We have put together a simple 13 question survey that will help us understand who you are and how you use Drupal. If you have ever wanted to voice your opinion, now is the time. Step up and spend five minutes to help the Drupal community.

Click here to take the survey

Comments

rszrama’s picture

Nice little survey. Makes me think... "what am I actually doing here???"

To let you know, the Not Easy .... Very Easy answers (11 and 12) don't work properly. You can't select more than one in the same column, so two can't be very easy. I thought maybe we were supposed to rank then, but there aren't enough circles to go around. ;)

Dublin Drupaller’s picture

it will be interesting to see the results, Drumm.

I had the same problem with question 11 (I think)...that rszrama had.

Cheers

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

drumm’s picture

venkat-rk’s picture

An important exercise like this should be highlighted on the front page, otherwise it is going to get lost in the forums.

elv’s picture

What's an administrator here?
Admin as in "I build websites for my clients"?
Admin as in "I administer contents on my company's website"?
Admin as in "I administer my own website"?

rszrama’s picture

All three. ;) Any of those would fit the questions asked... just check out the questions, and if they don't apply to you then skip them or don't submit.

piersonr’s picture

13. What are some important administration tasks that did not fit into the categories above for you? (select all that apply)

Maybe I just haven't had my morning coffee yet, but I found this question a bit confusion. Was the survey asking the administration tasks that were ... most common, least common, hardest, easiest?

Great idea in putting out the survey!

cel4145’s picture

Yeah. I was also unclear on whether it meant the previous question or all of the previous questions that might apply. I went with the former.

The ambiguity is something to keep in mind when reviewing the data.

-----
Charlie Lowe | cyberdash
Tips for posting to the Drupal forums

Pasqualle’s picture

this question put me down..
i am not a native english speaker. i thought my english is the problem..
i have no clue, what is this question about..

drupalnesia’s picture

i agree, most of my clients say that Drupal english is not easy to read/understand. maybe, this is the time for Drupal using international english version, you can look at any book produced by Sybex or read Microsoft Help files to understand what is "international english" version. english is not my native language also.

taxonomy? node? localization vs language? administer vs administration/administrator? vocabulary vs category title? story vs dinamic page? page vs static page?

atealtha’s picture

As an admin, themer, and web designer, I think the modules and their output needs to be proper semantic HTML. Themeable function help a lot, but sometimes it does not do enough.

Here is an example. The comments module ends up creating a bunch of divs where "nested" comments have a style="margin-left:25px" attribute attached. The proper way is to have an unordered list, with nested comments as nested unordered list:

<ul id="comments">
  <li>comment, blah blah blah
    <!-- nested comment below. notice there is no ending </li> tag yet -->
    <ul>
      <li>nested comment</li>
    </ul>
  <!-- first comment ends with tag below -->
  </li>
</ul>

With this, we can use CSS to easily handle the look while keeping the markup lean. But since the comment module never logically handles the nesting (it figures out the "depth" instead of comment's parent) there is no way to create the nesting without hacking the module.

I got the impression from the Lullabot podcasts that Drupal aims to be highly accessible, which is why it strongly suggests the use of UTF-8 encoded databases. Proper use of HTML tags improves usage for the blind, those that use text browsers, etc.

If you guys want some help with this, I would be glad to help out. Unfortunately I do not know the ins and outs of the guts yet to make code contributions.

escoles’s picture

The proper way is to have an unordered list...

I'm sorry, but who said that's the proper way? That seems like a kludge to me. Less of one, certainly, than embedding inline styles. But it seems to me that the "proper" way would be to nest DIVs, not to nest unordered lists. That's asking for trouble, AFAICS.

atealtha’s picture

Okay there is no "proper" way to do anything, really. But the benefit of using lists is that certain browsers can skip through them, see the next 5, last, first, etc. since there is a logical grouping. Sure we can group divs in another div, but what browser can easily figure out that it is a list?
We are so used to the point and click interfaces of Firefox, Safari, and the like that we do not know how these markups are used by other browsers meant for the disabled.

Having a good mix of properly used elements also help readability instead of looking through a bunch of divs. You can see the <li> tag and know it is part of a list. If we stuck with divs, either we have it nested in a "list" div and scroll up to make sure the div is in a list, or add class="list" to every div, which clutters up the HTML. Even if a site is not targetted to the disabled, it is still easier to code this way. We can get away with using <span> and adding span{display:block} in the css but we don't. It's just too much extra work.

As far as styling, divs and lists are pretty similar. Both are block level elements, can have width, height, float, etc.

But if nobody wants to listen to me, I hope at least things like nesting is considered when coding. I'll use the themeable functions and change the markup myself.

Toe’s picture

You're trying to talk semantics, but how do you figure that 'comments' are 'items in a list'? They might be presented with indentation similar to a list on threaded forums like this, but that doesn't make it a list. By your definition, we might as well eliminate the <p> tag altogether, after all, when you look at a page in a book, it's really just a list of paragraphs, and the paragraph itself is just a list of sentences, and the sentence is just a list of words, and...

escoles’s picture

Argh. You just made my brain hurt.

You have a point: The proper "semantic" way to do it could be to tag them with a level and indent or place based on that. But you could also look at it as being driven by the type of presentation.

When messages are presented "clothesline style" (does anybody still say that anymore?), there is no relationality between messages other than that which the users put there, in the form of links and quotes. There are good reasons to do the discussions that way. You get a different kidn of discussion. It's not threaded, and people like that. Sometimes.

So, I guess, the "right" way is to change the semantic code depending on what the view is. In a "clothesline" presentation, your observation holds: They're all just paras, independent of one antoher. But in a hierarchichal list, there are real parent:child relationships.

My objection to using list elements is that it seems to me to over-drive the function of the element. If we're really strictly thinking semantically, I guess I can see the original poster's point; my objection was based on implementation, where I've seen the rendering of an element like li have a significant effect on what you're trying to do with it.

atealtha’s picture

They might be presented with indentation similar to a list on threaded forums like this, but that doesn't make it a list.

I am not saying comments are a list because it is threaded. I want to use the list element because it can benefit special browsers.

By your definition, we might as well eliminate the <p> tag altogether, after all, when you look at a page in a book, it's really just a list of paragraphs, and the paragraph itself is just a list of sentences, and the sentence is just a list of words, and...

Paragraph is a list of words? I understand them as a stream of words, not a list. I don't use one <p> tag and stick in two <br> tags every time I want a new paragraph. Things can make sense to certain people and browsers. A list of characters does not make sense to me, so I won't resort to ridiculous "Daily WTF" style HTML.

Either way, however you percieve a "group of comments" is up to you. All I wanted was for module developers not rely on inline styles and use nesting. Leave me with the themeable functions so religous debates like this won't happen.

Toe’s picture

I am not saying comments are a list because it is threaded. I want to use the list element because it can benefit special browsers.

Then don't try to call what you're doing 'semantic HTML' and then proceed to bitch about Drupal's supposed lack of 'semantic HTML.' Semantic HTML means using a list tag for a list and only for a list, period.

atealtha’s picture

I do think of comments as a list not because it is threaded, but because I really consider it a list. I want to use it because it benefits the disabled. And from the start I said if anything, just give me proper nesting and leave the themeable functions for me.

Anyways, sorry for killing your family. I didn't realize it would piss you off so much.

drupalnesia’s picture

This survey did not give me a change to write my own suggestions to improve Drupal. Usually at the end of a survey, there is a text box to enter users suggestions if any.

venkat-rk’s picture

Hmm...I seem to remember that for almost every question, there was a text field called 'Other' where you could add additional info.

rbrooks00’s picture

That wasn't the point of this survey. The point as Neil articulated in the opening post is to get an idea of who Drupal administrators are and what they use most frequently. The reason for that is it allows people that want to work on usability to a) understand their audience and b) know where to focus their time first to get the most bang for their buck.

===
BuyBlue.org | Lullabot

Boris Mann’s picture

This is a specific survey focused on administration, which CivicSpace has long been funding and improving.

We *always* welcome specific feedback and suggestions. The best way to give them is to create issues for the appropriate project, with well reasoned examples and descriptions.

Walt Esquivel’s picture

Nice survey! Thank you for taking time to create the survey in order to better understand who Drupal users are and how they use Drupal. I went ahead and filled it out as best I could.

However, I have a minor question. As they say at many software companies, we should eat our own dog food. So why didn't we use Drupal's Survey 4.7.0 module to create and track this 14-item survey in lieu of SurveyMonkey?

Looks like the Drupal survey documentation page needs to be updated for 4.7. But other than that, couldn't Drupal's Survey 4.7.0 module have been used? In addition to eating our own dog food, I'm also curious because I'd like to use Drupal's Survey 4.7.0 module in the future for my own web site and am wondering if there are reasons to not use it.

Again, thank you for the great survey and thanks, in advance, for your constructive feedback.

Walt Esquivel, MBA, MA
President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

sepeck’s picture

Because survey module needs work.

-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

drumm’s picture

It should be noted that the writing of the survey was led by Kieran Lal (amazon on Drupal.org) from CivicSpace. The questions and potential answers were explored by doing interviews.

netbjarne’s picture

I'v done lots of these kinds of surverys - and a few things strikes me as odd in this one. Especially: somwhere I'm supposed to rate tasks from "not easy" to "easy". In my world "not easy" is "hard". But right below, I'm supposed to rate somewhat similar tasks from "hard" to "not hard". You had me a little confused there. Added to that, I think many of the questions are a bit to broad or complicated for non-native english speaking folks like me, for instance: "Manage content specifically creating new content types, viewing differences in node versions, importing content, or seeing multiple previews of content on a single page" - hard/not hard? hard to answer! - or "Setting up a testing process including creating a test role, soliciting feedback from users, configuring corrections, and working with module development process to get bugs resolved" - not in the categories above? Configuring corrections? - huh?

Maybe its because its friday and my brain is melting.

Amazon’s picture

The survey questions are based on feedback of the last Drupal administration survey. We found that overlap between easy to hard was confusing and folks wanted all the tasks in one list rated easy to hard. The problem was that in other survey questions when too many items were lumped together the response rates went down.

Big thanks to Neil for pushing this through to making it public. We need volunteers to participate in the analysis.

Kieran

Development manager CivicSpace Labs

Kieran Lal

rszrama’s picture

Already took the survey, but while playing with the latest 5.0, I thought of this... The menu names access control and access rules are confusing, because access here is referring to 2 different things. But they're right next to each other on the menu, and even though access control goes with roles, it's actually separated from roles by access rules. I'm not sure why or when access control became access control, and it makes sense to call the different parts of a site "access" levels... but next to access rules which obviously refer to accessing the entire site it's just confusing. I would propose something totally not confusing at all, and intuitive - as most systems use, and change "access control" to simply be permissions. This avoids the ambiguity with two different uses of access and the separation from the roles menu item... not to mention the "access control" page itself disses that term in favor of permissions in the entire page description. ; )

pamphile’s picture

I took the survey :)

Marcel
TinyHTTP.com - url shorting service

ica’s picture

Just wondering why not walkah's survey.module nor being used for 'Drupal Adminitrators' survey?

http://drupal.org/project/survey

Walt Esquivel’s picture

...this post:
http://drupal.org/node/84420#comment-154977

Walt Esquivel, MBA, MA
President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

hanief84’s picture

Drupal is cool but I think there is one thing that must be included in Drupal 5.0. A mailbox in the CMS itself and also the PM (personal messages) ability without needing us to go the GMail or any email account. People will say a Goodbye to the phpBB and IPB right if Drupal 5.0 has this ability.

http://www.indiecom.net - Hello from Malaysia

mike stewart’s picture

not sure why this is advertised on the Drupal homepage since this survey appears to be closed...

jonathan_hunt’s picture

I followed the link from the homepage, but I see the survey is closed too. I was willing to give some time to give feedback to Drupal but presumably something went wrong or something broke? Otherwise it seems like a very short time to gain responses from the community...

rszrama’s picture

Short time? This was posted over 3 months ago. : P

I'm sure they got enough feedback, and by now a lot of the things we mentioned in the survey have made their way into Drupal 5.0. Remember, that was still 4.7 territory. I'm sure there will be another for the newest interface eventually.

----------------------
Current Drupal project: http://www.ubercart.org

sepeck’s picture

The banner accidentally got put back in the banner rotation. It should be out again. These things happen.

-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

drupaldesigns’s picture

1) Will the results be made available?
2) I am also thinking along the same lines - why as Survey module not used ?

sepeck’s picture

1) in the handbook http://drupal.org/node/92304
2) see my previous comment.

-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

Walt Esquivel’s picture

...beat you to answering the post! ; )

But you beat me to it! : )

Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

Walt Esquivel’s picture

...this post:
http://drupal.org/node/84420#comment-154977

Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

vjordan’s picture

abmm’s picture

Hi,

I need to organize the internal survey in my organization. There are 20 question altogather. This is creating a very long page. Is there a way, in which we can split the huge page into 2-3 pages. Can we create any question as mandatory?

I appreciate a quick and helful response.

Thanks