Problem/Motivation
This is one of the support improvement issues originated in #1236290: Decide on a course of action for improving support options on Drupal.org.
At drupal.org, support requests in non-support community workplaces like work groups, issue queues, mailing lists such as development, etc. have greatly increased in recent times. For example, on the new and very active issues #1236290 (above linked) and #1236280: We need a central place for core contributors broadcast their business, those misplaced support requests are repeatedly mentioned as the main cause of the issues.
There are several possible factors involved, like the growing number of new Drupal users, and the mix of issue queues and support forums in drupal.org search options, discussed in #955928: Split apart "Forums & Issues" in search filters.
Update by lisarex: this idea has also been discussed in #1288460: Divide "Community & Support" top level nav into Community, Support and Get Involved
However, one of the main causes of this misplaced support traffic appears to be the new navigation, which recently removed the direct header links to Support and Forums.
Until October 2010, there were two header navigation tabs for support on all Drupal.org pages: "Support" (drupal.org/support) and "Forum" (drupal.org/forum). See:
- [screenshot] 1. Header navigation until October 2010

No problem here, support request were directed to the appropriate support sections. According to web analytics from 2008, mentioned in #314325: Redesign the support page, "most of the traffic goes to two sections of Drupal.org, documentation and forums". Support was also a successful header link.
Both "Support" and "Forum" header tabs were removed last October, and now there are zero support tabs. What we have now in navigation, "Community & Support", is a misleading title because that's not a support page, it's a community page (drupal.org/community), with the forums lost among many community resources, mainly for work, like groups.drupal.org, mailing lists, etc. Naturally, because of the page title, new users think all the community is a support place:

Proposed resolution: User interface changes
This is how header navigation can look after fixed, with Community (drupal.org/community) header link named correctly, and Support (drupal.org/support) header link restored:

(For comparisons, we can open the images on other browser tabs, right mouse button needed).
Indeed, just a quick fix is needed, a few lines of HTML and a node field. There are some undefined CSS classes, excepting li.first, so this navigation seems maybe hardcoded in the design, rather than primary links, etc. In any case, apart from possible patch details, this is the resulting HTML.
In the current header:
<li class="forum"><a href="/community" title="Drupal Community and Support">Community & Support</a></li>
Proposed header fix:
<li class="community"><a href="/community" title="Drupal Community">Community</a></li>
<li class="support"><a href="/support" title="Drupal Support">Support</a></li>
As well, there is now a tiny footer link, that should be fixed at the same time for consistency. In the current footer:
<li class="community first"><a href="/community">Community & Support</a></li>
Proposed footer fix:
<li class="community first"><a href="/community">Community</a></li>
The footer part of this issue summary has been updated (see comment #4) because a link to drupal.org/support has been recently added to the footer navigation, fixing another issue, #1234422: Tweak to drupal.org footer .
Finally, the node field for the /community page title should be "Community".
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #7 | fixsupport.patch | 6.85 KB | lisarex |
| 3.CommunityToCommunityAndSupportToSupport.jpg | 8.74 KB | juan_g | |
| 2.SupportRedirectedToCommunity.jpg | 8.9 KB | juan_g | |
| 1.HeaderNavigationUntilOctober2010.jpg | 9.21 KB | juan_g |
Comments
Comment #0.0
juan_g commentedSome details added.
Comment #0.1
juan_g commentedMinor edit.
Comment #0.2
juan_g commentedMinor style edit.
Comment #0.3
juan_g commentedMinor edit.
Comment #0.4
juan_g commentedMinor edit.
Comment #1
lisarex commentedI would not suggest putting support in the primary navigation, but I would love to put it in the footer #1234422: Tweak to drupal.org footer
as well as the Support page should become part of the Community and Support subnavigation. The 'community and support page' encapsulates it all, since many support options are community based.
Comment #2
juan_g commentedThe problem with "Community & Support", as explained above, is that all support seekers are redirected to a community page, not really a support page. Therefore, community workplaces are being saturated with support requests from new users that should be directed to support resources (currently, forums, documentation, etc.). Affected places are for example the development mailing list, many work groups, etc.
So, instead of "Community & Support", separate "Community" and "Support" header links would be really more appropriate, as proposed in this issue.
Comment #2.0
juan_g commentedOrder number for screenshots.
Comment #3
juan_g commentedIssue Summary edited for clarity.
Comment #3.0
juan_g commentedIssue Summary edited for clarity.
Comment #4
juan_g commentedA tiny "Need Help?", linking to http://drupal.org/support , has just been added yesterday to drupal.org footer (see the issue mentioned by lisarex, comment #1). So, removing the fixed footer part from the title of this issue, and updating the issue summary.
The essence of this issue is still the same, restoring "Support" in header navigation, that is to say modifying the current:
Get Started Community & Support Documentation Download & Extend Marketplace About
to:
Get Started Community Support Documentation Download & Extend Marketplace About
with distinct "Community" (drupal.org/community) and "Support" (drupal.org/support), for the reasons explained in the issue summary.
Comment #4.0
juan_g commentedSupport improvement issue originated in #1236290
Comment #4.1
juan_g commentedUpdating the footer part of the issue summary, just fixed on #1234422.
Comment #5
davidhernandezI'm not sure it is necessary to split them up. I agree that Community and Support are fairly intertwined. However, I find it odd that /support has no obvious way to navigate to it. It looks to be an orphan, and something should be done about that.
Another possibility would be to rework the http://drupal.org/community page, separating the text into two distinct sections.
Comment #5.0
davidhernandezMinor point on patch and html.
Comment #6
arianek commentedI'm a +1 on giving Support its own nav item again in the main menu. So many people coming to D.o are coming for that reason and we want to get them help as quickly as possible so they don't end up another of the "I couldn't find any information about what I was trying to do, so I gave up." stories.
Comment #7
lisarex commentedYep, I've def come around to the idea of Support having it's own link.
Here's a patch to the drupalorg_crosssite module
It
* adds Support after Documentation (see https://skitch.com/lisarex/8d17q/drupal-open-source-cms-drupal.org)
* Replaces Need Help? with Support, and moves it over to the Get Started column (since I believe that makes more sense to newbies!)
If folks want to just review the patch, I can tweak as needed and commit it, and drumm can deploy.
Comment #8
arianek commentedThat plan sounds A+!
Comment #9
lisarex commentedCool, I've committed this. This means the support page content has to be *awesome*.... see #1429436: Changes for http://drupal.org/support for existing discussion.
Comment #9.0
lisarex commentedAdding the linked screenshots, thanks to http://drupal.org/node/528682
Comment #10
juan_g commentedWe can see this has been deployed already on drupal.org (excepting localize.drupal.org at this time).
This organizational improvement means that now the increasing support traffic -new users, etc.- will be more directly redirected to the appropriate support resources, and therefore contributors will be able to be more efficient in their community workplaces. Thanks!
Comment #11
dwwComment #12
arianek commented@dww do we need to file another issue to get it deployed on localize.d.o? i didn't want to mark fixed because of that...
Comment #14
juan_g commentedJust noticed that it has been deployed on localize.d.o as well. So, good work, this issue seems completely fixed now.
Comment #15.0
(not verified) commentedadd link to other issue supportintg splitting support