“Drupal” isn’t Drupal.

If you’ve used Drupal for any length of time you know this is true — namely, the “Drupal” you talk about, use and recommend isn’t the Drupal people go to http://drupal.org and download on their server. I’ve been there before when I made the mistake of touting how wonderful Drupal was, and seen the inevitable conclusion by the person I told this to.

They downloaded the Drupal archive, extracted on their web server, set it up, and came back to me. They thought it was crap. Heck, the out of box experience for Drupal *IS* horrible. Of course I explained that “Oh, no, you want to disable overlay, install admin_menu, install views, grab a theme from here,….” My friend, heard this:

Called "the four subspaces" on Wikipedia commons, I don't want to know what it means.

See, the Drupal that people love and enjoy isn’t easy to get. Even though we all tout Drupal as everything but a sugar substitute, getting your hands on that “Drupal” joy is nearly impossible without having done it before. Oh, and, profiles are wonderful, but not all that useful because of how the rest of the development cycle works:

Month 0: Drupal is released
Month 3: Most modules become stable
Month 6-eternity: Views, Chaos Tools and Panels become stable
Month 10: Oh, Drupal has BlahShiney API that is AWESOME!
Month 12: A useful profile is actually released in a beta
Month 14: Useful profile’s author forgets about it due to work/classes.
Month 18: Drupal <next version> Beta/RC is out!
Month 18: “You should wait for/use the beta of Drupal , which has KitchenSink API by instead of using ”
Month 20: Useful profiles for <current version> actually become stable.
Month 22-24: Drupal <next version> released, see Month 0.

An editorial design on toxic water by Yesenia Rivero

You see, Mozilla has had this problem before. Mozilla browsers are simply too big for any one person to handle entirely. Because of that, they are split into a series of modular components with a manager (or maybe several co-managers) overseeing patches and the development cycle for that component. These people are called “drivers” and it’s their job to keep development moving, organize with each other and the higher overall project leaders on how to keep their teams moving in the right direction, and to all freeze their codebases in preparation for major launch events.

Some of that terminology probably feels familiar to those who use Drupal. Now, let’s think of how we could apply this logic to how Drupal develops.

Drupal [Distribution] becomes a stable distribution that has Drupal Core and the top 10 or so most common modules that the community needs to actually launch a good Drupal site. Drupal is a launching pad to great web applications (yeah, yeah; it can be a framework, but let’s focus on the idea of a launching pad distribution that is Drupal’s bread and butter). Drupal core would be split into the required components, with all the optional components separated out, along with these 10 or so critical contrib modules to become this base distribution.

Luxurious blue screwdriver from Amazon

Each of these components has a driver, someone who looks after their component, as well as co-drivers who might only be focused on improvements for a certain version or adding new features. This group of people talk regularly to coordinate efforts and are steered by the distribution’s (Drupal’s) driver (Dries or someone else who manages a specific release).

Minor changes and improvements can be signed off on completely by the component driver without going up the food-chain. Major changes or features get pushed to the distribution driver, both for a “yeah, this is a good idea” and a “yeah, this is ready to commit.” This lets key people stay focused on their component and improving it, and keeps being a Drupal release coordinator from turning into a full-time job/life (btw, Angie, you’re awesome to have done that and making it look easy).

This distribution driver sets the timeline for a release, and all the componet drivers also enforce that timeline for their branch. As critical points in the timeline draw close, they will switch new features to a new version, and only focus on improvements for the current (we’re familiar with this now in core).

When version freezes occur, they occur across all components and the result is a coordinated release of Drupal that it actually “Drupal,” the cool experience we want to share and not “Drupal” the “oh, this is crappy” at-first-look framework. Effectively, this means having active “maintainers” with commit authority across all parts of Drupal core. This removes strain from distributions drivers (maintainers) and allows people to be specialized. Also, synchronicity between Drupal core and the most critical modules so Drupal the framework and Drupal the handy distribution people depend on can be both generally expected at predictable times.

This organized and controlled distribution could be considered, to steal from operating systems, ring 0. Everything in this is critical to Drupal Distribution. The next most popular modules in contrib, as well as sponsored projects could form the basis for components in ring 1; less controlled but still given some attention to have ready for releases and security. Ring 2 would be what we all consider the jungle of contrib as it stands now, with only perhaps some reputation changes that folks are already talking about anyways, and I won’t get into.

Feedback and conversation is very welcome, but before you comment please note: I know parts of this have been discussed, and parts of it may even be attempted as due course; so please don’t comment with, “but we’re already doing x part of this, so y and z are invalid.” Also, any assumptions that I know what happens on all of groups.drupal.org or in back-channel developer discussions should be reconsidered before commenting.

P.S.: Remember Mozilla? They became so caught up in looking busy with new version numbers that they started to release minor fixes and improvements as major releases (6 and 7 instead of 5.1, 5.2). Let’s avoid that, shall we?

More is to be done with the module to intergrate with longer-standing modules in the Drupal ecosystem, such as shorten. Patches and/or suggestions for additional features are appreciated.

If you’re feeling adventurous, you can also go ahead and download development versions or fork your own repo from this module’s github repository.

See, the sad thing is most people I’ve met are…well…dummies.  The kind of people who are so tech illiterate they have no idea how illiterate they are.  And, typically I have to support these technological nincompoops.  So, I want to appeal to the Drupal community that is so great and so awesome, and ask how the other site providers among us deal with making Drupal — especially the content creation side — less “Drupal” for end users.

Less Drupal as in, no non-sense UI with few to no options.  Very task oriented and much less “powerful”, but much more self-describing.  Does anyone have any idea on how to do this with existing modules, themes, whathaveyou?  And, I promise when the dust settles to write another post documenting everything on simplifying the Drupal interface.  Deal?  Deal

I’ll be looking for suggestions on how to improve the UI and workflow of node submissions and add another module as focus turns to version 2.x.  2.x will released for Drupal 6.x and 7.x in the next month; and will move the workflow settings to the content type edit pages, rather than a separate settings page.   The 7.x version will also include a “Save and Add another” button, somewhat similar to submit again, and include integration with node clone.

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Michael B. from the Mozilla Marketing list recently posted an hypothesis on why Google Chrome may suddenly start taking a much larger chunk out of the browser market now that Microsoft’s browser selection screens are appearing in the EU.

I’ve a hypothesis to explain Chrome’s recent and sudden surge of usage share the last couple months. Let me first say that almost every time I ever ask what web browser someone uses, the answer I get is Google. After I explain that Google is a search engine, not a web browser they usually tell me that they have no idea. I later find out that they are either using Internet Explorer or Firefox. Enter Microsoft’s new browser ballot into the equation. Instead of just saying “Chrome,” Google’s web browser says “Google” and then says “chrome” in smaller letter. People are asked what web browser they want so they think, I want to search with Google of course so they choose Chrome. If this is the case, it might be a problem that should be addressed.

Perhaps user ignorance on what a browser actually is will give Google a major boost.  Because, admittedly, even my own father reference to Internet Explorer as “my internet”.

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It might seem like a minor thing, but it isn’t.

Microsoft has been fined billions over browser choice (or lack thereof) in Windows, and the solution that finally satisfied EU regulators was a browser choice screen, which would let users choose a web browser rather then having Internet Explorerinstalled as the default.

Now, Microsoft has posted images of what the browser choice screen will probably look like.

Here’s how it will work: The user will be presented with five major browsers, randomly ordered. He will also be able to choose several additional browsers, which are also randomly ordered. Once you install a browser, you’ll get a shortcut of that browser on your desktop, while Internet Explorer will be unpinned from the taskbar.

Since Windows 7 has been available on the European market for quite a while now, one may ask why (and how) is this happening so late? Since Microsoft needed some time to implement the browser choice solution, it will now use Windows Update to provide the browser choice screen to European users who are using Internet Explorer as their default browser. Better late than never, huh?

More precisely, testing of the browser choice screen begins next week in the UK, Belgium and France, where users will be able to download the software update from Windows Update if they like. A phased rollout of the update will happen across Europe starting with March 1.

via Europeans Get a Taste of the Browser Choice Screen.

TV shows like MacGyver and Junk Yard Wars, as well as real world survival and minimalist training [even camping] tell us that it’s cool to take bits of whatever is lying around, and jury-rig it into something useful, and potentially vital to our survival.  Today as I was thinking about the plethora of hacks we need to do something insanely simple…like…embed a flash video and have it work properly in all browsers. This made me realize, anyone who does web development or design is a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants, certified, Web 2.0 MacGyver.

We use CSS hacks to get things to look right in IE, load extra images or add a wack of useless tags to get rounded corners to work.  And, don’t think HTML5 is going to save our butt, it won’t.  We’ll need to make videos in 2 different formats and nest three different video and embed tags and hacks for it to work (seriously).  Worse, one of those formats we’ll need to license and pay for (or, as is the online way, hope we don’t get caught for not).

So, developers, hold your heads high; we’re holding the world together with duct tape and paperclips, and we make it look easy.

I just did an upgrade from WordPress 2.7 to 2.7.1, and it was completely done in under 5 seconds. Didn’t need to connect to SSH, didn’t need to connect to FTP. I click two buttons and my blog was running the latest and greatest WordPress.

Why are they allowed to make it this simple?

This kind of proceedure should be hard, time-consuming; and most of all full of stress.  Why, if this keeps up, I’ll be out of a job.  So, with that in mind:

Drupal must never become this simple.

All of us that work that Drupal consultanting circut need to rise up and make sure that Drupal never becomes this simple, easy or friendly to use.  Why, it could ruin the entire Drupal eco-system.

Now I’ve got to run, just noticed I need to upgrade a wordpress plugin…I’m sure that’ll take all of 2 seconds too

Admin Role creates an “Administrator” user role, that it then manages to ensure that this role always has all permissions.    Admin Role is a light and very clean module available for both Drupal 5.x and Drupal 6.x sites.  You can pick up the latest versions by visiting its project page at drupal.org.

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Unfortunately, the theme has gone down-hill with time. And hasn’t seen a true upgrade since Drupal 4.6 (the time of the CivicSpace distro). Last year I got permission to take over the CivicSpace theme project, and to remake it into something useful for communities today. And that brings me to the reason for this post. I’m looking for two things to help develop version 2 of the CivicSpace theme into the best possible base theme for community organizations.

Firstly, I want to get feedback from those of you who are working with community organizations right now.  What kind of things do you want in a theme?  Also, I want to hear from theme developers, who might be interested in helping make the next generation of grass roots base theme.  The CivicSpace theme should put community first, so be sure and have your say!