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By krababl on
Why didn´t Drupal.org integrate an easyer way to find modules easier?
Perhaps you can integrate "community tags". Then we all can put our own tags to the modules.
I think that the taxonomy of the listet modules is not realy clear for beginners. Also I didn´t can see which module is a new module.
Sorry for my bad english.
Comments
You can view the module list
You can view the module list alphabetically as well as by last updated. That seems to meet most people's needs. Are you needing something different?
- Corey
To be fair, he did ask for
To be fair, he (she?) did ask for something different (tags). The sheer volume of modules can be overwhelming, even to the experienced. User-generated taxonomy could be a powerful way to add multiple facets to enable discovery of different modules.
I have heard of improvements to the module infrastructure in the works, including user ratings. Any idea what the status of that effort is, or if there is a tagging feature being considered?
Thank you cubbtech...
Yes, you are right. There are so much of modules and for beginners like me it´s not easy to find the right one. When I can see tags from other users or if I can set my own tags it would be easyer for me.
...
In the handbooks in the Drupal.org FAQ is a feeds page which has a link for new modules.
Community tags is not a simple solution and can and often do further complicate categorization. How would 200 people setting their own tags make things easier for 200 others? It would merely add 40 more terms linking to 30 different modules that may or may not be categorized sensibly both 195 people.
You can see this effect in action on sites like Delicious. While this in and of itself is not saying it wouldn't be useful, implementing onto Drupal.org, a very very large site with an very active community, would be challenging.
-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
...
Thank you for the tip. But now you can see that a beginner couldn´t know about this link. You know about but I have to search for this link. No, I didn´t know about it. How should i search for him?
So, if you think that users are not able to handle his own tags, how should they find good modules? With a link over a link on a other site? Then you can place the links to the module-homepages in the forum. The modules overview is not much better...
Sorry, you all do a great job but you don´t have to see at first the bad things what can be when we do a new stepp into the future. (yes, my english is bad...)
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There are over a thousand pages in the handbooks. I do not expect a beginner to know them all anytime soon and frequent experience shows many ignore them altogether. This stuff is part of the Drupal learning curve. This is the benefit of community involvement. People help you find this stuff.
As an Open Source project, people help out. There is not a paid improvement center, more of 'do it yourself' and 'help others' group. Drupal is not simple and it's ease of install and feature implementation can fool you. What it allows you to accomplish is complex and there are multiple ways to accomplish similar tasks. Ideas are welcome as they can often lead to improvements. Some ideas are more complex then they initially sound or would be on a site with 500-1000 users then on a site with 200,000+ users.
It's not that I don't think community tags are valid solution, it's that I don't think they will actually solve the stated problem.
Yes they do. There are a lot of contributed modules, some with overlapping features or alternative implementations, some abandoned. Many of them have cryptic descriptions, or very specialized natures and their use is not immediately obvious or only a few people really understand them. Things are getting better but part of the power of Drupal is the flexibility and that flexibility adds complexity and that complexity adds challenge. The fact that there is rarely one true way to implement a site or feature further complicates things. The learning curve is steep.
We work hard to encourage people to document, provide for people to contribute documentation back, to help each other on the forums, but none of this removes the fact that what Drupal allows you to do is complex and it does it fairly well which can fool you.
Here's another helpful hint for you. In your user profile tab, enable the 'Contributors link' block. It right there in your account, but so many people miss it. On the bottom is a link the the Drupal Dojo. Check it out, lots of helpful stuff there.
Additional Drupal.org considerations:
Implementing new modules on Drupal.org is not as simple as installing the module. Drupal.org is a large, active, heavily trafficked site. Implementing a change of this magnatude is something that would require at least two months discussion, design and testing before scheduling an install. This completely ignores the time for a security review of the module.... Most of this done by volunteers, in their spare time in the middle of other projects that are actually consuming all their time now. (Project module preparation for Drupal 6 upgrade, theme upgrade, data migration testing, changing the database master/slave configuration)
Your English is fine, don't worry about it.
-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
Instead of finding another
Instead of finding another way to classify modules, why not simply ask developers to upload a few screenshots of what their module can do, in each module desciption?
There are other software websites that do this, and it helps people a lot, as we don't have to go through each description that is often too technical or too long. Then, once that you get a general idea of what the module is about (by looking at the screenshots) and are interested, you can go through the detailed description to see how it works.
Having a more basic, but informative title for the modules could also help. For example:
"CCK Taxonomy Super Select Ultra"
When we read the module title, novices have absolutely no idea what it is about and have to read through all the generally lengthy description to have an idea, for each module. It just sounds like the developers want to find a unique brand name for their modules. As far as I know, the listed modules are developed for free with no initial intention of setting up a company to sell their product, so it wouldn't be bad to be informative and attract more interest by having a title like: "Multiselect taxonomy with checkboxes".
I know the above is a bit harsh written, but I'm just really overwhelmed with confusion and getting lost. But I hope it can be of some help.
Working on it
There's a lot of discussing, surveying, proposing, etc, going on in this area. It's not as simple as slapping on a module.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Thanks for the hard
Thanks for the hard work!
Agreed that it is a big challenge, and it's far better to implement it well than half-baked.
"If you don't have the time to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to do it over?"