Hi, Folks,
I have a lot to say on this subject, after hammering away for hours yesterday installing Drupal on OS X (OS X Tiger, PHP 4.3.11, mySQL client 3.23.49).
I'm new to Drupal, but have used several other CMS systems. I considered phpWebsite and Plone, but I was impressed by the features of Drupal: great presentation on drupal.org, many many modules, lots of skins (templates), and template editing.
The install was going very well until I tried to get a WYSIWYG module to load up and start working.
I first tried FCKEditor... no workee. I followed the install very carefully. I activated the module. I tried posting a story... no WYSIWYG. I figured out to go to the settings for FCKEditor... I got a blank screen... no error message, nothing.
To make a long story shorter... after finding a lot of chat on the boards about FCKEditor, tinyMCE, and blank screens... bugs and patches and the like... I finally realised that if I was going to get a working version of tinyMCE, I would have to download the CVS version of the Drupal core. Then, after fussing around some more, I found the latest CVS versions of *some* of the tinyMCE components, which I downloaded individually, by hand, and patched the tinyMCE module download.
After this, things starting working normally.
My comments that I hope the developers will read...
First, bravo... this thing looks great and you've come a long way.
I'm actually kind of blown away that I ran into these problems. Drupal appears to be an outstanding CMS. IMHO, such an elemental part of the user interface--the WYSIWYG--should be rock solid and working in both the standard and beta releases! I know there is a lot of software in the loop here. I also installed phpWebsite (current everything) and found that their FAQ module would not load: reason... mySQL api had a new error code, which I had to debug myself to get it working. <<>> Anyway, that's the reason for good support forums. My second constructive criticism: I found the Drupal forums not very helpful in isolating these problems I encountered. In fact, they lead me the wrong way (trying to find bug fixes and patches). It was very irritating to see search results that were not ordered by date. And, irritating that the search was not more powerful... I could not get quoted strings to work, or logical AND or OR... nor could I find any documentation on searching. I think it would be a big improvement to have forums for individual modules... at least for core functionality, like WYSIWYG. <<>> Lastly, I would have been saved a lot of time by a few words in a README file... "if it don't work, download the latest CVS versions" (+ how to). Also, there should be a bit more in the README, re: enabling access permission so that a loaded module can be used. (And what's up with the default role for the admin being "authenticated"?... why not have an administrator role included at the startup, with all permissions? It was misleading.)
Was that a rant? I'm just being constructive and I would want nothing less in return.
thanks,
JC
Comments
Well, the last release of
Well, tinyMCE module is not core, so dont expect all contributed modules to work with every release. The issues page of the module often helps: http://drupal.org/project/issues/tinymce.
Drupal ships with an administrator account, like root on linux, everything else is in users hands. I think this is a sensible default.
I don't think that there should be a How To for downloading CVS versions in module Readme files. CVS is generally for developers and beta testers, and there is a CVS Guide in the Drupal Handbook.
You're right with the search, in fact there is afaik currently much work done on the search facilities of drupal.
After all, I think the developers of tinyMCE or fckEditor would be glad to have a reworked version of their documentation if you volunteer.
and to clarify admin permissions...
OP asked: (And what's up with the default role for the admin being "authenticated"?... why not have an administrator role included at the startup, with all permissions? It was misleading.)
Yes, as scroogie points out - and just to expand - admin _already_ has all permissions and doesn't need to have them set. Similarly, Admin doesn't appear on the access control page at all, because it's assumed that the original site admin needs all permissions. "Authenticated" refers to signed in/logged in members of your website, *not* to the admin. You can grant the "authenticated" user as few or as many perms as you wish.
Though you probably have figured this out by now...
my response
Yes, I thought about changing that terminology... "core functionality", but the forum would not let me edit my posting. I know it's not part of the core, but it is a very basic facility for a CMS... for the user interface.
I disagree that this is an issue with the versions of the WYSIWYGs. This is a problem with how an element like this is integrated and maintained for the CMS. If it was not a Drupal problem, why did it go away when I used the CVS versions?
Again, I don't have a problem with using the CVS versions... but I think users need to be guided in that, -or- changes need to be folded into releases sooner. FACT: The standard release and beta both failed when I tried to use FCKEditor or tinyMCE.
Yes, it's a fine point. From the perspective of a new installer, it would be more intuitive to have a specific administrator role, with all the permissions set. It demonstrates the use of permissions and removes any doubts about whether the dreaded blank white screen has anything to do with admin's permissions.
JC
This would end up in a whole
This would end up in a whole bunch of people complaining in the support forums that they somehow managed to lock themselfs out of the admin area.
Depends on the design
Or you could grey-out the system module settings for admin.
Also struggled with finding a WYSIWYG solution for my users
I had different, but parallel, problems to yours with trying to get a WYSIWYG editor.
I started with TinyMCE, because that seemed to get the most recommendations. I had to install/remove it twice due to not very clear documentation (and in fact, the instructions that are on the v 4.6 downloads page are for the 4.7 version). Thanks to someone in the forum, I discovered this and re-installed again. Got it working at last, although not in the best Mac browsers (Safari and OmniWeb) as they're not supported. Okay, I can live with that.
Then I found that the 'default' TinyMCE template that's supposed to be there, isn't. So the available choices were to either enable the Simple template that doesn't allow links, or the advanced one with way too many options for Joe User. I know the documentation says you can create your own, but hey, I've an entire site to get transferred and configured for a couple of hundred users... creating special templates for the WYSIWYG editor is something I don't have time to do right now. Oh, and then there was the creating new input formats and allocating them to users... more tweaking necessary.
So, I tried again with Htmlarea. That installed like a dream, with Xinha, the updated editor for htmlarea. Configuring it was easy too; just check off the functions you want available. So far so good. Looks good, shows up fine (although again, not in the good Mac browsers, and also a little dodgy in PC Internet Explorer... rather worrying, that.)
All fine until I actually tried using it... weird page breaks all over the place; fiddle with input formats and filters again, no joy and it all just got worse from there.
Eventually, I've just given up on a WYSIWYG for the ordinary users. I've installed the Textile module instead and will provide help pages on Textile mark-up instead.
Phoebe
--
Visit The Town
meet ~ discuss ~ connect
www.the-town.org
A question of attitude
All of the maintainers of drupal modules have at least that much work to do, and nevertheless they make an affort of creating modules for the public. You can't demand everything to work not even willing to do the slightest chore...
"Not do the slightest chore?"
Oh please. Don't exaggerate so.
I'm doing plenty of 'chores' involved in the install and configuration, as is anyone creating a reasonably complex site.
Hooray for all the volunteer developers of the core and the modules. They're great people, and no doubt we're all grateful to them. I know I am.
But, really, is it that hard to understand that sometimes, some stuff is just too much trouble to make work? That's not a dig at the developers, it's just a statement of fact. No disrespect intended.
I'm not a developer, I'm a self-taught admin and owner who's learning stuff from scratch all the time in order to make things work. In the last couple of weeks I've spent more time fiddling with Drupal than I've ever spent on any software, anywhere, ever, including other CMS's on other sites, simply because I believe in the end, it will be worth it.
There's so much learning to do here, that the more awkward something is to get working, the less likely that ordinary people are going to use it, whether admins or joe user. That's the way it is, no matter how unfair it might seem to the people who spent time creating it.
I explained the experience I'd been having in response to someone else reporting problems with the same thing. If I can't be honest about my experiences with the software here, in the support forums, what's the point? Why get all defensive and get a dig in at me for doing that? Why not just spit it out and say to me, "Have a nice cup of STFU?" Because that's what you really mean, isn't it?
TinyMCE Development
The latest version of TinyMCE works with CVS. You shouldn't need and patches and it shouldn't be used in production mode yet.
I'd never tell someone to try the CVS version if the latest stable isn't working. I'd tell them to file a but report so developers like myself can recreate the problem and fix it.
If you want better documentation, then please help me to improve it. Submit a patch and let's make it better.
Oh and a lot of time (and money) has gone into making TinyMCE for 4.7 outstanding. I'm very excited :-)
latest version of TinyMCE
The latest version of TinyMCE works with the CVS version of Drupal and the CVS version of the TinyMCE module. I think that's what I said. It appears not to work with Drupal 4.6.5 and 4.7.0 beta. Some more clarification: since the TinyMCE module is not part of the core, downloading the CVS version of Drupal doesn't give you the CVS version of TinyMCE... that I had to fuss around trying to find and downloading individual files by hand.
I need a production mode with a working WYSIWYG.
RE: Bug reports. If it's fixed in the CVS version of the TinyMCE module, why should I file a bug report? But I understand what you're saying. If I would have been able to easily find a repository for the correct patches to the correct components, maybe I could have arrived at a working TinyMCE. So, it seems a patch is needed in the way patches are managed and made available to end users. People did patches to get TinyMCE to work, but it appears that end users looking for fixes may have a hard time locating the patches. Perhaps a new node type is in order where module patches are stored that basically let you create a stable version of the module from a given release of Drupal.
looking forward to 4.7
JC
Bug Report
I don't know how to help you because you haven't described what isn't working with TinyMCE. Please file a bug report and describe what errors you're getting.