Back at OSCMS in Vancouver, a gentleman (I believe Dale?) pointed out to me that the "Contribute" section is rather un-friendly for new users. As someone who genuinely wanted to contribute to Drupal, he was stuck scratching his head about what to do with the plethora of links. There's no real indication of "context" in terms of what these links are actually for, nor a sense of "first do this, then do that." For some reason I forgot about this until just now. :P

So here's an alternate idea of spiffying this up a little. It's in PDF form just because it was easier for me to mock this up in Illustrator in 4 minutes than actually doing it. ;)

So basically, this page becomes a "jump-off" page to all the various ways you can contribute to the project, and then each sub-page contains more specific information. The "Contribute to documentation" page, for example, would talk about how people should first join the documentation mailing list, about the overall goal to incorporate comments into handbook pages, and various tools we can use to gauge what are popular pages, etc.

Thoughts?

CommentFileSizeAuthor
contributions idea.pdf104.66 KBwebchick

Comments

webchick’s picture

webchick
she/they
Primary language English
Location Vancouver 🇨🇦
commented
Assigned: Unassigned » webchick

a) Someone with actual graphic design skills should tweak the graphics, colours, etc. :P

b) There would also be other sections like "Developing," "Testing," "Donating," etc. I was just trying to mock up something quickly.

Gary Feldman’s picture

Gary Feldman commented

I like it - a lot.

michelle’s picture

michelle
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Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

I love it. If we go this route, and if people want to go with my handbook change in http://drupal.org/node/84169 (shameless plug *grin*) it would be nice if the same designer could do both. What webchick mocked up (design-wise, not content) is exactly what I was going for on the top level page of the handbooks so having them match would be great.

Michelle

webchick’s picture

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

Ok, I've started a new handbook section for this here: http://drupal.org/node/84228

Just the text for now; I figure we'll tweak that and then work in the graphics later.

If folks want to help flesh out the other sub-pages that would be cool. I've done the user support one to start.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

The text appears fine for the most part. I do think the the Header lead in should be changed from 'Thank You!' to 'Welcome'. The first paragraph text then has the Thank you, etc.

The second paragraph uses the word 'newbies', why can't we just use the phrase 'Even the most gifted Drupal developers were new once,' without the slang word 'newbies'? I am not sure how 'newbies' translates across languages.

We don't have any big spots of color anywhere else on Drupal so if you want that, I suggest chatting with Steve Whittens. Otherwise all the other pages use two colum bodies to do present this info using <div class="column-left"> and <div class="column-right"> in the page itself and I think we should remain consistent with that look.

Once we agree on the text, etc I can make the change.

webchick’s picture

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

thanks, sepeck! those changes were incorporated into the text. I also added the links right below the sections.

Another thing we talked about on IRC is that this doesn't really make sense as a book, but should rather be a series of pages. since I don't have the ability to create pages, Steven has offered to do that for me. :)

Gary Feldman’s picture

Gary Feldman commented

I'm not bothered by the slang newbies. Having some colloquial language can make the text feel friendlier, and Merriam-Webster (m-w.com) lists it without describing it as nonstandard or slang. Just avoid the leet spelling (i.e., noob or n00b), which isn't phonetic and harder to find.

Translation shouldn't be an issue. After all, newbie is essentially synonymous with tyro and close enough to beginner, yet we wouldn't worry about translating either of those. Since this isn't fiction, capturing the informal connotation of newbie in a translation isn't mandatory.

michelle’s picture

michelle
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Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

For those who aren't following along on IRC, webchick's awesome new pages are now under the contribute link ( http://drupal.org/contribute ) and not in the handbook as stated in #4.

Michelle

webchick’s picture

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

Also, the user support, documentation, and donation "how to contribute" pages are basically done. May need editing.

I'm going to need some help on the translations and marketing ones. I am working on the developer one now, and can probably take testing too.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

all pages aliased on the top level too. /contribute, then contribute/support, contirbute/development, etc.... We used Page type content rather then the handbook as once they are written I don't see them being revisisted except occasionally.

laura s’s picture

laura s commented

+1 The wonderful thing about online communities -- big wonderful things happen overnight. Thank you all.

webchick’s picture

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

Thanks, Laura!

Created two additional top-level contribute sections: themes and usability.

Started on the testing section but since the bug testing part by itself took up half a page, I decided to move the usability stuff to a separate section.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

pages exist.