Drupal has passionate coders. We need more passionate users.
I just took 30+ minutes to watch Kathy Sierra speaking at a WordCamp SF event. It's worth listening to.
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AcquiaBlog
2010 has been an inflection point for the Acquia partner program. We are doing more business than ever with partners, including case studies with Palantir.net, Blink Reaction, and IBM Global Services.
Bryan House
It is that phase of my life! I'm just turning 30 in a month, working with Drupal for 7 years and just had my third Acquia anniversary a week ago. Time to look back and evaluate how things went, all the good and bad things; even better if the wisdom can be shared with others. This was part of my thinking when I submitted the session titled "Come for the software, stay for the community" for Drupalcon Copenhagen.
Gábor Hojtsy
It sounded like a really simple request: "Is it easy to add a search filter for 'My posts'?". In other words, add a search result facet for posts by the current (logged in) user through the Apache Solr Search Integration module APIs?
But then the wheels start turning - we want not just one blind link, but a real facet link that tells us how many results we'll get. Also, if we are filtering by 'My posts' then we probably have an equal use case for the opposite filter 'Posts not by me'. So we really need a facet block with two links and facets counts.
Peter Wolanin
Comments
Greg Knaddison
I'll bite: We need more
I'll bite:
Why? Do you have some indication that we don't have enough? Or, as Kathy says, is it just a matter of "More passionate users is 'better' and 'better is better'"?
I have to say that I think the drupal.org community does a great job of highlighting strong developers/themers/documentation/support people, which is valuable because those are things that we need in the community. But, in highlighting those people we miss other groups like the "users." If we had some way to highlight our users and give them a reason to engage then perhaps we would see just how many of them we have...
A Wordpress install is very
A Wordpress install is very close to its users: the blogger that posts to the site.
A Drupal site is farther away from "users". Larger sites especially will be strongly branded and associated with their purpose / company / whatever. Requests for changes will flow to the site admins, not to "Drupal".
So, our direct users are developers, site configurators, and admins. We don't have a relationship with users...and I don't know if we should / can.
I think our developers and consultants ARE some of the most passionate in the world. Hence the proliferation of Camps and user groups around the world.
Could you explain what you mean, in this context, about passionate users?
Jay Batson
Dries' (and my) vision is to
Dries' (and my) vision is to see Drupal enable a large number of people to build a sophisticated site with little - or no - web development. Remember Dries' keynote in California? "We've eliminated the webmaster; now we need to eliminate the web developer."
Yet, look at the vast majority of the comments / participation on http://groups.drupal.org; they are / it is from people who love to code Drupal; not simply build/use websites (without programming).
Compare this G.D.O population to http://wordpress.org/support/, where the bulk of the traffic is from people who (a) do not code, but simply use WP; and (b) who are providing feedback to the community of WP coders who do code.
Boris' comment is instructive: "... our direct users are developers...", where Developers comes first in the list. This is, in fact, the thing I'm trying to address here. This "developer first" mindset is currently the center of gravity in the Drupal community, and which needs changed. Do we think the /admin interface is going to create passionate users? No - just the opposite. If fact, Boris, you blogged a few months ago about how you liked the new UI for OnSugar's blog capability - based on Drupal - an interface that is more likely to create obsessively happy users. Sugar presumably put users - not developers - first in their minds.
I'd also assert the Drupal community's (unconscious) preference for developers' interests is what is keeping Joomla highly competitive with Drupal. It's a subtle analysis, but key. Two examples of Joomla's user-focus. (1) There are more off-the-shelf Templates (Themes) for Joomla than Drupal. I sit in our Sales department, listening to our guys make sales calls, and hear them debate Joomla vs. Drupal with undecided users. (Did so this afternoon, in fact.) What helps Joomla win? This and such Joomla Template that the customer wants to use (/tweak) but which doesn't have an analogue in Drupal. Simple problem for a Drupal coder to resolve; but the customer doesn't want a coder - they want to install the CMS, upload a Theme/Template, and start creating content. The Joomla community has worked hard to create this easy-onramp; Drupal hasn't. (2) Joomla allows admins to make simple tweaks to the CSS of a Template (within bounds) from within the Admin UI of Joomla - no FTP/text-editor/... required. Simple things, but this focus on novice usability is helping Joomla - and the lack of it is a shortcoming of the Drupalsphere.
It's this mindset - that all the people "doing non-trivial stuff with Drupal are presumably Drupal developers" - that is the point of my Blog post here. IMHO, the Drupal community needs to start thinking more like "Our direct users are people who want to assemble a sophisticated website with as little development as possible. Will the way I'm about to implement the thing I'm doing make users passionately happy? Or am I just doing the 'minimial bit' for users?"
Until we begin to build with the goal of creating passionate users, we'll limit the growth of Drupal.
Does this help you get what I (insufficiently) said?
Shai Gluskin
Who is the passionate user
Who is the passionate user we are trying to reach?
I think the following profiles begin to define profiles of the "passionate Drupal people" we desire:
The more I think, the more there are... But they are not the guy who downloads a tar ball and says, "Wow, look what I can do mom... and I'm not even a developer!"
Market Sector Winners
Drupal has a huge advantage because of its power and flexibility; and it's a really big market.
The wonderful role that Acquia can play is in helping Drupal shops, which tend to be small, get bigger jobs because of the credibility Acquia brings to Drupal via its attention to testing/reliability etc. And it is these bigger customers who will also be purchasers of Acquia's products.
He was joking. He's talking about significantly ratcheting up the value and impact of each and every developer, not planning their demise. When a talented development team using Drupal can build a site for $100,000 when the boutique firm down the street builds the same thing (but less flexible and extensible) for over $1,000,000—can you still call them web developers? Not really, they are magicians.
I do think the Drupal Association and/or Acquia need to create good marketing materials. Indeed, this is where the developer dominance in the Drupal community really hurts us. Developers are not typically good at marketing.
You know those ads that Apple is putting out for the iPhone in which you can palpably see what you can do with it? We need to create web ads targeted at the profiles I've outlined above. Those ads should give those folks a palpable idea of what they will get when they choose Drupal.
Shai Gluskin
Content2zero
Jay...I think what you might
Jay...I think what you might be getting at is that we need a broader base of passionate users. That is, Drupal needs to be developed to a level where a "non-expert" can put together a pretty functional website in a reasonable time.
As an example, installing/using the ImageCache module is fairly straightforward. However, the one step of enabling Clean URLs (the back end server part) will throw most "non-experts" completely off. I've found that this is the case with a number of modules where either a key step in implementation is not well documented or a key step requires some obscure action.
Once it gets to the point where installing all key modules is a simple act of activating the module and then adjusting some key configuration, the audience for Drupal will grow.
I'm actually glad I stumbled
I'm actually glad I stumbled upon this website and in particular this topic. I would have to classify myself as a frustrated user. Having never built a website in my life and the only coding experience aquired in my 27 years of existence is entering the code in my ADT Home Security system, I have found the Drupal experience thus far to be nothing but aggravating.
My main attraction to Drupal was the flexibility in customizing your website and the potential for the website to grow with you. But all of this means nothing if the tools required to use it (essentially knowledge) are only possessed by a select few individuals, as opposed to the broader public.
As a brand new person to web design I find the Drupal documentation on their webpage appalling. The user forums are not heavily trafficked and sort of hit or miss, as you're trying as an "average Joe" to converse with programmers that speak to you in their language. And that's when you can actually get a response from anyone as alot of your simplistic questions (to them anyways) ,that can most likely be answered in a couple of sentences are simply skimmed over and likely dismissed.
One would think there would be a better infrastructure for Drupal to draw in the casual web user/developer as this would only benefit Drupal as a whole. This would mean more work opportunities for Drupal programmers/coders. If nothing is going to be done about integrating a more positive user experience, Drupal will always be behind the Wordpresses, and Joomlas, irregardless of the superior features Drupal has to offer. Ironically I found the link to this company and this blog on a Joomla messageboard, which i will probably be migrating to, after putting up with Drupal's frustrations.
My.02 cents
Shai Gluskin
I don't think the Acquia
I don't think the Acquia distribution of Drupal will solve Andy's problem. I think Wordpress and Joomla are simply better solutions for him.
John B. says:
There is indeed a major re-design of Drupal.org happening currently with $ being invested and a lot of community participation. So I think things will get better.
That said, I do agree there is a problem. I think the community aspects of Drupal are having a hard time scaling as the project grows so quickly. Dries' leadership style and the open source methodology "just worked" without too much fussing from a process perspective. Overall on the development side of things I think the Drupal community's evolution is still doing pretty well.
But on the support side, welcoming new folks, documentation -- I think the community has had a much harder time scaling. I think a lot of people would have liked to give of their time but just couldn't figure out how to do it. There aren't enough people reaching out to them. I don't have a solution, but I think calling attention to it will help.
Just because I don't think we should try to compete with Joomla and Wordpress doesn't mean I think Drupal's user-interface is okay. I think there are lots of problems with Drupal's user experience and I think sustained attention to it and leadership on Dries' part have been and will continue to be really helpful.
But I think that is a wholly different issue from Jay's desire for the "passionate user" like the Wordpress and Joomla users. I think his analysis is comparing apples to oranges. See my first response to this post.
Content2zero