Contributing to DrupalEd

Hello, all,

There have been some conversations recently about adding features into DrupalEd -- the main discussion has been around improving documentation and supporting different types of install profiles, but, IMO, there are also other areas where things can be made better.

First off, for those who are offering suggestions, thank you. Using the install and providing feedback gives us all a place of reference from which to start the discussion, and get more people contributing into DrupalEd.

As I mentioned a little earlier, there is now a project for DrupalEd on drupal.org. This provides us with a couple resources: first, it provides an issue queue that we can use to create and track issues (including documentation issues, and I created two earlier in the night to get us started). When we get rolling building install profiles, this will give us a place to start listing out the modules needed for the different profiles, and a place to upload patches related to the profiles. If there are developers who want to work with us on this, contact me and we can get this started.

I also want to stress that anybody can contribute -- you don't need to be a programmer, a designer, a web developer, etc -- if you have used a DrupalEd site, or installed a DrupalEd site, you have something to contribute. If you are worried that your documentation won't be clear, well, don't worry -- post your idea in the issue queue, and we can all work on it there.

In general terms (and doing a brief summary of ideas I have seen mentioned in the group), we need to focus on the following areas:

1. (no technical expertise required) End user documentation: what does a student do when they are in the site? What does a teacher do when they are in the site? How are courses and groups created?

2. (some familiarity with Drupal required, but much of this can be written/outlined by non-technical users) Site Admin documentation: how is the functionality in the site achieved? What modules are used? How can admins add modules to the site?

3. (Web designer/Instructional Designer) Improve the existing theme/navigational structure. Design/modify an existing theme for inclusion in the profile.

4. (developer/some familiarity with PHP) Create install profiles -- see this discussion for an overview of this.

At the risk of stating the obvious, all contributors to the project will be credited in a file that will ship with the profile. And, again at the risk of stating the obvious, the profile/project will be improved as more people pitch in. The more people contributing documentation, the better the documentation will be, and the more we will have.

So -- let's get this done. Start filing some issues, writing some documentation, tweaking some themes, and building some profiles.

Cheers,

Bill