Installation and configuration book structure

Thanks for taking a stab at this. Here are some immediate thoughts as I read this:

1. Rename from "Installation and configuration" to "Installation and setup"
2. Shorten "Introduction to Drupal terminology" to "Drupal terminology"

+1 - Less is more (to say the least, though no less)

3. Move "Drupal terminology" to "About Drupal" book
4. Move "Troubleshooting FAQ" to "Reference" book ("Customization and theming")

-1 ? -- My feeling is that the terminology is more relevant for people getting down to brass tacks, like installation. The "About Drupal" section is where people will want to see what it's about -- the big picture. A "related link" in the About Drupal section pointing to the terminology might be good to add, but to move the whole section there doesn't quite seem right to me.

Re the Troubleshooting, I suppose it depends. Troubleshooting install and setup issues should probably stay within the Install area, but other kinds of troubleshooting, like problems that can come up in the normal routine of website administration and maintenance, could reasonably be found in Reference. Maybe install-related problems could be called "Installation Troubleshooting" while other troubleshooting could be titled "Website Troubleshooting" or something like that. IMHO....

5. Shorten "Drupal Distributions: CivicSpace installer and Community Relationship Management" to "Drupal distributions"

+1

6. Re-title "HOWTO: Advanced user's guide" to "How to find answers" (it is 2 pages)
7. Move "How to find answers" to lead child of "Troubleshooting FAQ"

-1 in that, to me, "How to find answers" seems kind of vague. After all, isn't the whole Handbook how to find answers? Is "HOWTO:" a convention we want to pursue? And if so, should it apply to broad topics as opposed to specific issues (e.g., HOWTO: Override Date Format)? I think "Advanced User's Guide" may be vague, but as a catch-all for your non-basic material, it certainly seems fairly descriptive as a place to find that non-routine kind of info and help.

8. Shorten "Tuning your server for optimal Drupal performance" to "Server performance"

I'm not sure this is an improvement. It's about tuning the server, not about server specs, so the latter might be a bit confusing. If you think about search terms people are likely to use, "tuning" is good to have in the title, imho. Another alternative might be "Server tuning techniques".

Other impressions?

Not really a bug, is it?

I am reluctant to rename 'Installation and configuration' because the idea is for it to be Installation and configuration of Drupal (core). I'd like to see some more intro to customizing your site articles in the beginning of the next section.

I've renamed to Drupal terminology even though I like the other better. The content needs some expansions and additions. I added some more to the taxonomy off a description from styro I found in the forums. It needs to stay the first item in that section. I realize that people like to 'skip' to the meat but I we use a lot of terms for very specific things and I think people should have to jump past it if they're going to skip.

Instead of .... HOWTO: Advanced user's guide what about 'Next steps' or similar? Something to group more then basic stuff and serve as an introduction of what to do next? Moved tuning to a sub page of this and renamed it to 'Server tuning considerations" to see what it looked like, it may be that "Server tuning techniques" looks better (comments?). Moved planning a website to a sub page (This needs a lot of love and attention but the basic framework and ideas were solid, which is why I left it published until someone could edit it).

Moved migrating from other software to the dev handbook. That's not really a basic end user type thing.

Moved Troubleshooting FAQ to the end of the book. We've had it broken out in the past but then no one could find anything and none of the regulars saw old stuff to update/fix which resulted in a lot of duplicated content. This flat all in has had far more activity and updates then the old method. We can revisit this but updating to 5.0 should go first.

Unpublished the CivicSpace page. It's no longer distributed from their site and that company has changed focus. I will probably figure a way to add it as a historical reference in the about section with an article on 'distributions -history of' or similar. It's an important piece of our history but for now it's unpublished.

Best Practices guidelines are part of installing and configuring your site. Before I wrote the first articles we had a tremendous amount of support questions from panic'd people who lost their sites due to no backups or inadvisable changes on their production sites. I am convinced that people just installing and configuring their sites need to be exposed to this as soon as possible if only so we can ask if they've done this.

An intro to Advanced section' concepts or whatever would be excellent. We have a diverse audience here, neophytes (who are power users but self taught), people coming from other systems with assumptions that get in their way, specialists who see one aspect of web sites but not others so any way we can get a logical top page intro into the next steps (advanced, whatever) to group the more complex areas would be good. I was mainly getting things out of the way so we could see what it looked like.

Maybe intermediate or 'beyond basics' for the title?