My background is marketing and my hobby is web design/development. As a marketer first and a developer second, my approach to building a site is probably different than the average Drupal power-user. I tend to approach building a website with visitor ease of use in mind first, then manager/developer second, and editor/contributor last. I know several fellow developers who disagree with this approach, but my opinion is that the visitor is the priority, if they don't find the site and use the site then whats the point of the site, but I digress.
Anyway, I was recently rehired by my former employer to develop a new website for them. This is a complete upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7. As a side note, I've worked in Drupal since D5, managed a D6 (for former employer) site for two years, and over the past year I've built a dozen or so sites in D7 and with every one I have learned a bit more about Drupal. I know Drupal is an evolving platform and things get better with each release.
I say that to hopefully provide some credibility to my credentials so that what I say in the following isn't seen as a newbie just complaining because he doesn't know Drupal.
The reason I am writing this is to hopefully encourage others to join an ongoing dialogue and hopefully get some of our ideas integrated into the D8 core. I am by no means a coder, so I won't pretend to understand all that is involved in the module or core build, so hopefully some of you coders will find interest in this and be able to provide insight.
In developing the aforementioned new site for my company, I have really been pushing myself to try new and different things. Our goal (as a company) is for our site to be one that our competition looks at and wonders how we did that and wants to copy us vs. us copying the competition. In doing this I have decided to begin using Page Manager (CT Tools) with custom views panes to build the site versus building custom .tpl files.
I've been a loyal Views user since I began building sites in D7. Mostly didn't use them in D6 because the site was already developed and there wasn't any desire by the owners of the company to go through change. With the new site build I've really seen the power of Page manager and it and Views combined together are alloweing me to do some pretty amazing things; definitely unlike anything our competition is doing.
However, I've run into a brick wall with a few things regarding Views and Page Manager; the two biggest issue with these tools is a) their lack of SEO compliancy and b) their inability to be flexible enough to do some very fundamental web development things.
On the SEO front:
I know SEO isn't something that developers worry a lot about, but for those of us who wear multiple hats (developer, marketer, designer, etc...) there really should be some turn-key SEO solutions built into the Drupal core; especially solutions that pertain to items which are dynamic, i.e. Views and Page manager custom pages. I know there are work-arounds and modules to help, but my take... why build a site that isn't SEO friendly? More than likely, eventually someone is going to have to SEO the site, and it is far easier to implement SEO on the front-end versus having to come back in and do it. Drupal core should include a full suite of SEO tools rather than depending on 3rd party modules. Naturally, if someone didn't want to mess with the SEO side they could simply not touch the SEO components.
That said to say this... as dynamic and powerful as views and Custom pages are; there are small little things like my issue and the SEO issues that really need to be addressed in core for D8. Drupal's modular flexibility really makes it far superior to other CMS and site building tools, but the complexity of getting things that have long been considered core for other platforms is something that is lacking in Drupal. A page whether it is created as a node, taxonomy term/vocabulary, or something more dynamic (non SQL db stored) like views pages or Page Manager pages should all have the ability to control the SEO via the module itself or via a backend UI. Similar to how metatags works now, but on a much more granular and all-encompassing level.
On the flexibility front:
One of the brick walls I've run into is these custom pages (specifically) the URLs having the ability to port into views and/or page manager. For example, I am attempting to build an (old-school) HTML site map of all the pages for our site. The site is fairly in-depth and it would be nice to have a place where users can find what they are looking for should all else fail. Of course this would be easy to do in views if all my pages were node-based or taxonomy-based, but our site uses many Views and Page Manager pages to build main pages for different sections of our site.
In the past I've just created a content type called PHP/HTML/CSS pages and built these pages as nodes. Basically creating PHP/HTML to do something that views and Page Manager can do much easier and in a lot less time. Since these were nodes I was then able to build something like a site map with all the pages on my site because, well, they were nodes. Now with views and pages that isn't possible, at least that I have been able to achieve. If you have a suggestion on this I have an issue open here: http://drupal.org/node/1875982.
Ok /endrant now...
There are other issues, but some of them are already being addressed in D8 development. D7 was a major bump in ease of development, and I would hope that D8 is the same from a marketing/SEO and visitor perspective. There are many large/enterprise sites using Drupal and I am sure many more would if the platform would gear to the marketing/SEO and visitor usability.
Like I said I hope this is a good place for your input and suggestions on what you would like to see, especially for those of you who are like me and wear many hats outside developer.
Comments
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Couple of thoughts....
First, and most importantly, no changes to drupal will ever be affected by a post in the forums, period. Besides the complete lack of respect the forums receive from most developers, there's virtually zero chance any core developer will even see your post. If you want to be an agent of chancge jump into the core issue queue (and no, you don't have to be a developer to participate). Anything else is a complete waste of time.
Second, you use the acronym "SEO" over and over without actually explaining what you mean. "SEO" is probably the most abused/misused term/acronym ever. It can refer to dozens of different things. However, if you just take it literally in its purest form as 'good google search results', core drupal has insane seo-- as evidenced by drupal.org itself (which uses minimal contributed modules compared to other comparable sites). You can see for yourself-- just google the word "views" (a generic enough word) and see what's at the TOP of the first results page.
Third, although even after reading your post I'm not sure I understand the exact problems you're experiencing, most of what you describe seems centered about views and page manager-- neither of which are part of core drupal currently (though views was added to core for d8) so it seems you're aiming yourself at the wrong component. As with core, if your issues are with views or ctools (where page manager lives), then you're better off in those issue queues rather than the forums.
And finally, and this can't be stated strongly enough, wishing for change in drupal is pretty well useless. If you want change you need to be an agent of that change. Wishing for others to do what you want, even when proposing it as 'the best thing for drupal' while using the tired "but I'm not a developer" meme is probably single most detrimental way of approaching it possible. I don't say that to be mean-- but factual. You appear genuine in your desire and took time to write a thoughtful respectful post-- i just hate to see your waste your time like that.
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Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
Thanks for your reply! I
Thanks for your reply!
I understand what you are saying, but have to disagree with you or at minimum offer counter-points.
First, SEO.
I am purely talking about on-page SEO. The reason that Drupal ranks high (even with a minimum number of SEO modules) is because it is chalk-full of content. The Google or other search engines algorithm have learned that when people search for views that a large number of clicks from that search are directed toward the Drupal site. When you have a community that is adding fresh content and the site is highly used then the search-engines naturally are going to promote those types of sites higher in the SERPs, but the majority of websites that are built on the Drupal platform don't have the traffic, content or community that Drupal has, so what about new sites or sites that don't have a large community like Drupal?
The life-blood for these new or smaller sites is developing good search engine optimization practices– both on and off-page. I won't even breach off-page SEO, but in on-page SEO, it's crucial for pages to at least have the ability to have meta title and meta description. The contrib SEO modules allow for this to be added to nodes, taxonomy, users. However, we all know that most (good) Drupal sites are built with more dynamic pages... i.e. Views and Page Manager pages. Knowing this, why not install some standards in the core than handle site-wide on-page SEO? I get that (until D8) that Views is not core and that Page Manager (even in D8) isn't core, but it should just be part of Drupal to handle and URL within the domain and allow for some basic SEO for that page.
To take it one step further, if we know there are 6 major components of on-page SEO why not just put those into the core then allow the developer to turn these functions on/off? But I digress on this point...
Agent of change:
I totally understand your point here and agree with you. While I am not a developer I do attempt to help where I can. I am often in the IRC trying to help people where I can. Just because we don't commit to a project/module/core doesn't mean we aren't engaged. I personally find it more frustrating when someone that doesn't have the technical know-how attempts to provide technical information. It blurs the lines. This is why in enterprise settings there are teams to handle different roles.
Target of my post:
I didn't post in the forum to get a huge response from developers. Rather, to maybe provide an outlet for others that aren't as technically savvy as a developer to express their opinions. If a developer wanted to jump in then great, but I wasn't expecting it.
Anyway, I am not here to split hairs. Like I said I get what you are saying. Ultimately I think I was at a frustration point when I wrote my post and needed to vent. So maybe that is all it was good for. =)
Best,
Cory
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Ah ok, that clarifies what you're looking for in terms of SEO. Core drupal already allows for friendly urls via the path module. To expand on that one adds token (the basics of which are already in core for d7) and pathauto. If you think those features should be part of core then you're free to lobby for it (that's how the part of token that is in core d7 was added). Fair warning though-- recently the emphasis has been on reducing core not expanding it.
As for adding meta info to core, that's definitely a reasonable idea, but again (not to sound like a broken record), features like that generally don't just materialize in core-- someone has to propose it and champion it. That it has not been done to date only means that no one has found it important enough to expend the time and effort necessary to champion it (they're content to use the contribs).
Venting is fine-- but you took the time to write a thoughtful post so I didn't want to see it go ignored (or worse flamed, lol). Thoughtful constructive criticism is always a good thing (even when in the form a vent).
And I totally get what you're saying about non-technical contributors, but drupal really isn't an enterprise setting and actually functions differently than any other dev environment I've been exposed to. So traditional thinking doesn't usually apply, lol. So don't discount your ability to contribute! Although more developers is always a good thing, personally, I think drupal could also benefit from more non-developer cat herders.
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Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.