On Oct 15, 2006, at 5:29 PM, Trae McCombs wrote:

Kieran, Sorry if this is OT, but I think it sorta makes sense to say this on this thread.

I think the #1 problem Drupal faces is this:

Difficulty to upgrade.

Yes, it is off-topic.  Yes, you are right.  Upgrading was listed as the hardest task in the Drupal administration survey, as of right now.  Survey results are subject to change.


I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but... I think there should be a button, or something in the admin section that says goes something like the following:

Upgrade - Configure when your Drupal software is upgraded

1. Status
Upgrade is pending - Somewhere something should say: Upgrade pending!
No Upgrades present - Same place it should say: No Upgrades Needed.
(wording is off, but you get the idea)
other?

2. When are your upgrades to be run?
[Nightly]
[Monthy]
[Only when security releases are available - does this poll drupal.org ? heh]
[Never]

3. Level of upgrades [Email UID 1 (or whoever is specified) when something is done or available ]
Simple Notification
Download update but don't install
Install upgrade but perform only when UID1 logs in and approves
Automagic upgade with no user intervention needed. 

Heh, Ok, I know I'm probably smoking crack here, and none of this is possible, BUT, from a "newbie" Drupal Administrator, this would be a MAJOR plus on helping keep things maintained.  I'd personally select the Automagic upgrades.  That way I wouldn't have to worry about things.

There is a LOT more thinking that has to go into something like this, and I know it's probably a 6.0 feature, but... it would really make managing a Drupal site a complete and utter breeze. 

Most of the basics to solve this are being done by Derek right now.   The basic assumption is that we need a release mechanism for contributed modules in order to do official releases that need to be pushed out to sites.

However, I do think there are even harder parts of upgrading that we should explore like API changes, and teaching effective upgrading procedures to administrators.

Cheers,
Kieran


Trae

On 10/14/06, Kieran Lal <kieran@civicspacelabs.org> wrote:
Hello, there are hundreds, possibly thousands of available patches in
the queue for head.

If there are patches available that address managing large lists of
items (users, nodes, comments, groups, blocks, menus) then please
help identify them.
Also, if there are patches that help in the discovery of Drupal
settings for administrators please help to identify those patches as
well.

These are not requests for new features to be added to Drupal 5.0.
It is a request to help identify proposed solutions to user
experience problems that have been identified in the Drupal
administration survey.  We would like to include these proposed
solutions as part of the user experience survey report.

Cheers,
Kieran





--
    Trae McCombs || http://occy.net/
  Founder - Themes.org // Linux.com