[development] Deploying content from master site to subsites

[Domenic Santangelo]

On Dec 31, 2009, at 7:57 PM, andrew morton  
<drewish at katherinehouse.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Domenic Santangelo <domenics at gmail.com 
> > wrote:
>> As to overengineering in general, I think Drupal as a whole would  
>> be in a much better place if we called each other out on it more  
>> often (imagefield+imageapi+imagecache+upload+cck required for  
>> images in a node, anyone?). Food for thought.
>>
>
> Okay given that lead-in then I'll call you out on a factual error
> since upload is a core module and not needed in the imagefield+cck
> stack you outline.

I was just talking about the difference between what you get out of  
box (enabled) and what it takes to implement this basic feature. Since  
you mention it though, imagefield actually depends on yet another  
module, filefield, that superscedes core upload. IIRC, upload.module  
is disabled by default anyway meaning that at very least you have to  
switch it on out of the box if you go another route.


>  the image handling methods that dopry established have been
> tested and proven, that's why they're in core in D7.

I'm not arguing this point. Look, complicated (to the newbie)  
implementations are what pay my bills. It's in my personal best  
interest to keep things complex, and the fact that I've used these  
solutions scores of times means that a) they work well and b) I get to  
charge people to do what would be almost insurmountable -or at least  
impractical - for them to do themselves and is easy for me to do.

However, Drupal's growth will - and I argue has been - hampered by  
usability issues for the beginner. I mean, seriously consider what a  
rank beginner has to go through to be able to do such a basic thing as  
putting a picture in a blog post in D6 and below! I'm stoked beyond  
belief that fields and images are in D7, for this reason.

I used images as an example intentionally, because I think it's a  
salient example of building to meet engineering requirements and not  
user requirements. As a piece of technology, the image stack is a work  
of art; as a usable solution for a beginner, it's pretty rough.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that engineering should follow  
the use case, and I hope that we as contributors to the community can  
consider that. I hope I don't come off too harshly; like I said, my  
interests are best served by complicating things further :). But I  
love the vision of Drupal and the community and want it - us - to be  
as awesome as possible.

D