[meta-issue] Fix the unholy abomination that is the welcome screen

In my dream world the front page text:
- is a block that I can move around and which does not disappear as soon as I add text.
- not visible to anonymous users (and is configurable like a normal block)
- editable so that I can update the instructions for "new site administrators" after deploying Drupal.
- contains images that relate to the admin screens (assuming there are graphics in the new admin interface for things like adding content).

The dream was a little hazy on what the words actually said, but that might be because it was more graphical and less wall-of-text-ish.

+1 agree heavily.

I always wished that when I install a site for testing... that this welcome screen was just GONE... GONE as in Amber Alert gone...

I always have to go in and import some content, create some lorem ipsum nodes just so I can really start playing with my theme. Why can't we just create some default nodes that have similar site usage instructions in it, but at the same times sort of provides a nice variety of XHTML elements (UL, OL, Table, etc) for the theme developers to get a good sense of how the content will render on a variety of elements without manually having to create a CSS tester page. (I have a standard template I use to throw in every type of element I will ever use on the site)

Hm. I think for theming purposes it would be better to "just" use the devel module [1] which has an option to insert dummy content. Although one of the points on the welcome *block* could be instructions on how to do exactly that.

[1] http://drupal.org/project/devel

Why not redirect to the dashboard and set a "message" that links to documentation within the site on what to do next?

I don't like the idea of a re-direct, BUT what if the $content block by default had a little message (with a link) that said, "No content created. Create some content now." I would be fine with that kind of message disappearing once content is added. Or maybe the screen: node/add could appear in $content if no content had been created at all for the site? This is just crazy talk now, I know!

Actually, I think this issue should be resolved by Install Profiles.

#79582: Add example content to the experimental out-of-the-box demo install profile

I hate dummy text but I agree simple instruction on creating content right after install is a good idea. The other instruction that already exists may be the first screen on help menu or something like that. This is what happen for a logged in/admin user. For anonymous user they could only see a "There's no content created yet, come back soon" or something else more complex :-)

I wrapped the default welcome message in a theme function, with an $account object as the argument. This way, themes can override the welcome message... including the default theme (garland, or whatever your favorite install profile uses).

The contents of the default welcome message is still up for debate, but now that the $user is passed to it, we can use some code to determine what should be shown to the user. For instance, (just brainstorming here), if the user actually has access to install modules, then show the line about enabling modules. If the user only has access to create an article node, then provide a link to create a new article.

http://drupal.org/node/409788#comment-1639518

For the record, I like @emmajane's idea about making it a block.

I think it's important to consider *who* we're providing these instructions to. For example, the person who's "setting up" a Web site is probably also user/1 and has access to the 'admin' interface. Most of the instructions are currently admin-ish things. So wouldn't it make sense to have them available from /admin? This would put the instructions "near" the things they are related to.

@rfsbsb: I think this is along the same lines as what you were suggesting?

The current steps are as follows:
1. Configure your website
2. Enable additional functionality
3. Customize your website design
4. Start posting content

I think the front page should include a variation only the fourth item only:
You have no content, start creating content!

My understanding is that the new admin dashboard will appear regardless of where you are in the site? What if the text for 1, 2, 3 were replaced with a single "HELP" or "GET STARTED" button in the dashboard?

+1 on #7. Seems that people need to be oriented, but the current orientation is not working. IMHO, it's the result of too much text that's generic to all users. As stated in #11, the *who* needs to be better defined, and install profiles might help with that.

Making the default message a theme function could help with this. Not only can a theme (assumably part of the install profile) determine exactly what the content of the welcome message says, but the theme function also gets passed an $account (usually the $user) object, so more user-specific messages can be shown. I scratched the surface of this in my patch here which also creates an unordered list of content types the current user has permission to create, with links to the node/add/$type form. I don't think it's the be-all-end-all of the content of this message, but it opens up possibilities.

@emmajane has the most important point here. If there is no content yet, and someone needs to know what to do next. We should make it as easy and obvious as possible to create content.

+1 to joshmiller -- this should be install profile specific

#79582: Add example content to the experimental out-of-the-box demo install profile

Remember, even "out of the box" Drupal is just the "default" install profile. So let's make this thread how to *implement* this feature.

Yes, this is a extremely critical screen. It's where installation ends and your Drupal site starts. And yes, should probably be install profile specific. Though for default, I agree with #11 in that we should get people to their first "Hello world" post as quickly and smoothly as possible.

Do we postpone this issue on #79582: Add example content to the experimental out-of-the-box demo install profile or continue the brainstorm? Not sure what "how to implement" means, seems that's what the discussion in 79582 is about.

Brain-dump:

1. Help them create content #11 +++++1 EmmaJane hit the nail on the head.
2. Clean it up - The welcome message needs a better format. It just looks ugly and is hard to read so many paragraphs. Clean it up visually and work on the content so that it is more precise
3. Installation Profiles - should be able to completely customize where you go and what you see.
4. Why the homepage? - Right now you're taken to "the homepage" -- Why not take them to a "Getting Started" section and turn the site "offline" by default?
5. The homepage only makes sense to blogs Why not make it a node that links to "Getting Started" and gives them Drupal's best usability feature: the edit button. We need to stop pretending that core has views, unless it will have views, and then that's a different question altogether.
6. When is the site "new" ? Lots of issues have been sidelined because it hard or impossible to tell if a site is a new installation. Let's make it a simple variable and pray this doesn't turn into a "delete the user" issue
7. Do you know what you're doing? y/n Angie wants us to think big, right? Check out this guy's awesome idea for Drupal Installation / Welcome -- some of it is d7ux, but the most interesting part, asking for an assisted setup, has not been addressed yet by lesia or mark and may not be. This is the problem that the current installation profiles are trying to solve, but their names don't make a lot of sense (watch the video where leisa and mark try to install drupal).

Hopefully the above helps us address this issue and I haven't blown it out of proportion.

Follow up on my #5 above, not only does the homepage only make sense to blogs, it teaches new users that the only place to find their content is on the homepage.

This particular default teaches users the wrong things: A) Drupal is an out of the box blogging platform and B) This is where I can find my content if I can't figure out the menu system.

Neither need to happen.

We bashed around the idea a little bit more in IRC on Friday (?) night. I'm currently leaning away from having the message contained in an editable block and am leaning towards the following:

"Welcome":
- after installing Drupal user is redirected to admin/welcome
- the welcome message is always available from a tab on /admin. For example: [Modules] [Tasks] [Welcome]
- this screen is also available through a menu link in the "Navigation" menu.
- the screen is possibly renamed, "Getting Started" or "Help" instead of "Welcome."

Home:
- For authenticated users: page displays some variation on "You have not created any content, please add some." with a link to node/add.
- For NON-authenticated users: page displays some variation on, "" Yes. Nothing. :) Not a 404 or a message saying that the site maintainer still needs to add content or anything. Just plain ol' nothing.

Edit: replaced my clever <front> with "home."

I just want to throw in this link because this has been discussed elsewhere and I really like yoroy's mockup: http://groups.drupal.org/node/13270

we make the welcome page the default landing for /help.

+1 That would coincidentally solve the problem that the current help screen isn't exactly friendly, too. :)

No content in node_default_main() should just be 'No content posted yet' (maybe with a node/add link for users with create content permissions). Using /help for actually helping people seems good to me.

I am assigning this task to myself and am being coached by webchick, merlinofchaos and catch.
The Plan, by emmajane: The patch will move the current "welcome" text to /admin/help and leave the front page blank. The final screen of the install profile will link to the new help page instead of the front page.

#126221-47: Make 'node' empty text themable.
yes, the welcome message should be a help page.

So for now we're not really rewriting the actual content of the screen right? Well for future reference then:
- There's something about ending installation on the Help index that spells admitting defeat before letting people try.
- meaning: getting started page !== help index page. Especially for the first time experience we need something more focussed then an overview of all the things we have help text on.

Frankly, the new empty homepage catch describes in #23 to me sounds like a better start than a help page.

__

No content posted yet, Go create some!

or read the getting started guide

__

The less options we offer initially, the smaller the chance people get lost after their first click. That said, please do continue with the plan.

Oops, don't think the plan is to end installation on the help *index* but on a specific "welcome, get started" page. Good.

When the followup patch for redirects to other pages goes in, default could go to /help (or help/welcome or whatever), and minimal could go to .

the large step forward

/help needs to be made a lot more friendly and a lot nicer. There is absolutely nothing wrong with starting there. If we treat it like a "Here's a bunch of things you can do with this software" I doubt any user will be upset by getting sent to that. It's common sense, right?

The attached patch does the following:

1. Updates the final screen of the installer to point people to the front page AND the help system. See screen shot at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmajane/3586437555/
2. Updates the front page of Drupal to REMOVE the "Welcome screen."
3. Updates the front page of the help system to use the "Welcome screen" text.

@emmajane "The final screen of the install profile will link to the new help page instead of the front page."

This should be configurable. Specifically, we need to support potentially two things:

* make the final link of installation configurable per install profile (defaults to /help if no value given - needs a variable to set this as part of install, probably just a return value in one of the profile_ functions)
* allow a function to set the value / contents of /help in the install profile

Re: "Drupal is so hard, it defaults to /help"

Or: "Drupal is so awesome, there is this great page telling me what I can do next"

One option is to special case this on install and show a "teaser" from /help on the front page, with a jquery "hide this".

Revised patch attached. Please note the link should now be correctly implemented using the l() function.

Re: "Drupal is so hard, it defaults to /help"
Or: "Drupal is so awesome, there is this great page telling me what I can do next"

Yes and my point is, those are two different pages.
__

Must nitpick the wording on the flickr pic a bit. (these are new strings, right? else, disregard) Always try to omit needless words:

- Remove the "You may now", just use "Visit your new site."
- The last line about more info about configuring…etc. could just be a linked "Configuration help" or even just "Help".

oops

Should use theme('image').

@yoroy, there's no new text here apart from the alt text - the comment is just so we change that to something else before release.

Revised patch attached. Due to discrepancies in favourite bike colour, the shed has been removed.

Fixing awkward language in the TODO comment.

webchick wrote:

d) It's the ONLY help we offer people when they install Drupal and it DISAPPEARS COMPLETELY when you add your first piece of content. (I know there's an issue for this too! Grr!)

Here's one: #240721: UMN Usability: Make Drupal more helpful
and another: #126221: Make 'node' empty text themable.

Probably now obsolete based on this thread...?

Revised patch attached with new front page text. Please see revised home page screen shot at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmajane/3586756259/

I don't understand at all why drupal_set_title() is breaking simpletest, but I've taken it out and have gone back to no heading on the front page. I don't think it's as nice, but it should pass the tests.

The offending line was:
drupal_set_title( t('Welcome to ') . variable_get('site_name', 'Drupal'));

Fixes made according to webchick's review and simpletest tests updated to reflect the revised title.

@webchick: about the theme wrapper...how about I just buy you a bucket of ice cream every time a themer writes a customized tpl.php file to replace the default text? It'll be easier for both of us. :)

Same patch now with less white space. Hopefully.

"every time a themer writes a customized tpl.php file to replace the default text"

This is again going OT, but this is unlikely to be a theme function. Where is this text "stored"? The front page content is what should go into the install profile (in this case, default.profile).

Can we commit the help bits, and move the front page content out of this patch? Again, my goal here is to have really nice default.profile that other people can look at for overriding...

Sorry, setting back.

Argh! Why is this still hard-coded HTML, not a theme function as per the (once-upon-a-time) point of #126221: Make 'node' empty text themable.?

Maybe because nobody should see that message twice, and maybe we do not theme messages, and maybe it should come from an install profile (in a followup issue).
I guess if I install in expert mode I will see a blank page only, so there is nothing to theme..

There's at least one other open issue which changes this to a theme function, and there's less of it now, so let's do it one of those.

dww - I was torn about this tiny tiny piece of default text. I think only the "minimal" install profile will ever see this - default and other profiles will do [79582]

I considered arguing for even this text to be moved into the install profile, but I think it's fine.

Re: If we want to add one, we can do so in another issue.

That's what #126221: Make 'node' empty text themable. was for during most of its life, and was recently marked duplicate/won't fix with this issue...

/me gives up. ;)

I'm not saying you did. ;) I'm just saying these meta issue initiatives can be difficult to navigate since not everyone (including me) reads every issue associated with the thing, and different people have different ideas about the scope of each part. So, the main thrust of the folks in this issue has been "change how the thing basically works, clean up everything in sub-issues", and yet people comment in the sub-issues saying "this is being subsumed by the main issue, there's nothing more to do here..."

/me shrugs, too.

@ #59 , #57 above

This is an example of when a message needs themeing...

#423724-7: Help landing page: what should be on it, how would it look.

Yes, the vanilla message text can come from one function, but then that need to pass through a theme function to add all the nifty icons and columns and such.

The fact that people might misuse theme functions to change content is not an argument to disregard the theme function. The fact that people might drive over kittens is not an argument to disregard cars. I prefer my bike in the shed...

(Holy mixed metaphors, Batman. I don't even know what that means anymore.)

So which is the correct issue thread for discussing a theme function for this?

@emmajane I noticed you get all the messages that was on /node to /help, but now you must delete the 4th item:

"Start posting content Finally, you can add new content for your website. This message will disappear once you have promoted a post to the front page."

It's not necessary anymore.

It's getting better, congrats!

patch to remove the 4th line

where did my patch go?

Let's try again :)

PS. Something strange happens. First time it saved the comment but not the attachment. Now it saved the attachment, but not the comment. Fortunately I can edit my comments :)

And proper status

RE #72: #379470: Change in the issue description is discarded after clicking on the attach button

Latest patch is good.

Committed to CVS HEAD. Thanks!

It seems there were a few other places that lied to people (in particular anyone who installs with the expert profile).....

For example, the expert profile (and potentially other profiles too) doesn't come with the help.module installed and doesn't have any content types you can create, so we should avoid linking to those pages because the links will be broken.

Lying is bad, especially on the front page of the site :) This patch should fix it, I think.

Not sure if we fixed it, or just made it worse :) It was already pretty oke, from several tests - lets hope it will for next test.

TestBot was broken...

My patch in #78 was kind of a trivial bugfix, but posting it as a followup here did not exactly generate the quick RTBC that I figured would happen.... oh well :)

In the meantime, someone else posted the bug independently at #510782: Installer links to help module and other pages even when they are not available and started working on it, so I've merged my code with the patch there.

I'm moving this issue back to "active" based on @Bojhan's comment in #79, although if that is no longer relevant then this can just be closed.

Just looked at the welcome screen with fresh eyes on a new install. There were three "please"s. Patch attached to remove my Canadian-isms. :)

Nice catch, can you confirm that this patch also includes David's changes? If yes, then RTBC

it does not include any other changes and only removes the "pleases" as David's requested patch was fixed/committed in #510782: Installer links to help module and other pages even when they are not available.

Ok, then the patch in #84 is RTBC