[development] Best practices: Config settings

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

On Jan 1, 2008 6:49 PM, Gerhard Killesreiter <gerhard at killesreiter.de>
wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> my question is: Where should contrib module authors put config options
> for their modules?
>
> 1) Should this always be the individual module's settings page?
>
> 2) Should it try to add the config option to a more generic place
> (either provided by core or another module it depends on)?
>
> 3) Should it add it to both places?
>

What peeves me is that some modules put their settings in the content
type page, while it is just an on/off thing. This way, on a site with 10
content types, and I want to enabled that module's feature for 9 out
of those 10, I have to visit 10 pages, and select from a drop down
and click submit.

The module could simple list all content types under admin/settings/MYMODULE
with a check box next to each. One page to visit, and much better usability.

Also, admin/settings/MYMODULE is the most obvious place to find settings
for MYMODULE.


> Concrete example:
>
> I've added a performance related variable to event module. The value of
> the variable decides whether to do a full node load for each event on a
> calendar or to only use title, start, and end date from one mysql query.
>
> Now I need to put the UI for this variable somewhere...
>
> The variable also has influence on the theme you use since you can't
> print out any other node content fields if they aren't there. The event
> functions that event.module ships with for example expect the presence
> of a teaser field.
>
> In principle, I think that the variable should be set at
> admin/settings/performance but who is going to look there again after
> each newly installed module?
>
>
In your specific case, the settings may be in the module's setting page or
under
performance. But if you decide to do the latter you MUST provide a link in
admin/settings/event to that settings page, so users can find it.
-- 
Khalid M. Baheyeldin
2bits.com, Inc.
http://2bits.com
Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
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