After reading "Wordpress vs Drupal; what's in a reputation?" http://drupal.org/node/29364 I felt I needed to open up some of my own thoughts and start a new thread on improving Drupal for Bloggers.
I'm going to bitch and complain a lot, please take into account that I love and use Drupal, I think its great, you guys are doing a wonderful job, its just NOT easy to use for beginners.
From a blogger perspective that came from WordPress to Drupal after wanting multiple blogs / sites with more functionality and I found Drupal's learning curve far too high to get something basic to my liking up and running. Nothing seemed easy and I ran into many module bugs, had to learn CVS, patching and terminology.
To make it easier I feel there should be a single admin interface by default but allow custom interfaces through theming. Sooo many of the Drupal themes were buggy with the admin interface when I first came to customising drupal. That really put me off. I had to install the sections module and that was a pain in the arse. Someone please core an option to have a single admin interface thats designed by a designer, not a coder!
SEO permalinks, why doesn't Drupal core do this yet? Pathauto is only half a solution. WordPress' descriptive permalinks make so much more sense than Drupal's default "Clean URL's".
Theme's. People are individuals! Everyone wants to customise their blog/site. It should be easy to do it and should be flexible. Only recently with the flexiblock module is it made more flexible. Core it or something like it. Left and right aren't enough places.
PHPTemplate. I'm glad it will be in core in 4.7. Please make a new funky theme using PHPTemplate the core theme too! Have a theme competition! The old bluemarine doesn't showcase to new users who like to change a few things, just what drupal can look like and do. Themeing modules also sucks. I wanted to be able to insert adsense code after a certain post. I'm yet to work out how, I gave up. I can enter a few lines of code in WordPress templates and do that no problem. I have to dig through node.module for that probably. This is where I see drupal falling down. Theming. Unless your a coder you can't make it look exactly how you want it to easily. WordPress you just edit a few template files all in the one directory and your done. Rarely do you enter the codebase.
Creating content. The interface is fugly, unintuitive. There needs to be workflow changes. Title, Content, Insert/Attach Object then Tag, Categorise, Publish Options then Publish. I'm glad 4.7's AJAX implementation will be nicer there. But still a single admin interface would come in useful out of the box, to lay that out for new users. Make it simple. Familiar. The input format section needs a link to where you can configure that too. Took me forever to work out I could change those confusing defaults. To work out why some of what I'd typed in posts wasn't appearing!
Comments. Set defaults so that anonymous users can enter comments. Having to login is not on with bloggers. Deal with spam as it comes in.
Image handling. Should be in core.
Installation wasn't a problem. A script would be nice though. Adapt CivicSpace's. The installation text file needs to explain subdirectory multi sites better too.
The more I think about it the more I think there needs to be a "Drupal for Bloggers" Fork Release. Especially if efforts arent made to make it easier for users wanting to transition from blog software to Drupal to use it's extra functionality for their own sites.
What do others think?
Comments
Maintainance and the Past
There was a Drupal for Bloggers put out and the person who put it out never kept it maintained... that lead people back to this site looking to upgrade. There is a difference between a fork and a distribution. What you're talking abuot is a distribution. I personally am game for such a distribution, check out my site below. First step is to compile a list of modules needed, second step is to put it together, third step is to beta test, and the forth is to release it. I am willing to work with you on this if you want. Contact me.
Sami
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Please read the handbook, search the forums, then ask...
http://drupal.etopian.net (Modules and Drupal Services)
Sami, what you mention there
Sami, what you mention there would be a good start, however, I see there needing to be more than just a simple repackage to make it suitable for my blogging needs long term. Fork was obviously the wrong word, terminology was never a strong point of mine. :) I'd be more looking at a highly modified distribution than a simple repackaging. Its likely some of the things like SEO permalinks would need more work than just a module addon but I may be wrong. Having said that I see a need for keeping in step with Drupal releases too however I'd prefer that added features and accessibility could be added into Drupal rather than go and redo something that almost does what I want.
Unless there's support to back a distribution up, I don't see it lasting like that one you've mentioned there. If I did something, I'd be doing it from scratch, and mostly a hack, I've never done something like this before personally, and would be a big commitment to maintaining. I'm not sure I want to do that myself. If enough others are interested it might be possible, but only if like-minded. Too many cooks are likely to spoil the brew.
As CivicSpace has shown, some features and modules have migrated from there back into Drupal, which benefits everyone, I envisage something like that specifically for bloggers would be the aim.
Just testing waters to see how much of a need there is in the community for something like this, before I or others take it further.
Will definately keep your offer in mind. Thanks for your input! :)
Distributions and Forks
The problem with creating an actual fork, which is what you'd be doing if you changed the core, is this: if you don't keep it maintained, you've a flock that you've lead astray. There will be people out there with your little fork that won't be able to get support or be able to leave your little fork without a significant headache. Instead of what you're proposing, which would require significant commitment and work from the developers in order to achieve your goals and in the long run may be bad for the end-users if you decide to abandon your project, I say stick with what we have going here now. Drupal already has a large dedicated community around it and the only way to leverage that is to keep it in the family... So what I am saying is, don't touch the core, if you want in addition to what I proposed above, you can write additional modules to complement Drupal, Drupal is quite flexible so you may be able to do quite a few of the things mentioned above without touching the core. If you must touch the core, do it with the Drupal community and though that's a slow process, the end result will be much better for the end-users than going at it solo. If you had a revenue supported business model however you could create an actual fork, but then how is that being fair to Drupal or the developers or the community.
Sami
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Please read the handbook, search the forums, then ask...
http://drupal.etopian.net (Modules and Drupal Services)
Touching the core is why I
Touching the core is why I want to see how much support for a Drupal for Bloggers there is to either get some changes in Drupal for the better or to start maintaining my own fork or simply a distribution.
I'm thinking a patched distribution might be the way to go based on peoples reactions. Would others use such a distribution if it was made available is the question? I guess it would come down to spreading the word. Sami, do you have any idea how many use your Mega Drupal? For now I might just do something for myself as a project and if others want to use it, help maintain it, all the better.
My aim with this is helping spread Drupal more into the Blogosphere, showcase its additional uses, making it easier for me! and other to use in this area. It has all the goodness there to do it, it just isn't being realised because of that image problem;
I might start playing away with core and aim for my own Blogger distribution to coincide 4.7 release. Including modules, a nice phpTemplate theme with a single admin interface, some of what I've talked about here. See what comes of it. If others want to join in later if I do something, cool, if not at least I'll have something to my tastes and maybe some patches to contribute.
working with the community
As sami has already pointed out, there are significant advantages for working with the community. I have something additional to add.
When I began using Drupal as a blogging tool, one of the things that I liked about it was its handling of categories (taxonomy) with RSS feeds. This was a couple of years ago, and at that time, even MT's support of categories was pretty poor. In the years since, Drupal's clean URL approach has been seen as an important SEO feature, and indeed, far superior than what other CMS's/blogs were offering.
So this is a story of evolution. The fact that you perceive WordPresses permalink SEO as superior to Drupal's does not, IMHO, indicate a major fault in Drupal, but rather a new direction for futher evolution of Drupal features. Similarly, there's been much talk about creating a profile system so that out of the box, Drupal could be configured for bloggers (among other things) at the click of a couple of buttons.
Since you mention working with CVS above, I imagine that you are interested in some of the more raw, currently experimental features of Drupal that aren't quite ready for prime time. Given all of your interest in making Drupal better for bloggers, why not jump in and help to refine those features so that they are available to everyone--rather than just bloggers--and help in the continued evolution of Drupal in new directions? Long term both you and Drupal tend to gain much more.
BTW: CivicSpace originally went more along the lines of what you are proposing with their own CVS setup, but as I understand it now, they are now working at their development as sami describes by working to shape the direction of Drupal core development and creating their own additional modules where needed.
I like your thinking
I like your thinking cel4145, I'm talking of some evolutionary measures to help improve areas like URL's and user friendliness that everyone could benefit from. Thats my aim with this discussion.
As for a profile system, that would certainly go down well but only if it was suitably showcased. I have reservations over something like that getting lost as another feature of Drupal. It already does many many things and yet, unless you dive in and download a release and then the many many modules, you really don't get an idea of just how extensible it is. Most people don't have the time for that and I know the head Drupal developers probably like to keep their codebase small and light and may consider any additional profiles as mere bloatware. Why a blogger distribution maintained in parallel with releases might be the go, later on that could well become a profile, as could something like CivicSpace, but for now maybe a good maintained distro is the way to go. The current CivicSpace model seems a good one with their own site for discussion and spreading the word. Thats very much along the lines I was thinking only specifically for bloggers. I might give something like that a go and if I end up with anything to add to core I'll make my patches available. I just wanted to air some of the areas I find lacking to gauge the best approach to solving some of those.
Thanks for the feedback.
not just make patches available
Making your patches available after the fact will not guarantee that they will end up in core. Since you like the CivicSpace approach, you might follow their method of working as a core Drupal developer with core developers to see if you can't assist in developing Drupal core in directions that serve your interests.
Could you elaborate on this
What needs to be improved, besides the fact that pathauto isn't in core?
- Robert Douglass
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Rate the value of this post: http://rate.affero.net/robertDouglass/
I recommend CivicSpace: www.civicspacelabs.org
My sites: www.hornroller.com, www.robshouse.net
Hi Robert,
Hi Robert,
Pathauto works great for the basics like content url's and basic taxonomy, forums but as soon as you start adding in modules, say taxonomy_menu all that good work is lost, and my understanding, in order to have search engine friendly URL's your required to modify pathauto to support that for that individual module. Or manually go and add an alias for each individual item.
I had problems even getting pathauto to work with 4.6.3 initially, requiring a support request, bug fix. With a great response I should add! I'm just finding many other little issues seem to pop up with additional modules from time to time. It's just the framework behind it that isn't scalable I have issues with. Why I only see it as half a solution.
I'd like to see modules plugin to something like pathauto or its rewrite equivelant in core to allow customisation of URL patterns for any module or subdirectory tree in bulk. Modules providing tags that can be used to make those patterns.
To begin with would it be possible to do something simple with "Clean URL's"? Have the titles to items be pulled by default where available?
as an example:
/taxonomy_menu/1/1
tells me nothing about where I am.
/taxonomy_menu/myVocabulary-Title/my-Term-Title
would be much better. Is this easily doable?
Yeah, you could do it
There's no reason it couldn't be done. The path auto module would be the most logical place to expand functionality. I personally think it is great, flexible, clean and highly automated. You can even bulk alias content that already exists when you install the module. It seems like a non-issue that it can't anticipate the URLs of contributed modules and therefore has to be extended to deal with them.
How are other systems better? You seemed to imply that there was a better solution on the market... could you tell me more about how that works?
- Robert Douglass
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Rate the value of this post: http://rate.affero.net/robertDouglass/
I recommend CivicSpace: www.civicspacelabs.org
My sites: www.hornroller.com, www.robshouse.net
Hi Robert.
Hi Robert.
I didn't mean to come across as saying other systems are better. They're not when you consider pathauto's tags and ability to alias in patterns for many paths over many types of content. The issue i've had is customising parts that aren't covered in that module. As patrick has commented further down I find myself with the same problems when it comes to easily hacking at Drupal. Things like those menu urls. If you think extending pathauto is the best way to cover this area then maybe some of the taxonomy menu modules should be included. taxonomy_dhtml, taxonomy browser and taxonomy_menu for example. But they could be all covered with readable Clean URL's like I mentioned earlier.
Blogs generally have categories listed in a sidebar. Most sites have menu's. WordPress as an example lets you set the URL pattern for posts and categories. If pathauto did menus with categories that would be great. Perhaps taxonomy_menu should be cored too. These are the sorts of modules I use, where finding infomation is important, and should in my opinion, have readable SEO urls. I'm sure there are plenty of other modules that could use this, I just don't know if extending a single module all the time is the best way to do it long term. Especially if it goes in core. You don't really want core changing just for individual modules all the time do you? I'd rather see modules fitting into the core than the other way around. I'll think about it more, and get back to you if I have some better suggestions.
I manage a site
...that uses pathauto, node keywords, technorati tags and google sitemap, and at this point I think it would be difficult to de-optimize the site. There's also the delicious module, folksonomy and all that promises....
Taxonomy is fully configurable by pathauto, by the way, and by adding indexing, I believe you achieve what you're describing.
Anyway, I agree with the others that the best way to go is to work with the developers here. A fork can run into security issues (something that has arisen twice in the past few months). And if you know code, you can offer up patches -- something that always will get a feature request prime consideration.
Laura
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pingVision • scattered sunshine
_____ ____ ___ __ _ _
Laura Scott :: design » blog » tweet
For inserting adsense
For inserting adsense adverts inline with node bodies, see here: http://drupal.org/node/30387
It's pretty simple. Admittedly not as easy as it is with wordpress, but then with wordpress you're hacking on the theme and have to redo the hack for every theme your site uses. (Oh, wait, wordpress only supports one theme out of the box) With drupal it's a module as I've done and applies no matter which theme the user has chosen to use.
Unfortunately this module doesn't work for aggregator or other special page types. For the aggregator I hacked on aggregator.module.
- David Herron - http://7gen.com/
+ David Herron - 7gen.com/, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com/drupal-blogging-hints
Thanks reikiman!
Thanks reikiman!
That will come in useful, like you i'll probably have to hack away at a few areas to make it work for me but I can certainly use that as a starter. Great, thanks! I remember briefly searching for something like that and not finding anything. Is it me or is the Drupal search not that crash hot?
I like your site btw.
Drupal & Wordpress
I wrote some posts a few months ago about Drupal and Wordpress in regards to installation, admin interface, and documentation. From the comments received, many people felt that Drupal was for developers. One person said they weren't interested in comparisons with Wordpress as it was a program they were never likely to use, and wrote
I assume this attitude stems from the fact that there are limited Drupal developers who would rather expend their time enhancing the software, than making it more accessible.
Personally, I am comfortable writing html and php ... I just wish Drupal was easier to hack!
expansion :)
The phrase means that if you want to work towards that, then that's good that it is your goal. Welcome to the community and start working on scratching YOUR itch. In the meantime, other people work on extending what they are interested in. If you can develop ways to make things better, then do so. If you are not a coder, then develop mock ups, work flow wire-frames (ideas) and suggest/present them. If they pass muster, then developers will integrate them. (yes, I saw you were comfortable with php)
Just because others here have different goals does not mean you cannot work towards yours. I still don't know php and have figured out the basics of phpTemplate. I suspose I should write some stuff up on it in the next two weeks.
We do not have a lot of UI guys here. A lot of the developers have been using Drupal for a while. If you want to make Drupal 'easier' then you really really need to mention what you 'define' as easier. Drupal is pretty darn easy as it is -depending on what you are trying to do. Is it WordPress? of course not, but it is different and it's strengths and architecture mean that how and where you do some things in Drupal are not where or how you do things in a different program. Making Drupal's adminstration/configuration more like (other bloggin/cms/software) tool is not the solution to making it easier. Making the workflow work more smoothly is.
There was a lot of work done from 4.5 to 4.6. A huge interface discussion is in the forums a year ago. Drupal is moving towards implementing a lot of those suggestions still, so 4.7 is even easier to use and has configuration options more centrally located.
So, my advise to you, is to play with 4.6. Take specific notes on things you think could be done better. Pull done CVS or the release candidate. See how/where things improved. Track drupal-devel list. When 4.7 comes out, have a UI proposal ready and hopefully some admin/configuration mock ups ready to go and discuss them.
I say when 4.7 comes out, because unless you are already following the discussions on how HEAD is progressing now, you are likely to run into things that are already changing/going to change or have had the desician made, but you are certainly welcome to jump in and start doing.
Accessability is important and we have folks working hard on it. Go help them and see what they need.
There is a whole bunch of more complex stuff about setting up a CMS and all the work that goes into designing a site to take advantage of it, that really, unless you are a tech, developer, power user or someone interested in technology, do not make a good fit for the technical neophyte. They have to learn a new vocabularly (web server, rss, php, html, smtp, theming, design, target audience, workflow, presentation, site maintenence, backups, usability, restores, troubleshooting). If you want to go for the technical neophyte, then something like CivicSpace distro or hosted services is the way to go. A CMS is complex. A good, usable web site built with one is more so. Drupal is easy easy to setup, so it fools people into forgetting the planning and stuff part.
Drupal.org has few enough people who help in the forums (but that is slowly changing, in the last few months there are people who are sticking around and answering questions which for me is an insane relief). I wrote the Best Practices guide because we had a lot of technical neophytes posting panic'd questions without the concept of a backup. BUT the ones who stuck around are the power users, the ones who enjoy technology. Some seem to have continued on answering questions which is even cooler. My focus is writing some docs and getting the mid level site admins to stick around and help the next generation.
If yours is usability, then scratch your itch and dig in. Welcome to the team.
-sp
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
If accessability is
If accessability is important, I think Drupal sells itself short at the moment. Admittedly, Drupal's complexity makes designing an interface difficult ... Wordpress in comparison is more limited in its application (like plutonium).
Drupal vs Wordpress - some more questions
What exactly are bloggers looking for when they abandon Wordpress?
What draws them to Drupal?
And why do they seem to think that turning Drupal into Wordpress is an easier and better idea than getting those missing things added to Wordpress?
To me these kinds of requests about how Drupal should work are effectively stripping out all its flexibility and turning it into a glorified blog. I think if Drupal had just aspired to be a powerful blogging tool it would've gone in quite a different direction.
The reason Drupal attracted me to it is that it is well designed flexible website framework that is very easy to customise without hacking its core to bits with hard to maintain patches. It can do all kinds of sites - Communities, eCommerce sites, Intranet Content Management Systems, Product support sites, Knowledge bases, News sites, Collaborative publishing, plain ol websites etc etc and yes even blogs.
With this flexibility comes some complexity (although it's surprisingly straight forward really), and certainly no way any one set of default settings is going to suit everyone. The further it gets pulled in one direction, the more it will suck for others. I fully support the current idea of a stripped back core with very generic default settings.
If that powerful flexibility is scary, maybe the user should be using a more limited specialised application. But users wanting extra flexibility without wanting to invest any effort or patience in grasping it are deluding themselves.
Not being one of them, I can't speak for the developers but maybe attracting all these unwilling to learn Wordpress or phpBB refugees isn't exactly helpful to the community. They seem to be attracting more than enough productive constructive community members that the project is more than healthly enough without laundry lists from newbies wanting it to behave just like Wordpress.
And I'm not pointing fingers here, just talking in general.
I don't think anybody is
I don't think anybody is trying to turn Drupal into Wordpress - at least, I hope not.
I use Drupal as a CMS, and not for blogging. I have never blogged, but I still admire the Wordpress interface. I agree with the original thread that Drupal could benefit from a seperately themed admin interface, and a redesigned interface for creating content. These are purely cosmetic features of course.
like the idea of drupal blog effort & improving content creation
First of all I Love drupal, at the same time I understand the itch to make it more useful as a bloggers tool. I dont agree that bloggers shouldnt be looking to Drupal, some blogers want to do more than the standard blogging tools, they want to build more around their blog. Likewise I feel that Drupal as a Community platform will be hugely strenghtened by improving its blogging capabilities. My reason for thinking so are that Communities are ultimately built up from individuals, and ultimately if Drupal doesnt provide that then another tool will come along eventually that does. But as of today I dont see that there is another tool out there able to match Drupal overall as a community CMS with such good tools for the individuals in the community. Or vice versa a blogging tool with such good capabilities to go beyond just simple blogging. Drupal is better than anyone in that middle space. Where I agree with this actual original posting is that if we could make Drupal Distribution for Bloggers that would be a good thing. If those individual bloggers could leverage the power of Drupal to communify that would be brilliant, because the community would be made up of equal individuals rather than subscribers to one umbrella community site. A distributed community of bloggers who can communify with each other is what Im looking towards. Drupal seems best placed tahn anything else, but it means individuals having there own personal drupal, not belonging to a single overarching drupal community.
I know to most drupal users and developers this is not how they are thinking of using Drupal, but each to their own, as sepeck says, scratch your own itch. so if there was another group of individuals focussing on a Drupal blog distro, then Im keen to get behind them. but I think there needs to be a significant number of people saying they are behind this, before its worth doing. Also I think it should be very much trying to be keeping inline with the drupal effort as a whole as much as possible and feeding back into it.
I also agree with that last point...
".. and a redesigned interface for creating content"...
I think its worthwhile looking at some alternatives/improvements for creating content etc.
My own feeling is that the world (especially the blogging world) is rapidly moving forward in very imprortant ways, and that these could be applied to Drupal to good effect.
For example the Microcontent/microformats/structured blogging ideas that are happening. (yes Wordpress now has a structured blogging plugin). These are seriously revolutionary things about the way people create , share, read and experience content.
The implications are that maybe drupal in future could incorporate these new microformats for itself and immediately plugin to the global open data surrounding these. For example formats for events, for reviews, for social network info, for tags, for voting/polls and so on.
It may mean separtaing base content from additional (structured content - microfrmats) . Currently drupal has each content type all wrapped up as one thing, a node type, if the units of content were able to reflect standard microformats it would be more elegant as well as immediately integrating with all the rest of the content being created everywhere.
Microcontent / microformats / structured blogging
These ideas sound interesting. Do you have any good links explaining the jist of this new stuff?
Are these things like standard XML schemas that can be shared via web services?
Styro, check out
Styro, check out http://microformats.org/about/
redesigned content creation interface
There was quite a conversation about this
Node creation redesign mockups
Node creation redesign mockups part deux
Could be time for someone else to step in, take the ball, and run with it :)
node creation discussions
Thats long and very good discussions there.
but whats happened in the intervening time, the last post was time ago, has there been continuing discussion on this anywhere else, is this where the CCK is taking things? Would be good to know where things are at before charging in.
progress on content creation UI updates
I don't know for sure if there has been any progress on this. But you could post a query on drupal-devel if you are interested in continuing work on it.
Separate admin interface
I think the calls for a separate admin interface are ultimately misguided - I know, I used to think it was a good idea too :)
I think it sorta makes sense to people when their site has 'admins' and 'everyone else'. But once a site gets complex with lots of different roles with different rights - how do you define what part of the interface is admin and what isn't?
Creating themes is on the whole pretty easy IMO. You can do lots with just CSS knowledge.
For the simple case with 2 roles (assuming someone can't get the sections module working), what is wrong with giving admins Bluemarine then giving everyone else your custom theme?
The 'admin' interfaces aren't custom works of well layed out art because they can't really be like that. Drupal is slotting together interface components based on all kinds of criteria and nobody can anticipate in advance what they will all look like.
Drupal is completely and utterly flexible compared to (for instance) Mambo where there are a very small fixed number of roles and interfaces are pretty much hardcoded. It is within the realms of possibility to 'design' an admin interface for Mambo that works for all installations - because they pretty much all work the same way. Drupals admin interface though is built at runtime rather design time and based on near infinite combinations of roles, access rights, installed modules, taxonomy configuration etc.
The main thing I really like about Drupal is the relative lack of hardcoding compared to other projects, and how much you can achieve with a few simple API calls. It means that someone can create a modules that pretty much just slots in with everyone elses themes, and also you can make a theme that works with most any module. You can also override the blocks, menus etc if you need. Sure that runtime flexibity means that there will be a few rough edges that need to be smoothed out - but if someone doesn't want to deal with that there are a number of other simpler projects to choose from.
Note I'm not saying Drupal is perfect and that there isn't room for interface improvement - just that I think incrementally improving the existing approach is better than throwing it out.
good point
That's a good point, and one that I hadn't really thought about. The more I think about it, the more I think your are right.
I don't think any of the
I don't think any of the improvement I've discussed so far are bloggers only issues. Maybe they're just me issues, but patricks cosmetic comments there mirror mine.
Much of the usability issues are something that can be addressed for everyone. I'm definately not advocating that we turn Drupal into WordPress, rather simply expanding it to allow those who want to use it as a blog/site with relative ease. The line is beginning to blur between blogs and CMS'. I see more and more people wanting to do more. And when blogware like WordPress doesn't do what people want they start looking elsewhere. Drupal often being seen as the next step because of its framework. Its just not as easy to do the simple things as it is with WordPress out of the box.
I downloaded the latest CVS yesterday for a quick look and the improvements I notice are definately a good step to making life easier for everyone but I still believe a lot of it is confusing for the average user. If Drupal is aiming at the top end of the userbase that knows how to code then thats fine, I'll simply modify it as best i can for my own personal use, and keep quiet. There seems to be a lot of resistance to improvements I'd like. But if the aim is to make it easy for the majority of people to want to manage their content, then there needs to be more usability and cosmetic changes IMHO.
Most users coming from software like WordPress aren't complete beginners. They know a little php and design, and this is where I feel Drupal is hard to work with in customising it to individual needs. It may well be great for managing a number of users with many modules and for the hardcore users with the knowledge to hack away at it to make it as personal as they want, but for the rest, those who want to do the basics and have it look pretty close to what they want, its just often not easy.
I totally agree with Patrick when it comes to a seperately themed admin interface, but with the option to turn that off. No one here is talking about replacing the ability to customise the admin themes. What I'd like to see is one admin theme (or a checkbox to enable it) out of the box to make it easier to use initially when customising user visible themes for individual bloggers. Those who wish to customise an admin interface should always have the option to enable and disable that. Where's the big issue in doing that? Too many of the contributed themes simply break the admin interface. Often being hidden. The first thing i did when coming to Drupal was download a theme I liked, install that only to find the sidebar covered up the admin block area to the point where I had to edit my db to change the theme back to default to access it. A single interface initially would go a long way to easing customisation for new users. They wouldn't have to worry about customising their themes to work with an admin interface. More people may create their own themes and contribute them if this was done. Can't both types of users be catered for out of the box? Finding and installing the sections module was way too much work when I should have been theming and not patching.
I'm all for keeping existing extensibility, I'd just like to see it made easier to do the essentials like theming, admin and creating content out of the box.
To make this easier/more friendly I'm merely suggesting for core:
*A single admin theme that can be enabled/disabled.
*Content creation workflow be revised.
I recently did some for Flock.com and would be happy to do some for Drupal when I have time and see what the developers think.
*Descriptive URL's (Pathauto and CleanURL improvements)
*A Category menu module (taxonomy_menu)
*Image handling module (image)
*A new vibrant default theme. (Like drupal.org's is!)
*Improved Filtered HTML Input Format by default. To allow:
*Something like WordPresses QuickTags. Nothing like a bloated WYSIWYG editor.
*Remember settings for the AJAX drop down content creation options allowing people to customise how the content creation interface appears every time new content is to be created.
*Anonymous comments with must leave their contact information on by default.
*Flexiblock in addition to the new updated block positioning that will be in 4.7
*Getting rid of /misc/drupal.css and print.css. And putting those in the default themes. ( backward compatibility issues here, I know. :) ) At least do what CivicSpace does for the default themes there instead.
I'm sure there are others I've missed. But thats a start. Most of these are purely cosmetic in making life easier and more appealing to new users. A website is after all something you look at. Drupal needs to make a better impression out of the box IMHO.
If I made my own blogger distribution, these are the things I'd change as well as including a few other things like adding subscriptions, image assist, feedback, atom, trackbacks, etc.
core vs contrib vs distros
I really think there is scope for a bloggers distro of Drupal like Ubuntu vs Debian. If you aren't up to speed on Linux distros, Debian is a solid well designed infrastructure that is fine for more advanced users, and Ubuntu is a user friendly (but with less initial choices for the user) distro built on top of the solid Debian base. It's the best of both worlds for both groups. And there are also lots of other distros built on top of Debian.
Drupal isn't intended to be an 'out of the box' experience - the developers want core kept lean and mean and I agree with them. I wouldn't want to see most of the stuff you want added to core. It starts down the track of confining how you have to use Drupal.
But I think the 'out of the box' experience is the perfect area for other specialist distros built on top of Drupal (like Civicspace) to aim for improving, and although I'd probably never use it I'd love to see a healthy 'Drupal for bloggers' distro.
Don't underestimate how much work that would be though - the previous effort that forked Drupal for bloggers seems to have died out as far as I can tell - or maybe Drupal got good enough for them.
Ubuntu vs Debian is a great
Ubuntu vs Debian is a great example styro. I have an Ubuntu LiveCD I keep meaning to play with sitting on my desk. :)
It sounds to me like a Drupal for Bloggers distro would be the next step in showcasing Drupal to more users while making it more accessble for more people. I can understand the desire to keep the core lean, but I still think its missing some essentials.
I do know that existing users who've stuck through the hard yards of initial customisation will always come back to Drupal and addon as needed, the same may happen with power users of something like Drupal for Bloggers. However for me it's new user pickup, those who want a better way of managing blogs and content and ease the initial customising of a Drupal install that I can see something like Drupal for Bloggers appealing to. That can only be good for the community in bringing more people, ideas and development in, so long as the core is followed with a quality distribution.
The only way to find out if something like this would be used is to create an area for discussion of what Drupal for Bloggers would look like, and see who's interested in assisting. I might look into doing that if there is more interest. Anything that comes of it can go back into the Drupal community, anything that doesn't well, at least I tried to improve it to how I'd like it to be.
Ubuntu vs Debian is a great
Yep because although there was a market segment that Debian wasn't addressing, Ubuntus out of the box experience would not have worked for Debian.
You could start an RFC in the forums to gauge interest. You'd probably also want to canvas the core developers and site maintainers about where and how they think the development effort could be located.
This could range from running off to set up a sourceforge account, to somehow fitting it in with contrib on drupal.org, to even working as an entire cvs branch on drupal.org. These decisions will be up to the site maintainers though, and you'd have to put a pretty good case to them I suppose. Some of these options might need extra work done on the project module to handle these kinds of distro branches.
Whatever you do, I'd recommend putting a lot of thought into how you go about branching and customising Drupal. If you keep your customisations are really clean and done the 'Drupal way', it shouldn't be to hard too keep up with Drupal development. I'd recommend against just forking it.
One risk I see is that the itch scratching userbase for a distro like that will almost by definition be less technically inclined than the rest of the Drupal userbase and you might have trouble attracting enough development manpower. Ubuntu solved that by Mark Shuttleworth paying people to work on it - probably not an option for you yet :)
I wish you luck though if you decide to try and run with the idea.
HTML filter patch
Hi neuraxon77,
the value of asking for very specific features and describing what you'd like to see in a clear way has been demonstrated:
http://drupal.org/node/30481
This is a patch to include most of the non-deprecated HTML elements you mentioned in the HTML filter by default. Go and lend your voice of support or suggestions pertaining to the list of tags.
- Robert Douglass
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