Comments on: Drupal.org – Prototyping commences!

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:22:46 +0000

First impressions are good, although I would worry about the bandwidth demands, practicality and speed of the authenticated users (logged in) front page idea. Particularly now that browsing is shifting to small screen portable devices, like mobile phones.

That said, the not logged in front page looks excellent.

Cosmetically, I’m delighted to see an end to the old logo. I quite liked the Drupal logo in earlier iterations (the one with the splash above the letters u & p), but, I suppose anything would look better than the old logo.

Overall, the skin and content layout is looking really good. Great work.

What I’m quite keen to see happening soon is a re-design of how information is processed at d.o. i.e. re-designing how information goes INTO the Drupal.org.

A simple illustrative example might be allowing users to tag a thread as SOLVED along with a ‘convert to handbook page’ option when a discussion has finished.

By: Sean Effel

Sean Effel — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:02:31 +0000

It would be so sweet if the project pages for modules and themes would count downloads. I mean, like, totally sweet.

By: Juliette Culver

Juliette Culver — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:29:20 +0000

Definitely an improvement on the existing site

Worth mentioning that I instantly tried to find modules on the home page as that is what I go to drupal.org for most often and it took me what felt like along a long time to figure out that they were under ‘Extend’. I thought for quite a while that there was no way to find modules!

I’d like to see the Download and Extend page and the Documentation page. Realise that you can’t do the whole site, but those are the main pages I use and I felt that I couldn’t really evaluate the prototype beyond the home page because those pages weren’t there. They feel far far more important to me than jobs , events and drupal IRC (which are aimed at the ‘insiders’ which I still think I’m probably not!).

By: Ryan Cross

Ryan Cross — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:57:43 +0000

General feeling is good, however I’m really not a big fan of jobs being a top level navigation item (and ordered first). I feel similarly about events, though less so.
I also am trying to ignore my preconceptions from teh existing site, but I’m unclear about how something like groups.drupal.org is integrated here or whether it is still a seperate site. I think g.d.o is a better place for job posts, since we do not want to be in the business of offering job adverts or coming across as a commercial enterprise.

By: Duran Goodyear

Duran Goodyear — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:41:25 +0000

As an interested reader, I hope you take my comments just as observations, and if I’m lucky suggestions. Thank you.
…
On the home page mockup, I think its important to have a link directly to the download of the drupal installer. right now its below the fold on my browser (22 inch screen, my browser is taking up a large amount, but not maximized.)

The content seems to be organized a lot better at first glance then the existing site. I’m looking forward to seeing more!

By: Jacques (xmacinfo)

Jacques (xmacinfo) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:35:39 +0000

Anonymous/logged in home screen.

I’ve just noticed the toggle between anonymous view and the logged in view.

For the logged in view I’d rather want to see a merge of both screens. If not, I’d often need to to deconnect and reconnect.

We should also keep the number of stories published to the home screen to a larger value (5 to 10 stories).

By: Jacques (xmacinfo)

Jacques (xmacinfo) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:27:55 +0000

Nice to see the iterations!

Small comment: Some block needs to be visible on each single screen, with a few exceptions.

Examples, contributor block and navigation block (the last one could be replaced with the admin menu which is an horizontal menu bar visible for logged in users only).

Some block could be expanded to cover more than the home screen. For example, I’m always consulting the New forum topics block. And right now it’s available only on the home screen. I’d like to see this one on other pages.

Home screen again: it should offer more block below the current ones. Examples: latest updated modules, latest updated themes.

Download block, it should display both 6.x and 5.x last version download link (6.4 and 5.11) since both are currently supported.

Download and getting started blocks should be swapped.

That’s all for now.

Keep up the good work.

By: eigentor

eigentor — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:11:04 +0000

Wow – I am impressed. What strikes me first, is that the navigation reflects much more now the sheer size of Drupal and Drupal.org

I also like the fact, that e.g. the about page (I guess this will be the starting page of drupal.org?) looks quite different from say the events page.

It gets through to me that there are more “outward-facing” pages that are meant for the eyes of rather the novice user or someone that is barely interested, and more “inward-facing” pages that someone would visit that already is a “regular”.

Still the “about” page is a bit overwhelming to me – as hard the task may be to put into simple words what Drupal is and presents to a potential user.

Maybe it can be boilt down more until it has about that http://wordpress.org/ much information…

By: Christoph Weber

Christoph Weber — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:58:39 +0000

Disclaimers about design and layout being far from final not withstanding, I love the overall look! Much lighter and easier on the eye than the current drupal.org. If this is far from final, I am REALLY looking forward to the next version. The only issue I have right now are the heavy, rectangular buttons for Download, Join, etc. Also, I like the direction this is going re. putting the info where people need it. Things like “Who is using Drupal” is a good example. Love the Related Content section on the project page. That nails it! Also the stats in the project overview section are a cool idea and extremely helpful.