Myself, along with some of my co-workers, were tasked by Dries to perform a series of interviews along with other research to try and determine what the main blockers are for Drupal 8 adoption, as well as what factors are leading to Drupal 8 being hard to use. (These findings will be part of the Driesnote at Nashville.)
We've talked to over 50 people at this point, from site builders, to developers, to support and sales people, to trainers, both enterprise-level and small-medium business level, from various points on the globe including North America, Europe, and India. From this research, we feel we've gleaned a solid set of common pain points and have some suggested next steps.
One of the common complaints was around Drupal's evaluator experience. While a lot of this lies with Drupal.org-related stuff (see http://matthewgrasmick.com/compare-php-frameworks for a truly painful look), we also fall down in that once you finally manage to get Drupal installed, it's basically a completely blank slate and offers nearly zero guidance on what to do next. When Drupal is stood up next to our competitors, we actually end up looking more limited, which is pretty horrifying, given nearly the entire point of using Drupal is its inherent flexibility. :P
We already have an amazing tool at our disposal to help solve this problem: the Umami Demo profile. Let's un-hide it from Drupal 8.5, so we can vastly improve the evaluator experience now(ish), vs. waiting all the way in September. This approach would have a dual benefit in that it will also allow us to capture end user feedback that could feed into 8.6's development cycle, at which points we can hopefully remove some of the babysitting/dire warnings around it, and more actively encourage the profile's use for the evaluator use case (which is what it was built for).
The installer in 8.5.X would change to provide a third option, and a warning if it's selected:
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| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #8 | Select an installation profile | Drupal 2018-06-26 10-44-56.png | 110.07 KB | gábor hojtsy |
| #8 | Select an installation profile | Drupal 2018-06-26 10-44-38.png | 95.49 KB | gábor hojtsy |
| #6 | 2957464-6.patch | 442 bytes | gábor hojtsy |
Comments
Comment #2
webchickBased on some conversations at DrupalCon, it sounds like this is mainly blocked on release manager review, and it's been difficult to find time for said review what with all the security shenanigans going on, which has (understandably) taken priority. It's on the list, however.
Comment #3
catchI'm only aware of one issue that might block this, and it's one I opened, but it does seem important: #2975328: Install profile in settings.php and mismatch check makes re-installs of Drupal hard.
i.e. if we expect people to install Umami, then blow it away and re-install, what do we expect them to do?
Should they:
1. do a drush si?
2. empty the database and hit install.php
(both of these run into the bug above)
3. nuke the entire install directory, recreate the database, and install from scratch?
(this doesn't run into the bug above, but it's a completely fresh install, not a re-install).
4. do a completely separate install in a new vhost?
Comment #4
gábor hojtsy#2975328: Install profile in settings.php and mismatch check makes re-installs of Drupal hard is (again) RTBC, so we are getting close.
Comment #5
gábor hojtsyGot release manager review. Needs manual testing though with #2975328: Install profile in settings.php and mismatch check makes re-installs of Drupal hard applied.
Comment #6
gábor hojtsyComment #7
gábor hojtsyComment #8
gábor hojtsyUpdated issue summary with manual testing instructions and screenshots of "UI changes".
Comment #9
gábor hojtsyAs per https://groups.drupal.org/node/526844
Since there will not be an 8.5.x release where a major issues like this could land anymore, this will just not happen anymore. The profile is shown in 8.6 though. 🎉