[development] Please suggest user experience improvement patches for: managing large list of items, and discovering Drupal administration settings

[Kieran Lal]

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 at 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

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/development/attachments/20061015/021121dd/attachment.htm