never fear – the word ‘download’ is going nowhere and will definitely be found, as a call to action, wherever it is appropriate (contextually) throughout the site.

after sitting with all these thoughts for a few days, I’m currently thinking that a section called ‘Download & Extend’ could be the answer. To me it does several things:
a) it’s a call to action to download core/modules etc.
b) ‘extend’ also hints at things other than modules like themes & translations – generally making Drupal do more, be more customised.
c) ‘extend’ avoids confusion/ambiguity re: ‘extensions’
d) ‘extend’ is also a call to action to help to extend Drupal and it’s capabilities

I think it works quite well – what do you think?

+1 for just ‘Downloads’ — maybe a special block with a short one line description talking about themes and modules?

This year’s Summer of Code has yielded a module called Plugin Manager which also spans all of these categories, and there was certainly some discussion on the name of that module before it was created. Also, it’s a term that people are widely familiar with, and doesn’t clash with existing modules, themes, etc.

Might be a possibility. Apart from that, I totally agree with dww that a noun-based name is a good idea.

Lets certainly ditch ‘project’. ‘Components’ is too wishy washy, and ‘Extensions’ is just slightly less clear (confusion with file extension?).

b) I don’t know where the term “project” came from in the first place — that was before my time as well. The code was originally written by http://drupal.org/user/2 so it was definitely in the earliest possible days of Drupal. For me, “project” tends to invoke Getting Things Done “projects”, as well as “Drupal projects”. I agree it’s not the most outsider-friendly term, and I’d be happy to see it disappear from the IA/UI of the *.d.o network. Even insiders refer to a site they have to build for some client as a “project”, so it’s a totally overloaded term already. It’ll be fun trying to hack the project* suite of modules to make it so you can change the public-facing terminology it uses for itself. But, I’m up for that challenge if we come up with a better name…

c) As a hopelessly inside insider, I have to say I’m not at all opposed to this subsite just being called “downloads.d.o”. That’s what outsiders are obviously looking for. Insiders hang out there since they’re working on the stuff you can download. I really don’t see a problem with this. So long as it’s not *just* a download page, but a hub for the community (developers and users) of that thing you’re downloading, I think the concerns about a schism between users and developers are unfounded. Any “insider” who’s ashamed to be working on the “downloads” site needs a reality check — we work on stuff people download, folks. It might be *slightly* weird that you go to the “downloads” site to handle issue tracking, developer working groups, and a bunch of support stuff, too. But then again, all that stuff needs to live close to the action, and it’s all related to the stuff you download…

d) extensions.d.o is also a very good suggestion– I’d be happy with that option, too. In fact, I think this is the best option so far suggested. It’s not quite as self-evident for outsiders (though we could easily have a d.o/download page and have a prominent “Download” link in the site navigation as suggested). However, this potentially makes the support, issue tracking, and developer working groups fit in more nicely. “download”, “get support”, “talk code”, etc are all actions you can do on/about extensions. If the site is called “download”, that makes it seem like that’s *not* the place you go for those other actions, and you’d start looking around for “support.d.o” and “developers.d.o” and the like. However, by using a noun-based name for the site, it makes the site more “friendly” to various verb-related actions you might want to do with that noun. See what I mean?

Another nice reason to call these “extensions” instead of just “downloads” is that a bunch of insiders get these things not by downloading, but by “checking out” from our revision control system. So, again, they’re actually “extensions”, and “download” just happens to be the #1 most common action that outsiders want to do with them.

e) [Hopeless insider comment] I’m -1 on calling these “components”, since we already have the “components” of each project in its issue queue. I know not everyone uses the issue queue these days, but I know many 1000s of people do, and we can’t completely confuse all those folks. Sure, we could change the UI of the issue tracker to use a different name for this, but I’m not a fan. “Component” seems like the right word for what we’re already using it for — some sub-part of your “extension”. Sure, modules and themes are “components” of a site, but somehow they seem like more self-contained entities than what “component” invokes for my mind.

f) -1 on “Building blocks”, too, since “block” is already a loaded term around Drupal, and that seems like a road to confusion. Plus, “buildingblocks.d.o” isn’t as easy to say, type, or remember as “extensions.d.o”.

I don’t think you should be second guessing your instinct with regard to the separation of these two activities / areas in the IA.

People have to walk before they run. So let them walk. Let them be a user and when they are ready to be a developer let them run. Just make it easier for them to find where the joggers are.

The next question when someone would go to these sections is the “what”? What do I download? What kind of thing can I develop?
The answer to both is
* “Drupal” – the basic content managment framework
* “Modules” – components you can install that extend the functionality of Drupal.
* “Themes” – pre designed skins that make your Drupal site prettier
* “Translations” – ’nuff said

A final point:

In my mind all of Drupal.org can be boiled down to three things. Everything on the site should encourage or facilitate the following:
* Get the Product
* Find Support
* Contribute back

Downloads is obviously about getting the product.
Developing is obviously about giving/contributing back.

andre

However, in the Drupal software itself, we don’t have any conception of projects – just modules, themes, profiles, translations – and there’s no overall word to describe those things. That means we have an opportunity to create a new one if needs be.

Components makes sense, although I’m not sure it works for themes and translations that well, so my personal choice would be ‘extensions’, and have this as the main name of the subdomain running project module. Calling the site ‘Extensions’ gives the impression of being able to both download and find out more about each one (including development etc).

If we do that, this in no way stops us also having a drupal.org/download page on d.o itself which has a big green button for downloading core, and links to extensions.drupal.org + deep links to modules/themes/translations as well. ‘Outsiders’ are probably looking to |Download Drupal| – and that’s what they get if they visit /download – insiders, or at least people who’ve already done that, they go to extensions.

The only issue with this is that we’d be developing Drupal core on a subdomain called ‘extensions’ – but 1. Drupal core is in large part modules anyway, so meh 2. Active development of Drupal is extending it – and often bringing in functionality from contrib, so it’s semantically not too bad either.

I do agree with Larry that Downloads should appear somewhere and lead to an appropriate index.

I also tend to agree that we shouldn’t be so fast to discard the idea of a big front-page “Download” link that visitors are instinctively trained to look for. It’s what that link should point to that is open to debate. If we don’t like the idea of having the Download page be a list of download links as David G suggests in #5, we could, say, have it point to a page in the Getting Started docs that offers concise explanations of the Drupal Way of Downloading (”First you get the core from here. Next, here’s the definition of [a module, a theme, an install profile, a translation], and here is how you search for [component] and install it.”)

Therefore “download” is the perfect starting point for a Newbie engaging with the information architecture of the site.
(1) It is what the outsiders are looking for.
(2) The downloads section should (IMHO) be constructed in such a way to provide a measure-able funnel to broader participation (the various project page mock ups seem to follow this pattern).
(3) If we think that insiders are going to have a personalized “dashboard” like space, then use of ‘download’ will have a minimal impact on the insiders — they are essentially creating their own personal IA for their home page.
(4) Finally, as Suzanne points out there is a difference between core downloads and “extensions”. I would see a user coming to the d.o homepage, clicking on the download button, then seeing a really big “download Drupal core” linked to a project page and a dynamically generated list labeled something like “extending Drupal” of the most frequently downloaded modules. Then elements that funnel people into the directory of extensions– modules, themes, install profiles, etc.