By meh on

THE GOOD NEWS: Drupal's contributed modules are a treasure trove ... as a new user I've been spending dozens and dozens of hours digging for bronze, silver, and gold in the embarrassment of riches within the multiplicity of modules. I now have 225+ of them staged in my local site/all/modules directory for testing.

THE BAD NEWS: Alas, there appears to be no convention for alerting us new users where contributed modules will appear in the MODULES panel and/or how they are to be configured (Content mgmt? Blocks mgmt? Site Config? User mgmt?) and where they will put their output.

A ROACH MOTEL: E.g., right now the "User Feedback" module window on my first Drupal site like a 'roach motel' for messages ... the messages check in, but they never check out ... and I'm searching like a blind man to find them.

DOCUMENT THEM!: I come from the IBM mainframe world. The overkill of documentation therein would typically never leave an orphan module on the user's doorstep for adoption -- the authors would have documented module folder names, module files and their purposes, module configuration techniques, module output, etc. ... as if they were being paid by the word.

THE HUNT: It requires a treasure hunt ... indeed, a scavenger hunt ... to get the goodies generated by Drupal's generous gnomes.

SHOELESS CHILDREN: Seems like the cobblers who produce Drupal's contributed modules should be encouraged and empowered to shoe their own children via Drupal's CCK and taxonomy features!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

Ethmoid’s picture

Ethmoid commented

I have just tried to load the fckeditor module to my Drupal site. I downloaded it and then loaded the folder to my modules folder on drupal. Go to drupal and it shows as a module so I select it and it then shows under Site Configuration, but tells me that it is not installed correctly and there is a new version that is fully compatible with version 6.

On downloading ckeditor and then loading to the modules folder, it then does not show up in modules at all and simply does not appear under site configuration either - am at a loss as to know how to install it now.

redpuma’s picture

redpuma commented

You might be a victim of the FCKeditor project upgrading and renaming itself. The CKeditor is the newest version of FCKeditor so much better they renamed it. You need the FCKfiles available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/fckeditor/files/FCKeditor/ and you need to put them in the right directory

sites/all/modules/fckeditor/fckeditor

_vid’s picture

_vid commented

Hi meh,
RE: The bad news; Have you tried Admin by Modules?

I'm new to Drupal but something I found helpful and just discovered today is the Admin by Module tab, available from the main administration page or http://yoursite.../admin/by-module.

I noticed a link to that page immediately following the activation of a new module (which is exactly when you need it most!). It laid out all the options I needed to configure my new module; permissions, settings, even help. Very handy.

redpuma’s picture

redpuma commented

In addition to that link you can install the admin menu which helps finding all this stuff a bit easier. http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu

I was shown this module recently which helps http://drupal.org/project/sitedoc