Bikeshed: Re-work top-level admin categories [#374490]

There are lots of opinions on how top level admin categories should work:

Webchick:
Create new "Site layout" category (or similar):
- Blocks
- Themes
So the new menu with all core modules enabled might look something like this:
CONTENT MANAGEMENT: this now becomes "places for big lists of content that you can edit/delete/etc."
* Books
* Comments
* Content
* Forums
* Taxonomy
* URL aliases (?)
SITE BUILDING: this now becomes "places to setup 'templates' for things" -- I'm unsure about Forums/Taxonomy because although they don't strictly
* Contact form
* Content types
* Feed aggregator (unless there's a page where you can manage individual feed items, which I didn't see.)
* Menu
* Modules
* Translate interface
* Triggers
REPORTS
* the same
USER MANAGEMENT
* the same
SITE CONFIGURATION
* All existing stuff
* Post settings
* RSS Publishing

yoroy has in mind:

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Books
Comments
Content
Image galleries
Taxonomy

USER MANAGEMENT

Access permissions (probably confusing for the experienced, but I too still click on acces rules when I mean to set perms, maybe this will rule that out?)
Roles
User control (instead of access rules?)
User settings
Users

LANGUAGE TOOLS

Content translation
Interface translation

SITE ELEMENTS

Blocks
Contact form
Content types
Content fields
Menus
Modules
Site information (? moved out of system settings)
Themes
Translate interface
URL aliases

REPORTS

Available updates
Status report

SYSTEM SETTINGS

Actions
Administration theme (does this need it's own entry? maybe make it a tab in 'Themes'?)
Blog API
Clean URLs
Date and time
Error reporting
File system
Input formats
Languages
Logging and alerts
Performance
Post settings
RSS settings (renamed from RSS publishing, this does almost the same as 'Post settings'
Site maintenance

or http://drupal.org/files/issues/d7-adminsections-01.png
or http://img.skitch.com/20090214-dcqxsia9stfuup75u2d7gwyefe.jpg

karschsp thinks
* Content
* Design (presentation? layout? templates? i need help here...basically, themes and blocks)
* Plugins (modules? extensions? behavior?)
* Settings
* Users
* Reports

What do you think? Let the bikeshed begin!

(note: it's pointless to submit patches until we decide how the menus are structured)

Comments

Comment #1

dmitrig01 CreditAttribution: dmitrig01 commented 14 February 2009 at 20:20

I set up a card sort for this, but it's limited to 10 users, so please contact me if you would like to participate.

Comment #2

karschsp CreditAttribution: karschsp commented 14 February 2009 at 20:48

on my way out the door but very interested in this...thanks dmitrig01!

steve

Comment #3

Xano

he/they

English

Southampton

CreditAttribution: Xano commented 14 February 2009 at 20:53

- I'm unsure as to what "Content fields" does. If it does what I think it does, shouldn't it be part of "Content types"?
- Clean URLs have nothing to do with path aliases.
- Perhaps we should merge "Error reporting" and "Logging and alerts"? IMO these to are very strongly related to each other.
- +1 on making "Administration theme" part of "Themes".

Comment #4

catch

he/him

English

CreditAttribution: catch commented 14 February 2009 at 21:05

subscribe.

Comment #5

Bojhan CreditAttribution: Bojhan commented 14 February 2009 at 23:06

Subscribing, dmitrig01 can you tell me what your cardsort will reveal? Although it might not be for who we are redesigning, its a good insight into the opinions off drupalers. I think Leisha Reichelt will work on this aswell.

Comment #6

dmitrig01 CreditAttribution: dmitrig01 commented 14 February 2009 at 23:33

Bojhan, Yes I will. Everyone, please do it - [edit: use http://dmitrig01.optimalsort.com/drupal_admin2/ instead]. I'm going to just create more and more of the same cardsorts once i reach my limit of 10 :D

Comment #7

beeradb CreditAttribution: beeradb commented 14 February 2009 at 23:34

subscribing. I completed the cardsort. Definitely very interested to see what comes of this.

Comment #8

sun

German

Karlsruhe

CreditAttribution: sun commented 15 February 2009 at 03:20

Everyone: Read http://groups.drupal.org/node/19171

Comment #9

alexanderpas CreditAttribution: alexanderpas commented 15 February 2009 at 05:19

+1 for #8

Comment #10

gaele CreditAttribution: gaele commented 15 February 2009 at 21:22

A few comments:

- Please don't call this bikeshed. admin categories are important, and can be improved. The card sort is great for this.

- I really like webchick's "site layout" category.

- There's a difference between content management (adding nodes, approving comments), content configuration (site building like creating content types and menus) and site configuration (technical stuff like file system settings). The first will be done on a day-to-day basis, the second a few times, the latter only once. The first is a content editor task, the other two are for admins / site developers.

- Should there be just one level of categories?

- Shouldn't "modules" be a category of its own? Think about it. Compared to the other entries in its category it's of a completely different level. (Or perhaps it'll fit in a category together with site maintenance?)

Comment #11

dmitrig01 CreditAttribution: dmitrig01 commented 15 February 2009 at 21:26

Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is?
From http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html#BIKESHED-...
"The really, really short answer is that you should not. The somewhat longer answer is that just because you are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just because you do not like the color they plan to paint it. This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change."

Anyone can reorganize the admin menu and still have time to watch the game on TV. The issue at hand is how to do it well.

Comment #12

dmitrig01 CreditAttribution: dmitrig01 commented 15 February 2009 at 21:31

Also, form the five results i've gotten so far, one of the only things all the answers have in common is that the following items should be under "maintain" or "monitor" or "reports" or the like:

Recent log entries
Top 'page not found' errors
Available updates
Status report
Logging, errors and alerts
Updates

Comment #13

dmitrig01 CreditAttribution: dmitrig01 commented 16 February 2009 at 16:29

We can only have 10 people maximum per cardsort on my free account, so please use http://dmitrig01.optimalsort.com/drupal_admin2/ if the other one won't let you.

Comment #14

gaele CreditAttribution: gaele commented 16 February 2009 at 23:09

My point was that people may think redesigning admin is a trivial issue. Wikipedia:

"Parkinson's Law of Triviality (also known as the bicycle shed example, and by the expression colour of the bikeshed) is C. Northcote Parkinson's 1957 argument that organisations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues."

Add tot the list Jeff Noyes proposal: http://www.jeffnoyes.com/?q=node/30

@Bojhan: /admin sucks for drupalers too ;-)

Comment #15

dmitrig01 CreditAttribution: dmitrig01 commented 17 February 2009 at 21:34

Well, the first one is full. Use http://dmitrig01.optimalsort.com/drupal_admin2/.

Comment #16

dmitrig01 CreditAttribution: dmitrig01 commented 17 February 2009 at 21:41

Raw results from the first cardsort:
[edit: table of death removed. see http://jsbin.com/efawe]

Comment #17

dmitrig01 CreditAttribution: dmitrig01 commented 18 February 2009 at 03:02

Here's wordpress' top level dashboard: http://img.skitch.com/20090218-b9jfety1wjya4ngm18jpe638a7.jpg
It consists of dashboard widgety type things which are hide-able and show-able and drag-and-droppable and such. I can see widgets being there for status report, recent content, recent comments, recent feed items, "quick links" to all items under create content, etc.

Modules page - http://img.skitch.com/20090218-xfsi15uq3p7cnajp5xg1tw5cit.jpg. There's a settings link next to each module (or for wordpress, it's plugins). That will work for a couple of our modules. It'd also be nice to have a link right there to permissions, etc.