Wake up community – WordPress.org should scare you! | groups.drupal.org

Background: I’m a guy with a tiny bit of HTML/CSSJavascript knowledge (built a few basic Dreamweaver sites, installed and used WordPress, etc.) who, last night, began exploring Drupal.org and installing and trying Drupal for the first time to:

1) Play, explore, and experiment;

2) Learn about the community around it and if it might be something I’d like to get involved with and to what extent; and

3) See if serendipity might strike and connect me with a great freelance developer that I “click” with and who might be interested in helping me (us?) use Drupal (or another CMS, CMF, etc.) to launch and test a few experimental sites that I have not been able to bring to reality (yet) because I don’t (yet?) have the technical skills. More on this at the end of this long comment (sorry it’s so long).

Anyway, I stumbled upon this article because it was featured on Drupal.org.

It’s a fascinating article, and the comments/conversation are even more fascinating. Some comments even had some “scary” parts (see “My $20 dollars (rather than two cents)” by drupalcritic).

Anyway, after the first 10 minutes of reading the comments I was a little turned off. But now, after being out and about for a few hours and coming back and reading more, and getting down to Ryan Weal’s comments and some others, I’m inspired to make my first comment and continue my exploration and experimentation. When you read my impressions, below, please consider that I am a total newbie, who is trying to be constructive and give honest impressions that might help in some small way.

Below are my first Drupal impressions. My exploration started last night and has continued today. These impressions are fresh and some of them are raw. They are unedited.

1) I expected to see at least one “killer” shopping cart (not that I need one, but just that I figured one strong leader would exist for Drupal): I didn’t find one. What I did find was Ubercart, which says on its home page that Drupal is “the leading open source content management system” and uses the word “killer” in the middle of the pitch, and ends it with the words “and much much more!” Then I “scroll” one centimeter down the page and take a look at the latest Ubercart news, the most recent entry being from July 2010. Then I click the “Downloads” link and see the most recent release is from August 2010. I don’t see any mention of Drupal 7. Made me wonder how “the leading CMS” and its “killer” shopping cart be so dated. I then Googleed “Ubercart reviews” and this was the first result: http://drupalmodules.com/module/ubercart, which has all of 14 reviews (and the reviews made my spidey senses tingle even more than they already were). Regarding “Drupal is THE leading CMS”: Is that really true? My what measure? Or is this one of those “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” kind of word-definition things?

2) Next I looked into PayPal. Surely there must be a “killer” module for that. The ones that come up on Drupal.org when I searched and filtered by most installed don’t give confidence.

3) Next I looked at localization and geo. That looked interesting. Sigh of relief.

4) Next was user management, file upload, social, and community features. Some good/great, some meh. Ok.

5) This went on for a couple of hours, looking at each category, sorting in various ways, digging, etc.

My first impression, as a brand spanking new newbie, was that Druapl might be great for when you want more than a blog and you are (or have) a good/great developer (and designer, because some of the sites and themes pointed to look up-to-date and others like they are from 1995). It’s even better if you are a Drupal developer who can land big clients and bill them lots of hours at fat rates doing developer stuff because that’s just what you have to do if you use Drupal. That may be cynical, and it certainly doesn’t apply to everyone, but it is a concern prospective clients may have, especially ones paying out of their own pocket and/or on small budgets.

General Concerns:

1) Possible deviations from statements and reality (Ubercart) and what that might mean;

2) Things that I thought would exist, don’t exist or don’t seem to be well contributed to or otherwise don’t seem where I would have expected them to be.

3) Possible negative energy poisoning the well, But hopefully not enough to be fatal and hopefully nothing that can’t be turned into a positive-energy, giving, thriving, growing, pay-it-forward kind of community. I dunno, I’m an idealist, but I know ideals are possible to achieve with positive, can-do, grow-the-pie kind of people. What kind of community would you say Drupal is?

Design/Usability/UI/UX/Etc. Concerns:

4) Is there a Hacker News type up/down comment voting system, possibly with nested comments? Because it might be useful in such a l-o-n-g discussion as this comment thread. If there is one, why is it not used on such a busy site? And why no social sharing? Word-of-mouth = viral growth = good (and cheap) growth = life. UPDATE: I see it now. The contrast is kind of low, which may be why I missed it. Now I know

5) When I registered for an account, I didn’t get to pick my password right then and there. Instead I got a link to a page that did not even immediately present a field where I picked my password. Terrible first impression. I know why, but it’s besides the point, as it still makes a bad first impression. Why do it differently than the way “everybody” expects it to be done in 2011, which is the way Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon and “everybody” else who knows what they are doing does it, which is by letting people pick their password when they sign up and then sending them a link to click to confirm their account? If I was Malcolm Gladwell (“Blink”) that would be enough right there to tell me that something was majorly wrong and I had to get away fast, at least until there was a change in leadership and the new leadership had good design/usability/user experience sense or at least sense enough to let people who do have that sense lead in that area.

6) Speaking of sign-on / sign-up? Why is the AJAX user-name-check feature not used and why is there no Google/Facebook/Twitter/whatever option? There are modules that do those things? Are they not good enough for Drupal’s own site? Again, a bad first impression. Drupal.org could/should eat more of its own cooking. Why “everybody” on the web is probably also on at least one, if not more, of the major identity providers, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Drupal has modules that enable. Why not use? Seems kind of crazy and makes me think of that Seinfeld:

Kramer: What did you want to see me about, Mr. Leland?
Mr. Leland: Kramer, I’ve been reviewing your work. Quite frankly, it stinks.
Kramer: Well,I’ve been having trouble at home and, uh, I’ll work harder. Nights, weekends, whatever it takes.
Mr. Leland: No, no, I don’t think that’s going to do it. These reports you handed in, it’s almost as if you have no business training at all. I don’t know what this is supposed to be.
Kramer: Well, I’m just trying to get ahead.
Mr. Leland: I’m sorry, there’s just no way that we can keep you on.
Kramer: But I don’t even really work here.
Mr. Leland: That’s what makes this so difficult….

I know/think people aren’t directly paid to contribute to Drupal, but I suspect there are some leaders who need to have frank talk with Mr. Leland. It’s what’s best for the project. And everyone, including Kramer, will be relieved, thankful, and better off.

7) The text under the upload profile picture might needs editing. As I recall, tt says images must be 85×85, which is wrong. What is correct is that images larger than 85×85 will be automatically resized. Or?

Why does Drupal want people’s birthday if they don’t use it? Get rid of it or use it.

Well, that’s my two cents. Sorry it’s so long and un-polished, but hopefully there’s something there that can be of use. Seems like there is a lot of low hanging fruit to pick and I don’t understand why it’s not already been picked (is it even being picked now, I hope so, but have little confidence).

How to fix?

A) Pick the low hanging fruit first and improve the first impression.

B) Do some usability testing. A lot of it. Keep doing it. Read (or re-read) and apply Steve Krug’s two books.

Thanks, cheers, and I look forward to contributing as much as I can to the Drupal community (I know)

Cheers,
Chris
Gothenburg, Sweden

PS: Please get in touch if you are a good (great?!) Drupal developer who might be interested in some freelance work, such as:

1) Vertical niche directory:

1A) Directory of 3,000 businesses (one role), with profiles, maps, geo, search, results, sexy sort/filter, mobile friendly (recognize device and display appropriately), users (another role), profiles, comments, reviews, ad blocks, newsletters, blog with multiple contributors, writers & editors (roles), and media types. Already got the data set to populate the database of businesses, which will then be notified and able to claim their profiles for free (and then buy upgrades/premiums if they want and be cross-sold on B, below). Directory platform to be reused with other vertical niches we will roll out. Those ones will include heavy ad and affiliate revenue.

1B) “Jobs” board.

1C) CRM (Salesforce or Sugar) implementation tying A and B together.

2) Person-to-person marketplace vertical. Basically a one-product freelance marketplace. One side will pay and post jobs, which will be cued up. PayPal or Amazon payments. The other side with clear the cue and get paid. We will take a small percentage. Will work on all devices (desktop, tablet, mobile). Some people already signed up.