As a user of the handbook, I find it difficult to start at the Handbooks tab and navigate to the information I'm looking for. There is just so much info there and a huge amount of links right on the front page. For some time, I've been thinking it would be nice to simplify the landing page and use a sort of upside-down funnel system to get to the information.

Since I can't go making mass changes in the live handbook, I've been sketching out my ideas on my own site. Unfortunately, there's no way to import the actual handbook to my site to make changes so I've done a lot of copying and pasting. This is still extremely rough and most of the links don't work due to being straight copied from here. I encourage people to leave comments either on the actual pages or on this issue. Since I had only one reply when I posted this on the docs list, I haven't taken any time to work on it since I initially put it up there. If there's interest, though, and people like the approach I'm taking, I will gladly continue to flesh it out and make it into something that can be brought over to the handbook here.

http://shellmultimedia.com/node/2

Thanks for looking,

Michelle

Comments

webchick’s picture

webchick
she/they
Primary language English
Location Vancouver 🇨🇦
commented

I really like this idea. Currently the /handbook link is a rather intimidating list of links, and it's difficult for an individual to tell what they should be looking for without reading each one individually.

The Main Page, + a few graphics like at the proposed contribute page rewrite looks very good. I'd make the descriptions maybe a hair longer, maybe identify the appropriate audiences for each section, and we can tweak the wording on the titles, etc.

The jump-off pages they go to, however, are just lists of links. I'd like to see these turn not so much into "table of contents" but more "table of concepts" ... so sort of like the initial jump-off page, but for that specific handbook. So the About section could have things like "New to Drupal? here are some links you might find useful: blah blah blah" .. "Want information about the Drupal community? Try these: blah blah blah"

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

Actually, that is what I was planning. The jump off pages are currently a list of links simply because I dumped the existing links from the landing page into them. I might have been premature in showing this off because it is still so very raw compared to what's in my head, but I wanted to get opinion on the direction before going any farther on it.

Since I've heard positive things from a few key people, I will put some more work into making this less rough.

Thanks for looking,

Michelle

xano’s picture

xano
he/they
Primary language English
Location Southampton
commented
Status: Active » Fixed

I believe that recently the handbook pages have been reorganised.

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented
Status: Fixed » Closed (won't fix)

Let's make this more accurate since my idea never got any interest.

Michelle