exactly for this "Acquia" is there.
Its an illogical or pseudo-logical game of words what you say :) but you have proved there are at least one ( if not more :)) persons who disagree to this point. May be we should have a poll !
You clearly fail to see the importance of Forum (and or Issues) : it has provided and continues to provide INSTANT and varied solution to some problems ( for example, like me many users google drupal forum pages or issue pages and have found solution ) : commercial solution cannot be this instant.
Probably after having so much of free input over these years that has made Drupal Drupal you now like to sidetrack it by arguing even that small request : which is also in accordance with majority of web-user's user expectancy : that keep Forum before Commercial
Or at least : keep them in parallel blocks ( separate and prominent comm blocks )
May be you should suggest to make Drupal fully commercial : that will make its growth fastest ??
I am not sure : take the benfit of free community of Drupal and then argue to sidetrack it : at least treat both equally :)
Addendum : There is also another point : php scripts are about bugs or feature requests. Where do we do them first : Issues or Commercial ?? ??
maybe a more handy use case from Hungary
While I follow, participate in on several occasions (since the very first start of this redesign on interviews, mockup creation, card sorting, etc), there is another redesign going on closer to my backyard, the Drupal.hu redesign. What is interesting there, is that two of the main requirements of the redesign are that (1) we should make a hosting services directory of some kind [I know this failed due to some respect on drupal.org] and (2) build a marketplace and have strong highlights on who is providing Drupal related services (site building, courses, maintenance, design).
We do these on drupal.hu because these are the top two requests from forum members. They ask on the forums on hosting and other Drupal services (we have a contract seeker / provider forum), and it does not really work out because these people have different needs and a different approach. They need phone numbers to call, not a pot where they can put in their request and hope for applicants. What we found out in practice was that resistance to highlighting them (in the name of say alienating some of the providers who will be down in the list and not on top, or who for whatever reason would feel they are misrepresented on the site) is futile. If we don't step ahead, our efforts to improve our reach would still color us amateurish. People just don't know they have phone numbers to call when they need to attend a course to learn Drupal (there are 3-4 providers in Hungary for this), they need to have Drupal friendly design done (more and more of these guys crop up on our user group meetings), or they need a website built. An interesting cross-observation recently was that even our web designer community members look for developer service provider community members to team up for work :) So it turned out that if we do not provide clear and straightforward indication that all these service providers are there, they could be pretty much invisible.
That there is not even a single sound of resistance to this in the Drupal.hu redesign is maybe due to the fact that there are not many "big names" to call in Hungary, like Lullabot, Workhabit, Bryght, Acquia, etc. are internationally. So probably people do not have a feeling that the big names might overtake the commercial space on the site, and they do not come to FUD-fueled conclusions like "May be you should suggest to make Drupal fully commercial : that will make its growth fastest ??"... Those who do not need a commercial service will just ignore those parts, those who do will be happy to find that and even if they do not need it directly, will be delighted to see right there that there are options for them to come back later.
If you need your walls painted in your house, you can either do it yourself, call your well known usual service provider, or look into your local service provider directory and call up a provider from there. If you do it yourself, you may need to look up some tips on forums and mailing lists on how to best paint your walls, but it is reassuring that you also have a local service provider listing (eg. yellow pages) and you know where you can find it, so that you can look for a professional to do the job, when you have more important stuff to do. People just love to have options for different needs and they learn to ignore stuff which is not directed at them. I know first hand the Drupal.hu redesign is in full force in this direction and it would be unfortunate to not let Drupal.org spread the word on all these good options around as well.
Ps. information on the drupal.hu redesign is unfortunately only available in Hungarian on the Drupal.hu forums: http://drupal.hu/forum/temak/drupalhu
.........
Hi Gabor,
The lines quoted by you from my text was just a side talk, more of a funny question to the insufficient logic given rather than any conclusion. There were more important things,highlighted relevant questions to discuss, imho rather than picking up this :) . I find it rather harsh to call this FUD since I have taken long times and long writeups to substantiate what I have said. Many of questions were just not answered - no problem with that, but picking up a line like this out of context hurts.
I summarized before also that in iteration 11 - "Commercial" should not be coming first in the Navigation, rather it should be followed after Forum ( or forum and issues )
You can see opinions of others in the feedbacks on iteration 11. Your usecase is very well appreciated but despite its length it does not answer :
Should not Forum come first and then Commercial ( currently the Forum is way down and somewhat obscure) in Drupal org's support page navigation ?
Even if not first can we have parallel blocks of equal importance ( like the blocks in the new propsed Acquia design ?)
The main user actions centred on a php script are support,feature request, bug reports - which is the first place to do this via : Commercial link or Issue ?
Simple questions : 'yes' 'no' answers will suffice!
There is no direct link to Forum from the first page - this also adds to the difficulty in finding it : and on the community and support page, I think I am not the only one who is finding the 'Forum' link sort of obscure or not of relevant weightage in accordance with the support it provides.
While we are interested in "Commercial" ( no objection to this ) are we equally interested in those who may not be able to procure it ?
I also came up with another thought :
Amazon was keeping pointing that the central focus of the Support page is "How can we help you" block ? Can we make it [title]"How can you help you?" -- [subtitle] Our Forums and Issues are here - search and find ( or some similar text)
This also goes a HUGE way to highlight the forums and issues and will probably be liked by all parties. I wish you can respond on this.
A prominent block linking to hosting is also welcome, for example, a colored side block or whatever. Mixing up all commercial services may not be a good idea as hosting is something which will be needed by almost all.
There is no objection to Commercial services as we all need them - the only objection was how these or how things are laid out, what new users or users from other cms-es expect according to the lines of 'normal user expectancy'. I understand my posts are not being "liked" but there are similar thoughts in other users' posts also. And after all Drupal's highest authorities are at liberty to do what they like with their project but this far I have said according to the best possible logic not just of my own but also of innumerable users'.
no preference
I have no preference on whether the Forum goes before the Commercial items or the other way around. I was pointing out that you jump to far reaching conclusions (which you say now were "funny side-notes"), and that these are not at all in touch with questions on how these are placed. As I've said, those who do not need commercial stuff will learn to ignore commercial stuff. Did you notice the big banner ads on all kinds of sites on the web, or you just get used to it, and you focus on the content?
Honestly I do not understand much of this discussions around simple things like this placement thing or whether one block of text shows up in a column or not. These designs are not in stone, they will not be implemented as-is, features will be added and dropped. MBD got the job to provide us with a starting point and sets of rules (style guide) to work from there, so that we as a group can have a common guide to work from. I believe the exact order of blocks, menu items, whatever will change, although probably not drastically. Also, the site will not get online on day 1 as it is on the design, so changes will come from time to time, allowing us to adapt as we see if something is not working, while we figure out the rest of the implementation.
As a matter of fact, the Get Started page has Forum and IRC only in the support section: http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/getstarted.html and from what Jay suggested with a very well understandable mockup, he did asked to put in commercial support as the last option after these two items. Not sure how you arrived at the decision that he wants everything being commercial on Drupal :)
On the Community and Support page which is more for these things (http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/community.html) I can see Local groups and interest groups (community) highlighted first, which are way more effective then disorganized overly general forums. We can solve problems in person on our local meetings in seconds, while in forums it takes days. Also, interest groups on groups.drupal.org helped drive progress on lots of important areas which would not be possible with generic forums. Chats, mailing lists and forums come next which might be considered more of a support related item then the previous two community items. In that sense, the commercial support is not in connect with the other support-like options down there, so there is indeed some disconnect. Not because it is commercial but because it is support :)
All-in-all I appreciate to be driven to the local community first, since meeting people in person is what makes human connections, quick problem solving, making friends and sometimes even good business. I also appreciate that topic specific interest groups (groups.drupal.org) are pushed more then overly general forums, since I've seen so many more quality action (docs, discussions, community work) then in the forums. There was some push to make forums more groups instead, eg. migrate them to groups in some way, but it looks like it was deemed out of scope for now.
Basically we are having lots of channels of community and support, and I am not sure who are those numerous people you mention, but I know (1) more people speak non-English then English, so driving them to local communities is best (2) people love when they can talk to like-minded folks and not get lost in a sea of open-ended topics, so I don't consider forums to be over many of the mentioned items.
....
Thanks Gabor. I appreciate your point. But I have preference :) as its an important navigational link we are talking about. Your arguments are clear NOW and everyone can see and draw conclusions, if so needed. We do not get focussed by banner ads and we know what are ads or what to do with them, here we were talking about a navigational link. Ad is bad argument here.
The entire iterations is about discussing various "item"s that were already there and now in "what order" or design they come.
Commercial or non-commercial or Search etc : all of these were their before, and will be in future too. MBD has not added any NEW element : we were discussing old things only and arguing how the NEW bottle will be. This was discussion, heated arguments follow, everyone upholding their one and what I say will also not go in stone. I hope all of this was not just yes-head-nodding exercise. So at what point or uptill what point are we to discuss or not discuss or nitpick things?
In the Community and Supports page, the very prominent and really highlighted "Where is our Comminity" block answers the first answer as Commercial support.
The forums, contrary to what you say, are NOT disorganized and has the maximun participation from ALL over the world as you can see from the number of posts which is hardly so massive in Local Groups etc . Also the MAINSTAY community support of any php script which advances it - that is, bug reports and feature suggestions do not belong to domain of local groups, Groups etc
I am non-english speaking and so are many, who find Forum ( and Issues ) far more full of posts and answers and helpful than anything else. MAJORITY of the search results containing solutions to problems point to Forum and Issue pages, and not local groups pages
I apologize if it appeared I was jumping to far reaching conclusions : but that was 'reply to reply' post :
I wish you were equally responsive to my original posts & answered the so many unanswered questions with the same energy but this is certainly not necessary nor do I ask: I have serious respect for you and your time, and I understand I must have struck a note of discord or detaste in your mind. Like you I am also trying to help Drupal. And have known user psychology particularly how new users think and expect from the early days of the net : from '97. My original posts have been objective and logical and with clearly laid out preferences rather than having no preference. A site design or ongoing open discussion about it is all about preferential layout of things which clicks or not clicks success.
Multiple Emails
The only thing I want to know is why every time "minesota" posts I get it 6 to 8 times by email and it doesn't happen with anyone else.
Happening to me too
that's happening to me too, since i change my e-mail account from gmail to yahoo.
Definitely I get multiple copies
... of Minnesota's posts in my email ( received @.mac).. 6-8 is about average.
It triggers on edits
It will happen to anyones post if they edit it. Since her posts are long, she naturally edits them a lot and thus you get duplicate mails.
I think this is a rabbit hole
Jay, I think this IS a rabbit hole.
I think there should be an area and clear links to lead people to the highlighting and celebration of great commercial partners in the Drupal ecosystem. I even think that it should be highlighted / celebrated directly on the front page, leading to a "commercial" area listing a jumping off point for many services (and a convenient place to sell some ads).
Insinuating it directly into the nav of Drupal.org makes me uncomfortable. And yes, I'm using my vocabularly deliberately.
yep
The lack of a dedicated commercial area that the moment means a constant war against spam and corporate puff in the forums, planet etc.
It's been my hope that by adding this area as part of the redesign, the rest of Drupal.org will be nice and tidy in that respect, with high quality content, (and I'm fine with targeted paid ads where appropriate/necessary to keep the coffers full). Keeping some boundaries is the only way to not suck thousands of volunteer hours dealing with serial self-promoters (take a look at the webmasters queue for the paid services and hosting forums if you think I'm over-egging this argument, I'm not).
Paid-services and hosting pressure
Catch brings up a good point. Many people in the Drupal community had completely written off the Drupal forums. In particular, the constant spam posts by hosting companies and subsequent tit for tat retaliation between outraged community members, and competing hosts resulted for the call to just shut down several forums or outright ignore all of the forums.
The paid services forum was not as bad, but the constant spam posting of template responses to every paid-services post was very damaging. To new visitors they were frequently only exposed to the worst behaving members of the community. To Drupal developers looking for work, they felt shut out, unwilling to compete with these spam techniques so they just looked to non-drupal work.
The solution was to implement some release valves, and set some new norms for behavior. Many of the hosting companies simply wanted a fair shake to be listed as providing Drupal hosting services. Since the community would not accommodate them, they turned to only option left to them, spamming forums. So we updated http://drupal.org/hosting and made it possible for any hosting provider to submit their hosting services for inclusion on that page. For each hosting provider we simply requested that they create a Drupal hosting specific landing page. The Drupal project benefits from additional marketing, end users benefit by landing on a page that shows the hosting company in fact supports Drupal.
Some of the hosting businesses wanted to participate in an affiliate marketing program and we obliged them while earning revenue from the Drupal.org marketing partnership. The funds raised, through my volunteer work, help to pay for the redesign, hardware upgrades, and provide capital for upfront expenses for events like Drupalcon which require tens of thousands of dollars in deposits months before the event. We created a win for users, win for Drupal supporting businesses, and a win for the Drupal community. The hosting advertising program is far from perfect, it's success is directly related to the number of hours I am personally able to commit to it each month. There were two additional challenges to making the hosting forums tolerable. First, we needed to re-purpose the hosting forums from evaluation of hosting services to helping users with hosting services, as specified in new guidelines. Second, we needed to recruit new maintainers so forum moderation was both consensus driven, to avoid accusations of bias, and to be scalable so maintainers could got on vacation, etc.
We recruited three new maintainers for the hosting forum, and worked on new guidelines that were easy to understand and could be enforced. The result, complete silence. The re-purposed hosting-support forum died. The spammers could not operate under these conditions. Their accounts were blocked, and their comments were unpublished within hours, old threads full of spam links were locked and no longer promoted to the top of the forum. We killed the Drupal hosting forum! Or did we? Slowly after a few weeks, regular users, people with actual questions slowly started returning to this forum. Today the hosting-support forum is back and helping users, supporting Drupal hosting businesses, and actually supporting the Drupal community rather than draining it.
Amazing! Did we discover a third way, a middle ground between open source exclusiveness, commercial businesses, and helping users?
Some here will argue, we should return to pure open source. Kick the businesses out, let's go back to the dark ages of pure spam, down trodden drupal.org maintainers, deceitful advice for every new user! Of course, my tongue is firmly in my cheek (I am being fecious to make a point).
A reasonable compromise is possible, and everyone can win. But this change will not come easy. These changes to support hosting businesses involved personal attacks, attacks against the volunteers at the Drupal association, and attacks on my employer. I am glad to see this discussion has not descended there.
Navigating these changes can be difficult. Last night at the San Francisco Drupal users group meeting I was asked "How do you avoid all these conflicts?". My response was simple. "Put the users first, all types of users."
Kieran
hosting
I hadn't checked into the hosting forum since the last time it was taken down, good to hear it died and came back better since.
right on!
I'm thrilled to hear that you tested on a variety of different user categories. It's way too easy for someone get caught up in thinking that all users think like him/her.
We've often found that users make pretty logical mistakes, but that they're ones we couldn't even dream of. It's hard to balance the need to provide safety nets with the need to reduce clutter. It's also impossibly difficult to reconcile the needs of every vocal member of the Drupal community -- something that scared my design firm completely away from being involved in the redesign process.
Guys, at some point Mark Boulton et al. are going to have to shoo you out of the design kitchen so they can finish their great work.
Unless they've been given a HUGE budget, 11 iterations of any design is a very generous gift from MBD to the Drupal community.
@modulist
Great work guys, only 3
Great work guys, only 3 design based things that I'd like to see improved on, I realise it's pretty mush over and design by committee is a bad thing but just some suggestions :
The footer color doesn't show up well on some monitors due to the color. I realise this same color is also used to distinguish other regions of the design.
Round the corners of the pages top navigation and the search box and I think they'd fit in much better, and possibly round other elements such as those blocks on the dashboard page.
The current rounded corners on the tabs and the search button still feel a little bit squared off, not sure why. I do really like that you removed the grey drop shadow from tabs that makes it look much better.
Get started submenu sequences
I've got some seconds of confusion at "Get started with Drupal" menu, where the four steps are OK, but at the top, in the secondary (?) menu some items are more or less the same, but in other sequence, and with slightly different naming, and mixed with other menu items, like "Marketplace".
I'd propose to reconsider this point, and go for a consistent sequence and naming in the secondary menu.
Hugh work, thanks for it!
Technical design notes
Reduce header size
On >=24" Monitors the overview is okay, but on 15" Laptop displays or smaller the header is too high since it requires sometimes half of the screen height. My own designs had these problems, too, in the past - removing functionality from the header into the content or sidebars helps (e.g. the oversized search block). Please revise header size, orientating at the current drupal.org header size. Always have the mobile users in mind!
Revise page width
Even on my small Laptop display only a part of the display width is used. At least the right sidebar should be on the right corner of the browser window.
Therefore remove the style attribute "width" from .whitebgr .container or make it adjustable by users in their options (use theme variables).
Theme style options
In several designs I've used options so the user could define fixed or relative width, whether certain elements should appear or not, which blocks to show where etc for himself. I highly recommend this for drupal.org, too. Regarding those features I've got much positive feedback from my customers.
Also have a look at Color module NG. This module greatly ease the work for theme developers and could be of use in later versions of the design (module still under heavy development).
Content
Generally reduze number of blocks and move them in sidebars e.g. for http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/download.html
http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/getinvolved.html
Content looks good!
This was also mentioned on
This was also mentioned on the Drupal.org post and I'm adding it here as well:
Minesota says: (http://drupal.org/node/343078#comment-1142459)
"The big header occupies too much of "above the fold" particularly for 1024 resolutions as well as mobile browser. The other problem is the flash or animated map does not work in all browser or takes undue time to load / incomplete load on slower connections.
The number of blocks on the dashboard which is supposed to be main transit area once I am in ths site is really cluttered !"
And I posted: (http://drupal.org/node/343078#comment-1146569
I have the same exact comment that the home page header takes a bit too much vertical space. I understand the need for it to breathe and have the proper space, but it could be tightened up a bit to reduce the amount of space it takes up and allow the most important content on the page just below it to be placed higher on the page.
--
Gravitek Labs
--
Gravitek Labs
I agree on the screen resolution, and think Flash is a bad idea.
My primary computer these days is a tiny Thinkpad, it has a maximum resolution of 1024. I can't imagine that I am the only person who is in this situation. In fact, according to w3schools 48% of people use 1024x768. Screen-Resolutions.com puts this number at 57%. A few other stats that I've looked at place it in this same range. This means that roughly half of the web is using 1024.
If we are seriously talking about making drupal.org more accessible to the new non-geek user, we cannot ignore that non-geeks probably surf at lower resolutions, and make up that half. Therefore the header really has to shrink. On my screen, iteration 11 currently occupies slightly less than half of the available page space. That's too much space for too little information. The people who are browsing at this resolution may very well be the type of people I keep hearing referred to as part of the growing ecosystem, and as having more $$ than time. If we're redesigning with them in mind, it might be a good assumption to make that your average corporate type might fall in to the roughly half the internet browsing at 1024. In my experience, giant headers are confusing, and make me absorb less of what is below the fold. In this case remember the fold is only 768, which in reality is more like 668 or a little less when you factor in tabs, URL bar, browser chrome etc.
I also want to chime in with a -1 on the flash map. I think that flash on the home page may turn off some very serious free software people. I have adobe's branded flash player installed on my Linux computer, but I know many really solid programmers that don't have it installed and never will. Drupal has grown because of its strong identification with Free Software and the Free Software community. Drupal.org's strict adherence to hosting only GPL'd code, as well as its strong active community, has made it one of the best GPL projects out there. As we grow, and attract a more diverse audience, we cannot lose site of the fact that Drupal is Free Software, and that we as a community support the GPL. Flash in many ways is antithetical to the goals of Free Software, it is closed source, and has promulgated a set of file standards that are entirely proprietary - and while the players are free to use, they are not owned by the Drupal community, or anyone but Adobe, and used solely at their pleasure. The free substitutes are broken, and still hacks on a closed standard. My point is that as a community that has its roots so deep in free software, do we really want to give up so much front page real estate to a tool that isn't free just because its ubiquitous?
I am not discouraging anyone from developing Flash/Drupal solutions, but why do we need it on the front page of d.o, when many of the most hard core free software geeks (who may possibly be the new rock star developers), may be bothered that there's Flash on the front page. I also don't see Flash on the front page of several software projects, like Linux, Apache, MySQL, Php, Joomla, Ubuntu and so on; there isn't a precedent for this, and its a bad one to set. It is tacit support for a closed standard.
Also, I think that its not needed, and wastes the system resources of people like me, who hit the home page of d.o with some regularity. Flash Player (at least on Linux) is a beast to run. It uses more resources on my machine than FF3 itself (with ~30 - ~40 tabs open).
This is a d.o performance hit on the home page for anyone who isn't using a faster newer machine on a broadband connection. Again, if we're trying to grow the Drupal community we need to think in both directions; those who are turning to Drupal because its powerful and have overflowing pockets, as well as those who are turning to it because its powerful, free, and they are broke.
Finally, do we really need to require Flash just so people can click through to the newest posts geolocated on a map? I'm sure we can come up with more useful, information presented in a better way. If it has to be graphical and animated, why not challenge ourselves to use a free solution in jQuery?
jQuery + Front Page Map
I like your challenge gnat -- use an opensource software (subliminal hint to those who need to be hit over the head that we developers do this more for fun than for profit) to add the bling, not a hog like Flash.
I suggest that there is nothing done in the preview that couldn't easily be pulled off with jQuery. Plus, since we are loading the standard library anyway, it wouldn't be a performance hit. Perhaps we could ask the author of the new Pakt Drupal and Javascript book to work out a solution that competes with the flashy map...
MJ
PS: We get multiple minnesota posts every time he edits his post and clicks save. Leisa and a few others have edited their post afterwards, I think minnesota just doesn't know that his 20+ revisions send a separate email to everyone in the discussion.
I am really sorry, I was not
I am really sorry, I was not aware of this bug. I thought mails are sent once only per post or some sort of time parameter is there so it is not repeatedly sent. There could have been an edit limit also if the mail must behave that way. In any case I am sorry, and have stopped editing the posts henceforth.
black text on blue background...
in the header is hard to read. Even the skinny white text below the search bar is hard to read, and I've Ctrl-plussed twice in Firefox. A little bit of reverse type (on buttons, for instance) is nice, but this is just plain difficult. I've been wearing glasses since kindergarten, 'tis true, but I don't tend to have trouble reading other websites.
I suggest increasing the gradient (to a lighter color) so that the black "What can you make with Drupal" is more legible, an then shifting the suggested search terms to a darker color
(I was directed to post here, from http://drupal.org/node/343078 )
Am I the only one that
Am I the only one who thinks the "issue queue" link being below the fold on the module landing page is a huge mistake? I thought I'd read all the comments of each of the iteration posts-- did I miss something where it discussed that a conscience choice was being made not to emphasize the issues queues as the primary place for module support?
Already voiced this concern
Already voiced this concern above / elsewhere.
How do I directly create an issue ? Am I missing such link?
Also wanted to know how the user visiting is supposed to know what are the differneces in things provided by issue queue ( namely bug reporting, feature request, support request ) and things provided by 'Join Groups'. To do bug reporting, feature request, support request shall an user use Issues OR Join Groups ?
As I understand it, first
As I understand it, first time visitors should not be encouraged to raise issues against something they have never tried.
Anonymous randoms are not encouraged to request support.
Really.
I don't think we want bug reports from non-members.
Log in to d.o. before complaining!
Once you've actually logged in - you have more prominent access to the issue queues etc, as your logged in home page is the dashboard. Your options make more sense then.
The default home page can't be all things to all people, but the version you've been taking apart is targeted at non-drupal members/users , remember?
Maybe push these people to commercial support?
People or companies who will collect money for helping people are happy to talk to anybody - non-members, inexperienced people, etc.
Again - another reason to make sure there's an outlet for people who do NOT want to make Drupal their lifestyle, and just want it use it ane make it work. :-)
depends
For bug reports, these really need to get into the issue queues. There's a real issue at the moment where people post bug reports in the forums, and of course module maintainers can't be expected to scan the forums for bug reports about their modules. At the same time, people tend to post identical bug reports in issue queues because they don't look for similar issues first. Then on top of that support requests in issue queues tend to be a burden on maintainers, because people fielding random 'how do I do this?" questions are in #drupal-support and the forums, not looking in the issue queues for people to help.
So there's a complicated feedback chain, which despite the above caveats doesn't work too badly at the moment - except possibly for the most popular modules who are swamped with dozens of daily similar support requests from brand new users, and probably those brand new users who are posting identical support requests all over the place - I guess Acquia is concerned with both here.
What concerns me about saying "Hey, new user? Come over here for friendly newbie/commercial support" is that new users can provide very valuable feedback - finding obscure bugs, weird usability issues just as much as experienced ones. Also, new users become experienced users in the end, can end up supporting other users in a matter of weeks etc., and steering them away from the issue queues early on (as the forums do now, and a strong emphasis on commercial support might do down the line) tends to interrupt that flow. I know I spent far too long on the forums (and the development list even) before I realised how much was happening in the core issue queue as a new Drupal user with little coding experience. I wouldn't want to make it harder for people like me getting introduced to the project now.
The dashboard after logging in has no CREATE CONTENT link
The dashboard after logging in has no CREATE CONTENT link like the present drupal org's navigation links of a logged in user, the issue queues are nowhere in the nav tabs, and the concerned block is well below the fold, the bottommost block - this is as far as http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/dashboard.html is concerned and if we are to discuss about it.
The "play patch bingo" "play bug bingo" are also not shown to the logged in users.
Looks good.
Looks good.
Just a small fix: I think that the space between blocks on 'about' page should be increased to improve readability
( screenshot )
Drupal logo
I really like the plans for the redesign of the site. It is miles better than the current site, and I think we can all see that! I appreciate all the work other members of this community are putting into feedback too—I've seen lots of great suggestions.
I'd just like to comment on one—the new logo. I don't particularly like the Druplicon (sorry) and was so pleased to see the new logo, in its earlier iteration. It immediately struck me as a great design, a highlight of the redesign I thought. I now agree of course it is far too close to the Mambo logo so clearly that wasn't going to be a go. However, I hope that the text-only logo that is now in the new design is just a temporary measure to allow the site design to go forwards while the logo is considered further. The text only logo doesn't do much for me at all. It's just too bland; it lacks character. The Druplicon has, perhaps, too much character... but there is little about the new logo that says to me community, or dynamism, or energy, or forwards progress.
Perhaps there is an extensive discussion of the logo elsewhere. (Point me to it?) I haven't been able to keep up with all the discussions on the redesign.
Finally, great work on the redesign, redesign team! I am SO looking forward to the day I arrive at drupal.org and it is here... :)
infinity eyes
** putting two sideways drops together ** to form an infinity symbol in the logo might visualize the communities character in the new Drupal logo?
** http://drupal.org/druplicon
Re-request on commercial support
All--
I'd like to re-request (as requested in Iteration 9 comments (I think)) a Commercial Support paragraph to the "Get Support" column of the Get Started page.
Many, many people have more money than time, and this will only grow if Drupal's growth continues. These people simply want the site to work - not to get an answer themselves. The Forums and IRC only provide people a way to get an answer; not a way to find somebody to pay to get the answer for them.
I made a mockup of the way I envision the addition. I uploaded the mockup to flickr, here.
Please, can we add this?
I agree-- and I like your
I agree-- and I like your mockup. I have only one small comment-- it reads to me like $$$$$-- you might want to say something like "commercial companies and consultants". Though not always true, "consultant" sounds more within the price range of non-enterprise users who may also wish to purchase some type of commercial support.
Using "... and consultants ..." sounds fine to me...
... as long as we don't lose "companies" in the process.
Reasoning: Two points:
These are both credible things that people looking for Support (who are at this point in the page) may want to find. Which is why I want to make sure "Companies" doesn't disappear.... ;-)
I've searched for a place
I've searched for a place where I can submit my ideas on new Drupal logo and couldn't find it.
The related thread http://www.markboultondesign.com/news/detail/cap_d_or_not_splash_or_not/ is closed, I'm not sure why. May be these ideas have a small chance to be useful, who knows..
http://sidashin.ru/misc/drupal_logos.png
The module landing page begins to make sense
http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/modules.html
This comment might be too late for any real impact.
Although I now see a lot of nice improvement in the module landing page, there are still some functions missings that I would like to see:
• Sort by date (modification date)
• Sort by rating
• A pager when the listing shows too many items
• The module version listed for each module
• New modules block
/* http://www.xmacinfo.com */
The first two requests will
The first two requests will no doubt be addressed by the new super duper Drupal search powered by Apache Solr.
Kyle Mathews
Kyle Mathews
Thank You
Thank's for your great article. Thank's to join me
Thoughts on the 11th
I'm clearly jumping in late in the game. Wish I had been more involved earlier. Here are my thoughts on the home page.
1) Search Box:
There are two types of web surfers. Those that search and those that browse. It's important to cater to both classes of surfers. One way to do that is to have the search box prominently displayed. However in this case it's much too prominent. The size of the box is probably 30-50% too big. The location, however is spot on. People look in the upper right for the search box.
Consider automatically putting focus in the search box onload. This is one less click for the searching surfer and draws attention to the box, while detracting nothing from the browsing surfer.
2) The Header:
The header is working on two levels on the home page. It's not just the standard Logo/Navigation/Search Bar, it's got a nice little slogan and a blurb. It's also adding some functionality to the search. These are fine and laudable goals, but I think the blurb could be replaced with the getting started link from below. The blurbs current location adds nothing useful to either first time visitors or veteran. Veterans are likely to simply bookmark the dashboard anyway... but the first time visitor wants to see how to get started.
3) The Global Widget:
Below the fold you have an animated widget that is confusing to view and while visually attractive adds little to the clarity of the site because it lacks context. It's now a distraction from whatever it is I'm actually looking for and would be better served as content on the dashboard page.
4) Gradient Background vs. Text Colour:
You can't play this both ways. Either you need a dark gradient with white text or a light gradient with black text. Trying to hit some magical 50% brightness that allows for both doesn't work.
5) Top Bar Navigation:
Everything here is rounded except this sharp edged navigation. Consider rounding the edges.
6) Login:
Upper right hand corner please. I should be able to login or register from the front page without needing to click through a tab.
7) Current Versions/Security Updates
One of the best features on the current site is the "in your face" nature of the current versions of Drupal with a nice explanation of the security fixes the new version provides. That's lost here. A "current versions" block makes sense and gives people a one click link to the latest versions of their software updates. I would hate to see this lost in the new design.
--
John Kipling Lewis
--
John Kipling Lewis
Main Download and Extend page
Just a quick comment on the main download and extend page.
I believe the part of the page that shows the categories of the modules is an excellent idea but......
It is overcrowded with categories and options.
For the expert user looks extremely helpful but as a landing page for a novice that has just started using Drupal may seem difficult to follow since all these categories create dilemmas where to go.
Maybe a tabular design would be better or a hierarchical folder/sub folder style (left pane) with details (right pane) would be more user friendly.
The map on the front page
Great feature ! Cameron moll had the idea covered on his series "Extensible CSS Interface" !
The front page
Wouldn't it be better if the frontpage contained only a minimum set of info / less clutered ?
What's next?
It's been one month since Iteration 11, the last of iterations. So what are the next steps?
now it is on us
(1) Drupal.org needs to be updated to Drupal 6 (2) some of the redesigns should be implemented and put into life incrementally.
I've been rallying some attention on my blog to organizing work on (1), see http://hojtsy.hu/blog/2008-dec-05/upgrade-drupalorg-drupal-6-help-redesign and http://hojtsy.hu/blog/2008-dec-11/project-module-roadmap-forward-drupal-6, but it did not get much attention so far.
Since the virtual collaboration did not work out, there is one or more in-person upgrade sprints in planning: http://hojtsy.hu/blog/2008-dec-25/drupalorg-upgrade-sprint-planning and should be announced soon.
At the DrupalCamp Köln a
At the DrupalCamp Köln a redesign hackatron is on the session proposal list. As there is server maintence in progress at http://drupalcamp.de I'm quoting the proposal here:
Dries has posted about this as well: http://buytaert.net/drupalcamp-koln-2008
/edit: Linkfix + We Didn't have alot of frontpage news recently. A post with information about the current situation and tasklist with links to issues might help to get people back to work on concrete tasks.
Front page post++
Last d.o. front page post is from Dec. 10th. An article about redesign progress would be great.
Also, with the Köln hackathon, I'll be welcoming all ideas on how to make it the most productive time it can be. I have a lot of prep work to do before I'm able to lead it. Share your thoughts!
Great! How about starting a
Great!
How about starting a new wiki post to slice up the big task into smaller peaces people can pick from?
As far as I can see we don't have a single person/company leading the next steps so either the DA should hand out tasks or individuals take action and then those need tasks to work on.
I haven't seen discussion on how to transform http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/homepage_notloggedin.html into a drupal theme fo example, starting such a discussion (focused on the how it is done best not about wich menu item should be where) would bring some actual progress and a starting point for someone to do it.
specific groups
There are these nice Drupal.org redesign infrastructure team and Drupal.org theme developers groups, where all this action is supposed to happen.
I did post a breakdown of modules in need of help for the Drupal 6 upgrade of drupal.org (which is a prerequisite to any redesign work) on the infrastructure group before blogging about it. No significant results so far, except one change "danithaca will test the pivots_block sub-function. should be D6 friendly w/o changing code". I admit I might have chosen wrong ways to get people involved, but did expect that smaller subteams would spawn out of the starting discussions. Looks like neither the targeted groups, nor Drupal Planet is a godsend to get the word out on stuff where people can help out. The Drupalcamp Cologne hackathon and possible live IRC meetings and such would help the cause more significantly, but even my employer is not ready to put me full time on this, so I don't have time to manage live discussions except when put specifically on the job.
Also, Kieran started discussion on the starter theme to use for the drupal.org redesign, so that it would not be a theme designed from the ground up (just mentioning this, not taking sides on whether it should be based on a starter theme or written from scratch). On the theme I've heard that Mark would share a style guidelines doc with the association (that was one of his deliverables as far as I am informed), which would greatly help any theming work (as opposed to just running and implementing what he mocked up on the iterations blindly).
Thanks Gábor I know about
Thanks Gábor I know about the groups. I think your blog posts and opening the wiki page is great, maybe there were simply alot of people to busy finishing project within 2008 / being on holiday / laying in bed with a flue / celebrating Christmas / etc. like me and I therefore am proposing to do the same as you did with the "Drupal.org to Drupal 6 upgrade collaboration" wiki with a "Drupal.org template collaboration" wiki. I think work can be and should be started in the directions of the theme now. I also think it needs a little extra push to get things going again now.
Kierans discussion:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/15532
Put it in the group
It was unclear to my, and probably many others, that this is stalling the redesign implementation. Note that not everyone reads the Planet so it might be a good idea to write up a clear post in the Redesign Group with what needs to happen next.
We'd be happy to help
I'm pretty sure we'd be willing to dedicate a couple of days for our team to work on this. We'd also be happy to host something here in Philly, if anyone else is interested...
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
Where is "Forum" link?
Seems a bit strange, that Drupal forums cannot be reached with a single click and from the first page (monitor screen, without scrolling down). If Drupal is all about building communities, then link to biggest piece of Drupal community should be clearly visible and reachable on first level.
For me header area is too high. Vasted space.
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