Change label for user/1 account from "administrator" to "site maintenance account"

I am +1 changing the user/1 account name to "Site Owner" (or equivalent) and reserving the term "administrator role" to the new default role that has been created. I'm also marking this issue "Novice" as it will be an easy patch to roll.

"Site Owner" owner has many good qualities.
1. Its accurate
2. Its powerful
3. Its not confused with the generic administrator
4. Emmajane likes it

All in all, an excellent idea.

+1 for changing the description of user/1 from "administrator" to something else. @kazar's draft doc paragraph trying to explain the difference should be all the evidence that we need to be convinced of the need to make a change.

I don't like "Site-owner" as an alternative, however. I have many clients for which I, the developer, am the only one who has access to user/1. I am certainly not the "site-owner." I serve at the will of my clients and they "own" the site, it's domain, its content, etc.

How about "first account." I think the install wizard could explain it like this:

Please set up your first account now by creating a user name and password and assigning an email address to it. This account has special privileges, unlike any other account that will be set up for the site. All other users are permitted to view pages or perform editorial or administrative activities on the site based on a role or roles that they are assigned to. However, the first user you are creating now can do everything. By definition, there are no limitations that can be placed on this first user (sometimes described as a "super-user" or as "user/1").

In addition, it is only the first user who can perform updates to Drupal or its contributed modules.

If the person creating the first account is also going to be adding content to the site, it is a best practice to create a separate account for creating the content. For example, for the first account, use "firstaccount" for the user name and for the account under which you'll post content use "Jane Smith," substituting your real name for "Jane Smith."

I +1 like "Site Owner". It is simple and clear.

The problem with "Site owner", is that it is although clear and in a lot of cases correct it may not always apply, because the real site owner does not necessarily has to use that account.

A process point...

In some ways this is two issues,
1. "Administrator" is a bad term to describe user/1 given the new "Administrator" pre-configured role for non user/1 users.
2. What would be a better way to describe "administrator"? "Site Owner" is proposed by @kazar who opened the issue.

If you weigh in on number 2, it is still important that you leave a "+1" or "-1" for number 1 as well.

best,

Shai

How about "root" or "root user" or "root account"? I usually give user/1 the name "root" anyway.

It's too technical and very difficult to translate, if translatable at all. Super user is still the best term I have come across so far. It points out that that user can do more than the others and it is simple and translatable.

OK, so yes to #1 (confusing to have first account be "administrator")

Regarding #2

How about "Site Maintenance Account"? It is a little more verbose, but has the following advantages IMO...
- It should be easy to translate (I think??)
- It clearly implies the power of the account
- It clearly suggests that this account will have special site maintenance abilities (such as upgrade)
- It clearly suggests that it is to be used as a site maintenance account rather than as a day to day account

"Super User" I also like, but I wonder if that appeals to me because it has some tradition in IT. A less techy user might find that to be jargon.

+1 for "Site Maintenance Account" for the reasons stated in #9

also, it makes support a bit easier:
"Use your Site Maintenance Account to do [...]"
"Ensure you're logged-in your Site Maintenance Account before doing [...]"

Under Site Maintenance Account (Drupal 7), enter a user name, email address and password for logging into your site as the overall site maintainer. The account you set up in the "Site Maintenance Account" fields during installation is a super-user ("/user/1", for those of you familiar with that account from earlier versions of Drupal) who has overall control over every aspect of the management and configuration of the site.

Cool. So here is a patch for review. Covers both install and update.

+1 for the change to "Site Maintenance Account" - this will make things much more straightforward for new users. Haven't yet reviewed the actual patch.

kazar: check out http://drupal.org/patch/apply.

Setting status back to "needs review" so others ( & test bot) can review.

Site Maintenance account would push forward the "don't run your site as user/1" idea. Not sure if it'd discourage people from just using user/1 on their blog though, which IMO is fine, but otherwise not a bad thing at all. And we only refer to this on install/update.

Patch has a couple of issues though - typo for account/acount in the first hunk. Also in the help text, it should be site maintenance account (i.e., add the em tags please) to make it clear this is a system-defined account rather than any old account used for maintaining the site.

Good one. I'd go for maintenance account to keep the term shorter and easier to translate. Catch is right that this hopefully convinces users not to use the account for daily work.

If we are going for a maintenance account, what about automatically creating a regular account (user/2) during installation as well?

OK, here is that patch with the corrections.

Re: Maintenance account vs. Site Maintenance account - I like the later even though it is slightly more verbose so perhaps that issue needs more discussion.

Re-titling. I also prefer 'maintenance account' we know it relates to the site.

+1 for "Maintenance account."

Creating a second account is beyond the scope of this patch. At most the text could be updated to include a link to the "add a user" page. However, that would remove the user from their current context of installing the site. I've added a new issue for this discussion at #571354: Create a second, "regular" account on site install.

I am a strong proponent for "super user."

It specifically describes the permissions that this Drupal user has. It mirrors many other technical situations our users might find themselves in. If they are researching how to strip away permission barriers in other systems they are likely to come across the term "super user" (unix, linux, mac os). While this term might be very technical this type of access should be reserved for technical maintenance.

The dangerousness of this permission is also similar with the concept of a super user or root account.

I just worry about us reinventing the wheel here and calling it by another less familiar name.

I think this is a good change, but:

1. From working on #67234: Update script access rights I suspect there are other places that use the term "administrator account" that might need to be changed here as well. Look in sites/default/default.settings.php (the section that contains instructions for using $update_free_access) and also perhaps in UPGRADE.txt....?
2. Overall, I'd lean towards "Site maintenance account" rather than just "Maintenance account"; since the installer doesn't have any other description of what this account is used for, I think the extra word is actually helpful.
3. Relatively minor: The above patch changes the word "user" to "account" in a couple places -- for example, "remember to log in to your website as the site maintenance account" -- and I'm not 100% convinced that's grammatically correct. You can log in as a user or log in to an account, but "logging in as an account" doesn't sound right to me.
4. Although I do think this is a good change, I'm not particularly convinced it will solve the usability issue that started this thread. We can change the text in the installer, but a week later, if they're still using this account, they're not going to remember that, and they'll still be going around the site thinking of themselves as the administrator.

   Note that:

   • @ksenzee at http://drupal.org/node/497500#comment-1738122 suggested this:
     

     A drupal_set_message on the permissions page would help with the confusion. If you're logged in as user 1 and you remove permissions from a role assigned to user 1, you could get a message letting you know that you're the superuser, so you still have those permissions. We do something similar with themes. If you've set RootCandy as your admin theme, and then you go to admin/build/themes and change your site theme to Garland, you get a message letting you know why the page you're on is still in RootCandy.

   • @sun at http://drupal.org/node/480660#comment-1725182 suggested putting a special note on user/1/edit, in the roles configuration section, explaining that user/1 gets all permissions regardless of what roles are assigned to it.
   • In the same issue, I suggested assigning the "administrator" role to user/1 by default, to remove any confusion surrounding other parts of Drupal that use roles (e.g., block visibility, where assigning a role to user/1 actually does have a real effect, as well as the various other ways that contrib modules might use it).

   I think some combination of all of the above things is the right way to solve this problem. We don't necessarily have to do it all in one issue if we don't want, but I don't think that just renaming "Administrator" to "Site maintenance account" in the installer is going to solve the overall usability issue that was brought up here.

+1 for Super User. Maintenance account doesn't say anything about the permissions of the user.

@David_Rothstein raises some good points.

Take a look back at my proposed help-text language in comment #3. I think actually explaining things at the right moment is helpful. Obviously first-time installers will forget a lot of what they read and explaining the distinction between user/1 and other users needs to also be on easily accessible docs pages.

Regarding the grammar on "maintenance account" vs. "maintenance user." I think the reason why @winston maybe even subconsciously wrote "account" instead of "user" is that people who have not created web sites previously may not intuitively get that one person can be many users. It's more intuitive that one person could have more than one account. In addition, by using "Maintenance Account" we are reinforcing that that account exists for a specific purpose, not for a specific person.

I like @sun's idea explaining that user/1 has all permissions.

I don't like the idea of auto-assigning user/1 to the pre-configured administrator role. I think that tries to solve through configuration what can only be learned by understanding exactly how user/1 works.

Re-adding the tag.

Oops, sorry about that crosspost!

@David_Rothstein raises some good points.

and so does Shai....

altrough i still prefer site maintenance account, as it also sounds nicely:
Were you logged in into the site maintaince account when you tried that?

@David_Rothstein, I'll grep around a bit to see where else administrator or user 1 account may be referenced. Install.txt is a good place to explain this. Upgrade.txt clearly also refers to the user 1 account. If I feel like I got them all I'll roll a new patch.

The #4 point you raise I think is very valid, but outside the scope of this particular discussion. I definitely think helping the user understand the significance and behavior of the user/1 account in other places beyond install (such as with set message, etc.) makes a lot of sense. But that simply means that if we add "set message" or other indications about the significance of user/1 then we'll just want to make sure to use the term agreed on for user/1 in this thread.

Regarding your point about grammar, I'll double check that. The switch to the word "account" there as opposed to "user" was indeed on purpose as Shai suspected. I definitely thought the word account was better there as it implies something that is not typically (or at least not necessarily) associated with a person, whereas user implies an individual human being. Not sure if that distinction translates well, perhaps someone can comment on that.

@Shai, regarding putting a blob of text on the install page itself to describe this account I have to disagree there. My experience with installs of other products is that they keep the installer interface as clean as possible. I think a more verbose explanation of what is going on on that screen belongs both in INSTALL.txt as well as any install documentation in the handbook, not directly in the UI. It makes the install UI "feel" hard which is not what I think we want.

Regarding naming - perhaps there is not a consensus so I'll add my thoughts on the proposed names...

1. "Super User". I consider this operating system jargon, and not common on all operating systems.
- For example, Windows does not have this term, but does have the term "Power User" which means something very different. Room for confusion? I think so.
- Although "Super User" as a name does give an indication that this is a highly privileged user, it gives no indication of what is considered best practice use of this account, nor does it imply the special role this account plays in the upgrade process.

2. "Site Maintenance Account" (or "Maintenance Account")
- There seem to be more in this camp at the moment although there is some disagreement about the word "Site". Let's consider these the same for the moment (we can quibble about the word Site later)
- This name implies a privileged account as well without using terminology more commonly associated with operating systems
- This name implies some of the best practice around using this account on a non-trivial site (don't log in as user 1 for normal operations, account is primarily for upgrades, etc.)
- This name de-emphasizes the association of the account with an individual human being

@winston regarding the issue of verbose help-text. How about a link, right in the installer to "more information about Drupal's user account and permissions system." Is that a good compromise?

Re: the string itself, my votes, in order of preference are:
1. First Account
2. Site Maintenance Account
3. Maintenance Account
4. Super User

I know its obvious that we are speaking in regards to a "site" but I still think it helps in the prhase "Site Maintenance Account". It's not a "Drupal.org Maintenance Account" or an "Acquia Maintenance Account" (not that those things exist, but people can make all kinds of wrong guesses at what is being talked about).

Shai

Quick follow up.

grep -n -r "[Aa]dministrator" *.*

yielded the following (removed CHANGELOG.txt hits). I've emphasized what is already covered by the patch

install.php:1004: * Installation task; allow the site administrator to select which profile to
install.php:1121: * Installation task; allow the site administrator to select which locale to
install.php:1372: // Add JS to show / hide the 'Email administrator about site updates' elements
install.php:1373: drupal_add_js('jQuery(function () { Drupal.hideEmailAdministratorCheckbox() });', 'inline');
install.php:1559: '#title' => st('Administrator account'),
install.php:1681: // Add the administrator's email address to the list of addresses to be
INSTALL.txt:155: page, and you will be logged in as the administrator already. Proceed with
INSTALL.txt:210: Some administrators suggest making the documentation files, especially
update.php:16: * If you are not logged in as administrator, you will need to modify the access
UPGRADE.txt:39: created and the main administrator account. User ID 1 will be able to

So I'll have a look at those other location to see what additional changes might be needed with this patch. Also, I'll look at if INSTALL.txt would benefit from additional verbiage explaining this step.

@Shai

I like links to the help system. Anyone know if there is a general policy on doing that from the installer?

Either way, I suggest that should be raised as a separate issue from this as it would require a well known alias pointing to a very specific page on d.o. that will not change for the lifetime of d7.

How do you rationalize "First Account" as a choice? I mean it is accurate ;) ,but what does it tell the user about the significance of the account?

Since this is just about field labelling (if I have understood the discussion correctly) and not about the actual username of the user/1 account, I think that "Site maintenance account" make a lot of sense.

I wonder if the installation screen should go so far as proposing suitable username(s) for user/1? Or just suggest you use username that conveys the "maintenance" aspect of user/1. Or maybe this is unneccesary.

Ooops, also found a couple of references to "first user account" so addressing those also...

grep -n -r "[Ff]irst [Uu]ser" *.*

install.php:48: * basic site information and sets up the first user account.
INSTALL.txt:122: create tables, add the first user account and provide basic web

Here is the new patch. I also added a couple of slight wording changes to comments to avoid the use of the phrase "site administrator" in the install.php comments. Overkill perhaps.

-1 LOTS for Super User. Despite it being a more common user word in some OS environments, it is not as common as all that in many of those environments. Who knows how 'super user' translates (besides, I've always thought it sounded like it wanted to jump over tall buildings).

I am the one who started pushing people to not use UID1 for general use on a given site. Even for a personal blog people probably shouldn't be using UID1 for daily posting but that's only advise on personal experience not an actual hard rule.

OK, I created a new issue at #572240: Explain in the user interface that user/1 and the "administrator" role are not the same thing for the side point I raised in #20.

The new patch looks like it gets most of the places, but seems to be missing some of the changes to update.php that were in the original patch? Also, watch out for capitalization... at least for user-facing text, Drupal's coding standard is first word capitalized only (so "Site maintenance account"). In the code comments, it matters a lot less of course, but probably all lower-case is best.

Also, there is definitely a precedent for linking to drupal.org pages in the installer. So something like that seems reasonable (although this one would be kind of prominent). And indeed, a lot a lot of work went into making the installer less verbose for D7, so there are people who will probably complain if any text gets added back, but it seems to me like a single descriptive sentence with a link to a drupal.org page (and text like in #3 on that page) would probably be OK :)

David, thanks once again. I don't know why the capitalization thing is getting me. I guess I want to highlight "Site Maintenance Account", but that is not correct. Anyway I've updated the patch as follows...

- Put back the edit in update.php that I accidentally took out
- Used lower case for "site maintenance account" throughout except using initial cap case for the one instance in the installer where it is used as a fieldset title ("Site maintenance account")
- Also, just highlighting the grammar adjustment so now instead of "log in as the site maintenance account", we have "log in using the site maintenance account".

Regarding adding a descriptive line with a link in the installer ui, I'm still thinking that is best as a separate issue as you would need a very solid doc page for that first to justify putting it in the installer. I'm also not convinced it is necessary.

@sepeck - I totally agree that "super user" sounds super dumb.

I just like it because it's one less thing you might not have to learn when you come to Drupal from a *nix perspective. I also agree that this does nothing to help Windows folks.

Alas, there seems to be no love for SU or root, so I won't fight that. I wish we could get "site/website/drupal maintenance/maintainer account" a bit shorter and pithy. Sensei, God, Power account, anyone?

How about Core User. Matches to the initial installation of core. Core is a term that is used already, and has a meaning of the initial download. The most important, main, necessary, unchangeable part of Drupal. Core User, the most important, main, necessary, unchangeable user. Comes automatically with the core installation.

-1 for "Core user." User/1 also has special privileges vis-a-vis every contributed module in that all permissions are set to "on" automatically. So user/1 account doesn't only relate to core.

I'm still voting for Site Maintenance Account. I think the "account" is important, not calling it a user.

Shai

I think it is safe to assume we are going for (site) maintenance account?
- Using account makes sense, because we are not talking about an invidiual here.
- Maintenance, although possibly not a 100% correct, is a good term, because it tells the user the account should be used for maintenance work only.

We should however come to a decision about the wort site and list all pros and cons of using it. I can only find one con and that is that it makes the name unnecessarily longer, because what other kind of maintenance account would Drupal talk about? We changed Site configuration to just Configuration (...), so leaving site out of site maintenance account is consistent with that.

+++ INSTALL.txt	9 Sep 2009 11:27:18 -0000
@@ -152,8 +152,8 @@ INSTALLATION
+   page, and you will be logged in as the site maintenance account already. Proceed

grammar?

+++ update.php	9 Sep 2009 11:27:18 -0000
@@ -201,12 +202,12 @@ function update_info_page() {
+ <li>To avoid having this problem in future, remember to log in to your website using the site maintenance account (the first user account you created) before you backup your database at the beginning of the update process.</li>

To avoid having this problem in future

To avoid having this problem in the future

(the first user account you created)

(the account you created during installation.)

I'm on crack. Are you, too?

We changed Site configuration to just Configuration (...), so leaving site out of site maintenance account is consistent with that.

Xano, please please don't take this as an insult, but it is just so rare that one can use a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote in this sort of conversation...

Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

OK, got that out of my system ;)

So to cases...

I'll make the case for keeping the word Site here. I think it will be a little clearer in the other places it may get used (docs, install guides etc.). Also, if you look at the configuration screen that it is on in the install it is used in a fieldset title. If that fieldset title on that particular screen said just "Maintenance Account" I think there is a slightly greater possibility of confusion in the user's mind (remember we are talking about brand new folks, experienced folks will already know about user/1 etc.). So think like a brand new user! Can "Maintenance Account" be misconstrued to mean something other than we want it to? "Site Maintenance Account" seems just a slight bit clearer about what we are after here.

A previous post suggested that we can safely drop the word "site" because of course in the context of the install it is a maintenance account for the site. But why even have the possibility of raising a doubt in the user's mind at this critical point?

So, yes consistency with other choices made suggests we go for brevity. I'll counter argue that the importance of user/1 suggests an exception is acceptable here.

Here is another patch update. Ready for additional grammar checks ;)

Great job @winston. You've made the case for "Site Maintenance Account" for me. And thanks for doing those patches.

After this gets committed I'll make a separate issue for adding a link to a docs page describing Drupal's account, roles, permissions right from in the installer.

Shai

May I request some screenshots? Seems like these changes are visible during installation/updates, which are screens you don't easily get to if you're not *that* comfortable with CVS checkouts etc yet. :-) thanks.

Yes, no problem. There are two places in the UI where this patch hits. One is in the installer on the configure site step, the other is in update.php when you are not logged in as user/1.

The rest of the patch is either updating text in the INSTALL.txt or UPGRADE.txt or adjusting comments in code.

Fantastic! I think this is getting seriously close to being RTBC. I've also come around to liking the three-word, "Site maintenance account." In the end "Maintenance account" made me think of janitor. And while the janitor *does* get the keys to the whole school and live in the basement boiler room, i'm not sure this was quite the analogy we want to make. ;)

consensus is "site maintenance account"

The attached patch cleans up a few tiny things and also adds changes to sites/default/default.settings.php, as previously mentioned.

It looks ready to go to me...

I do wonder a bit if we are not providing any explanation of what the "site maintenance account" means, during installation. Before #471234: Installer: Configure site text cleanup, the description during installation used to say this:

The administrator account has complete access to the site; it will automatically be granted all permissions and can perform any administrative activity. This will be the only account that can perform certain activities, so keep its credentials safe.

I definitely wouldn't want to add all that back, but maybe something like this would be worth it:

The site maintenance account has complete access to the site and can perform any administrative activity.

Otherwise, I would agree with RTBC-ness.

After reading through this whole issue and thinking about David's last problem, I think this is RTBC with some side issues flowing out of it...

#572240: Explain in the user interface that user/1 and the "administrator" role are not the same thing

#497500: Create an administrator account in the default install profile, separate from user 1

Winston really championed this issue and dealt well with the necessary bike shedding.

I'll pull down d7 again this week and install from scratch so I can update the d7 installation screenshots and docs.

+++ UPGRADE.txt	12 Sep 2009 22:29:53 -0000
@@ -36,10 +36,10 @@ Let's begin!
+    be able to automatically access update.php in step #10. There are special 
+    instructions in step #10 if you are unable to log on as user ID 1. Do not 
+++ update.php	12 Sep 2009 22:29:54 -0000
@@ -13,9 +13,10 @@ define('DRUPAL_ROOT', getcwd());
+ * to modify the access check statement inside your settings.php file. After 

Trailing white-space here.

I'm on crack. Are you, too?

I'm happy with this change, and will commit it once marked RTBC.

This should fix the whitespace issues.

Strange, I found and fixed one such whitespace problem in the patch I submitted above, but apparently at the same time I managed to miss and/or introduce the others :)

Go for it.

Committed to CVS HEAD. Thanks!

Let's document this in the upgrade instructions so other module maintainers can update their references to user/1.

Done.

I wonder if it makes sense to add back a small description on the installation form, as described in #50?

I can't decide for sure, but to me it looks a little unclear without it, and it's easy enough to propose as a patch/screenshot for review...

So glad this is in!

@David_Rothstein: What about instead "This account has full administrative access and is required for site updates."

It wouldn't have to be that text exactly, but just something to indicate that the most essential function of user/1 is for running the site update script.

Note that with #67234: Update script access rights, user/1 would no longer be required to run site updates...

Sorry, I am going to mark this won't fix. We have discussed the instalation page inlength many times now, and it was removed with a full understanding that people very likely know the concept of admin / maintaince account whatever is.

The issue "status" is getting all wacky.

@Bojhan, I'm changing this to "fixed" based on the fact that a patch was committed in response to the issue (see #55 and #57).

If @David_Rothstein wants to pursue #59 he should open a new issue.

What confuses me is that I'm not sure why @Dries marked this issue as "Needs work" in the comment (#57) where he wrote, "committed to CVS HEAD." My guess is that was inadvertent.

Shai

@Shai you are correct, wasn't sure what to tag it.

What confuses me is that I'm not sure why @Dries marked this issue as "Needs work" in the comment (#57) where he wrote, "committed to CVS HEAD." My guess is that was inadvertent.

He marked it NW because of: "Let's document this in the upgrade instructions so other module maintainers can update their references to user/1."

tagging.

Xano did already document this in #58:
http://drupal.org/update/modules/6/7#user-1