I have many years of software development experience. I started to look into Drupal and Joomla about two years ago. So far, I have used Joomla for two production sites. Now I need to work on a more serious web application. I have read more documents on Drupal site and experimented with theme and module coding.
With my limited exposure to Drupal, I came to the appreciation of Drupal’s structure and implementation. I have decided that my next application will be based on Drupal. However, like many other people, I am bewildered by some basic questions about Drupal. I scratched my head all the time and wondered why.
Many people claim that Drupal site is not as vibrant as Joomla. I don’t see why that has to be the case.
Here are a few questions: (I’ll have to beg your pardon if any questions sound stupid.)
1. Why is this forum is so monolithic? No avatars, no colors, not even emoticons :-(
2. Why can’t there be a few sticky topics on the top of a forum, where the most commonly asked questions or the most useful topics (I know these might be subjective to select) are displayed, It may help many visitors to get some quick answers, and get a quick idea what the forum is about. Instead of starting with some random post.
3. On the module / theme download pages: Drupal has two ways to sort modules and themes: by name or date. This kind of sorting doesn't provide any useful information about the modules. Joomla download area sorts the components by rating by default. I believe that’s very useful. They allow user to rate the modules and provide reviews. They also have “Most favored”, “Most popular”, “Editor’s pick”, “Top Rated” and more. Why can’t Drupal do something like that?
The reason I raise these questions is that when I come to the site, I always felt like helpless, don’t know where to go. I think these simple measures may help visitors to get around more easily and improve visitor’s experience on the site.
Many industry reviews label Drupal as a more developer’s favor. I believe Drupal can do more to appeal to more people, and more to developer-minded people as well.
My 2 cents.
Comments
Hi, i found the forum
Hi,
i found the forum structure better than joomlas ... includeing the search and response times.
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1. It's a theme thing and avatars etc add bandwidth and load. While the infrastructure should now be capable of supporting that for many years Drupal.org ran on one server and the increasing load of millions of page views and bandwidth costs made it impractical. There is a re-design group working at things but they are volunteers and working on other things as well, so in a few months you may see some changes. Drupal.org is a really big site and changing it is complicated but wheels in motion. Just in first gear. (Release Drupal 6 first, then glitz and shiny new icons etc :)
2. We use the handbooks, not the forums to store long term information. Limitations of other bulletin board systems have resulted in using 'sticky' posts instead of writing documentation in a handbook. See Getting Started to get started. In addition to culture differences in how forums evolved and get used, core forums with out some contrib modules are fairly basic. Drupal 6 has had some work to add some permissions and additional core capabilities to them which will help and some others are actively working on additional features that may eventually wind their way into Drupal core or drupal.org.
3. It's more complicated than that. Joomla had a problem with 'user ratings' where they discovered developers/contributors gaming the system. Also, Drupal != Joomla. There are over laps but also differences in the communities that are subtle and important (not better/worse, just differences). User ratings also grow stale and may not apply in 2 months on a version release, what then? Clear ratings? new module? Complicated. There are a few issues being worked on to expose download and other statistics information on the module pages to help people evaluate modules and themes. These are actually complex to do in a way that provides reasonably accurate information yet does not destroy the database with queries. Somewhere in the issue queue are screen shots of the interface. So, while not specifically what you are asking, this issue is being addressed. If you search the infrastructure queue you should be able to find it. There are bigger threads in the pro/con of the approach as well. Soon hopefully
Raising questions is the first step to more involvement.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Thanks for the response. I
Thanks for the response. I understand all the work is done by volunteers. Let's just hope Drupal site will improve the UI in a not too distant future. Look and feel are also important besides the nifty underlying engine, especially for a web development platform.
I also agree with Laura's response that Drupal's search is better than Joomla's.
I can see handbooks are a good idea. Will it be even better to stick the handbook links on the top of the relevant forums? I actually came from handbooks area to here, because the questions posted in that area don't get answered quickly if at all.
...
Generally the questions posted in the handbook pages are removed.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide