Not much dramatic has happened in the last few months. Mostly it's been editing and incremental adding, editing and updating pages with a few bonuses. To highlight some items seems a good idea. Please chime in as I'm sure I've missed some.
We've had the addition of various Video casts that people seem to enjoy. I would like to see more. I keep pretending that I'll have time to make some myself but so far that hasn't happened. Heine pointed out wink as a possible tool to generate some if anyone else was wanting to hop in and contribute. (You are of course welcome to use other tools, I just thought I'd mention it as free).
People have always been able to add pages to the handbook, they just went into moderation for a few days. Despite that, for our community our size, we still have a relatively small documenation contributor base but it is growing. Something that is very nice to see. A few weeks ago I chaged the default behavior of book pages and took all book submissions out of moderation. This has resulted in a bit more spam, test and garbage pages being visible in the handbook but so far has been under control. The other result is that you are able to edit your former contributions without knocking the page back into moderation.
We have also added an additional role on Drupal.org for more people to edit handbook pages without the additional responsibilities of being a site-maintainer. This will hopefully result in even better editing of content in the handbook and contribution. The barrier is that you need to join the documentation team list, express interest and ask.
While some more recipes have been added to the site recipes section (thanks everyone), tutorials that people had said they were working on have unfortunately not materialized. This is disappointing as several were very firm in various forum postings that this would happen. In any case, I and others would welcome tutorials and even video casts of those very same tutorials. Now is your chance to contribute. How to setup a local test site using XAMMP or ApacheTriad (someone could even grab the ones I started, update them and add them if they want) .... How to restore data to that site from your production site. Fame can be yours… :D
Another area or limbo is those folks who thought Drupal needed more Marketing. With the slow steady up take of Drupal by people and organizations I was never sure why but some folk were convinced we needed it. Unfortunately no one has really come up with any really comprehensive articles for the About Drupal marketing section so I may just re-order some of it myself.
In the Customization and themeing section the php snippets, theme snippets continue to grow. Heine went through and filtered out several that were not well written and contained various vulnerabilities. He contacted the authors and worked with them to update using more secure techniques to reduce and eliminate issue's. The Views snippets section was added earlier this year and is slowing growing more content.
Some work on cleaning up some of the Developers guide has been going on as various folks update example pages, add performance how-to's and try and reduce duplication of content. The PHPTemplate manual needs some attention in the near future though.
IBM Developer Works focused a nice series on setting up Drupal. If you haven't been following it, it's worth a read and will help introduce you to some areas beyond just Drupal that you may not have explored yet. IBM has some time limit restrictions but we should by able to add the content when those time limits run out. Have to check various licences and such.
So, what challenges lie ahead? The next release of Drupal is from an interface perspective dramatic. A lot of UI interface discussion happened between 4.4 and 4.5 and much of the results of those discussions have been filtering into Drupal core sense. Some have not proven to be a great way to go and others helped shine a light of solid ideas. The next version of Drupal will have a big impact on much of the existing Installation and configuration section of the handbook. The interface will change a bit, the CCK base api is now in core. The installer is in and this also affects module updates, etc. Jquery making it in (not in yet) will also have yet a further impact on the learning curve for Drupal users (and by users I mean those who implement sites, not your site's end-users)
What to do and how to approach this challenge is the next item up on the list with freeze in a few days....
Comments
Part 5 of IBM series just out - about Drupal's innards
Thanks for the update. The efforts of the documentation people are much appreciated.
IBM just posted the latest in their series on CMSs and Drupal.
Part 5: Getting started with Drupal
Although the title is "Getting Started", the IBMers very quickly jump from the definition of nodes and modules to how hooks and theming work. I found it a very clear description of Drupal's architecture and mechanisms. This article appears to be the groundwork for instructions on building a custom module, which will be the subject of their next installment.
It might be worth putting a copy of this article, or an annotated link to it, in the handbook.
Drupal Marketing Group
Steven, have you considered posting a marketing request to the Drupal Marketing Group to lend you some assistance with the About Drupal section? The Drupal Marketing Group has, as of 8/29/06, 66 subscribers. Perhaps someone there can take care of this issue for you?
Also, THANK YOU for putting all the above very helpful and pertinent info together and for all that you do for Drupal.
Walt Esquivel, MBA, MA
President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
...
Some of the folks who formed that group are part of the documentation team. Some of them were the one's who wanted the marketing section. I am not against this idea myself, I just think that other documentation is far more important.
Of course, I also don't make money from Drupal services or support so that does render me somewhat biased towards the support documentaion. By helping more people make effective use of Drupal, I increase the potential pool of people effectively using it. By doing this, I increase the posibility of people coming up with neat a spiffy ways to use it and contribute those idea's back. In my opinion, people who get invested in using Drupal are far more likely to contribute back. People also work for companies so this is the more effective vector I see and therefore put my limited resources into. Sort of how Linux spread into corporations.
Of course, if someone else thinks Marketing is more effective, then I'm more then happy to facilitate their improving the documentation as they can. :D
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Word of mouth and/or Google probably
means more to the marketing of things like a CMS than any internal stuff anyone might produce here (marketing being separate from documentation and/or instructional videos and the like, which of course still ends up being marketing in their own right, but I digress). Not to say that internally generated marketing materials are without value, just that word of mouth and the first 10 results on google for any given subject likely matter more. (who need "credentials" if you have pagerank, right)
After surverying the situation for quite a while, it would seem to me that the main complaints with Drupal almost always boils down to "ease-of-use issues" (so called and/or actual) and it sounds like the upcoming release is going to take those issues on in a big-way, via the installer.
In a connected and savvy world it's very hard to make up for real world facts with press releases (unless you're in the White House, natch), so the fact that Drupal is addressing usability is a going to be quite a marketing-win!
If everyone does what they can, marketing or otherwise, we can all meet in the middle and enjoy a more successful project!
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Bloggyland.com
Hosting for pre-configured Drupal installations
Instantly activated, Drupal specific support
Also: HigherVisibilityWebsites.com
Many kudos
Steven, kudos on an excellent article. I can now understand your passion. I will try to contribute to the documentation base, once I'm more familiar with Drupal.
Thanks for all you do, Steve and others...
Thanks Steve for all your hard work...
And yes, documentation is half the battle. I know that it's difficult to get people to document stuff well.... So... I had an idea... maybe it's nothing, but maybe it's brilliant, who knows?, but I'm wondering if we implemented something like TipIt [which lets the node authors receive small tips from readers], if this might help out the spirit of good will in the community..... and even more importantly good documentation. :-)
http://drupal.org/project/tipit
Just my 2c,
Peace,
Albert
Esalen Alumni Group
i would like to have a go @
I would like to have a go at writing a tutorial for setting up drupal locally using XAMMP.
Apache2Triad
As I did not noticed this had been posted, I posted my own, earlier, if you are still following this thread, sepeck.
adding author names
I really applaud the move to publish pages before they are moderated.
is this a good time to turn on author names?
I wanted to write a page but was afraid I might lead people wrong. I was pretty sure in that it works completely correctly in my environment. if the page had my name on it, then people would know I am no sepeck or dries and to take what I say with some caution.
or maybe a badge for "approved" versus "in moderation queue"
...
If you feel you need review you can always post to the doc list. Or write it up and ambush someone in #drupal-support which is what I do at times as well. Sometimes someone is available and other times I wait a day.
Just because I am visible does not mean I am an expert on all aspects of Drupal There are things I realy on for others do write and proof.
Starting through docuenting something you do not fully understand is a good way to leanr it better. So, write it up and toss it on the docs list if unsure.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide