[development] Drupal administration survey draft based on 10 interviews

Kieran Lal kieran at civicspacelabs.org
Wed Aug 9 02:54:48 UTC 2006


The survey questions and responses listed below are derived from  
interviews conducted with Drupal administrators from novice to  
expert.  The responses must be evaluated for clarity and conciseness.  
All questions are multiple selection in that the survey taker can  
select those that apply to help us best understand the Drupal users  
in aggregate.  Each question in the survey will have an other  
selection so we can look for  answers that did not surface during  
interviews.

The survey will be done using SurveyMonkey.com.  It will run for 45  
days linked from the front page of Drupal.org.

If you complete all the questions in this survey and would like to be  
recognized as a contributor to improving Drupal user experience  
please indicate your Drupal.org username
Drupal.org username_______________

How would you describe yourself as a Drupal administrator?
(select all that apply)
	New user
	Non-technical user developing community or social change web site  
forced to become "accidental technologist"
	Inexperienced with Drupal but curious. Learning fast based on other  
web site building experience
	Experienced user, comfortable with configuring site rapidly
	Module developer who understands what's going on behind the scenes
	Other_______________

How frequently do you administer you your Drupal site?
(select all that apply)
	Monthly
	Once every couple of weeks
	Several times a week
	Daily for 30-60 minutes of website management
	Daily for several hours in site development and deployment
	Other_______________

How long do you administer your Drupal site in a single sitting  
approximately?
(select all that apply)
	Thirty minutes to an hour
	Few hours
	Half a day
	All day long
	Other_______________

How does Drupal help you accomplish your goals as a web site  
administrator?
(select all that apply)
	Rapid deployment of features and ability to meet customer  
requirements saves time
	Web based content publishing is easy and allows for end user  
contributions
	Learnable website that can be taught to users and allows website  
developers to leverage existing learning when building new sites
	Allows for monitoring and logging of the website
	Module configuration, extensibility with new modules, and clean code  
make it easier to configure the website as  you need it
	Dynamic and exciting community allows for rapid and fun learning
	Other_______________

Why do you use Drupal?
(select all that apply)
	Features, extensibility, integration of modules, clean code allow  
you to customize your site
	Speed of deployment and re-use of existing functionality
	Quality community is helpful, has smart people, is very active, and  
is working on community solutions not just technical capabilities
	Allows users to create content, categorize content, and add  
navigation to the site
	Other_______________

How does Drupal help your users?
(select all that apply)
	Gives them the features they want quickly
	Allows users to create web based content such as forum posts, or blogs
	Drupal community innovates and provides community building capacity  
with Drupal
	Cost effective and winning over non-technical decision makers
	Other_______________

What are some common Drupal administration tasks?
(select all that apply)
	Monitor site through reviewing logs, looking at user activity
	Manage spam through comments, track backs, forum, and user registration
	Configure modules
	Update modules, install modules, test patches, track fixes for modules
	Work on themes and add theme template to customize module output
	Learn about Drupal capabilities and features, understand  
terminology, and plan improvements
	Manage users accounts, change permissions
	Respond to user feedback during testing and make changes
	Create web pages through the creating content types
	Other_______________

What are some infrequent Drupal tasks?
(select all that apply)
	Add new features by adding modules or coding new features
	Manage spam, delete content and comment,  and banning users
	Modify existing content such publishing to the front page, making  
content sticky, or changing titles
	Layout content in positions with blocks, views, or designing a  
content section
	Change site theme or theme a content section
	Modify site navigation
	Other_______________

When you administer your site you find it easy to:
(1 is not easy, 5 is very easy)
1-5	Add new features and install modules
1-5	Automate tasks using cron	
1-5	Manage user information by editing user account permissions
1-5	Change themes or make changes to layout with theme templates
1-5	Post, edit, and version web pages and other content types
1-5	General settings such as changing titles, or date format

When you administer your site you find it hard to?
(1 is not hard, 5 is very hard)
1-5	Discover where to configure site settings, or where all the  
different places where a site needs to be configured are
1-5	Understanding Drupal specific concepts or understand technical  
language without pictures
1-5	Upgrade modules manually, manage module conflicts in output,  
download modules that don't include dependencies
1-5	Manage content specifically creating new content types, viewing  
differences in node versions, importing content, or seeing multiple  
previews of content on a single page
1-5	Manage large groups or users, nodes, menu items, comments, blocks
1-5	Get overview of new content and activities on site
1-5	Configure user permissions with existing granularity
1-5	Manage menus such as changing menu block weights for all menus on  
a page, or ordering menu items within a menu

What other important tasks did not fit into the categories above for  
you?
(select all that apply)
	Analyzing logs to understand the state of your site
	Integrating modules and resolving clashes in the output
	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
	Work on the theme and templates to create structure and distinct  
looks to sections of the site
	Hide output from modules such as node links or browsing links
	Managing menus with the menu editing interface, bulk menu editing,  
and menu options
	Manage performance of the site
	Identify popular content
	Aggregate content from other sources into a site


Here is table which was used to manually cluster responses from the  
interviews: http://drupal.org/node/77193.  The clusters were used to  
make up the survey responses.  If one of the survey options is  
confusing or needs to be reworded please consult the table and source  
interviews to help in making the responses clearer.

Interview 1: http://groups.drupal.org/node/1136
Interview 2: http://groups.drupal.org/node/1135
Interview 3: http://groups.drupal.org/node/1133
Interview 4: http://groups.drupal.org/node/1137
Interview 5: http://groups.drupal.org/node/1134
Interview 6: http://groups.drupal.org/node/1139
Interview 7: http://groups.drupal.org/node/1143
Interview 8: http://groups.drupal.org/node/1144
Interview 9: http://groups.drupal.org/node/1146
Interview 10: http://groups.drupal.org/node/1148
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