Clean up Administer - Users - Configure [#16271]

The current page we have at "administer - users - configure" contains several important pages: roles, permissions, access rules and user profiles. These 4 items are buried too deep and are thus hard to find. I also think that roles/permissions/access rules are not really related to the users (i.e. the people) but more with the accounts that are linked to them.

Most things are described by this illustration with Kika-style notes ;)
http://acko.net/dumpx/clean-up-admin-users.png

This patch also fixes a couple of small things, like adding drupal_gotos or improving the contextual help a bit.

Comment	File	Size	Author
#1	clean-up-admin-users_0.patch	20.02 KB	Steven
#1
	clean-up-admin-users.patch	17.73 KB	Steven

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Comments

Comment #1

Steven CreditAttribution: Steven commented 27 January 2005 at 03:54

File	Size
clean-up-admin-users_0.patch	20.02 KB

Sorry, I forgot some paths in profile.module. Better patch attached.

Comment #2

Boris Mann CreditAttribution: Boris Mann commented 27 January 2005 at 03:58

Looks good, Steven.

Can we call "access rules" something else? The "long" description is that they are username and email filters. What is a short name that better indicates this?

Maybe:
* user filters (might imply sorting users)
* account filters (username + email is always required -- I like this one the best)
* account rules (this one is OK too)

Comment #3

Steven CreditAttribution: Steven commented 27 January 2005 at 04:19

I like "account rules", but it's in fact longer than "access rules". But it's clearer and they do only apply to accounts on registration, not on the access when using an account.

Comment #4

Steven CreditAttribution: Steven commented 27 January 2005 at 04:47

Another possibility for the third tab is "registration".

I that case, we could move the account registration settings (registration allows, with or without approval, etc) there too (they are currently still placed in administer - users - configure, but there are no other subtabs anymore there). However, the registration settings do contain more than just control, there's also stuff like the welcome text and avatar settings. So the old page would probably still remain there, with some settings moved to the new location, which sounds like a bad idea.

Comment #5

Boris Mann CreditAttribution: Boris Mann commented 27 January 2005 at 05:21

I wouldn't move any other registration stuff there. Remember, the path would actually read as "Access Control > Registration", which makes sense exactly for what's there.

Is longer bad? Either "registration" or "account rules" are both good, but my +1 would be for "account rules".

Comment #6

tangent CreditAttribution: tangent commented 27 January 2005 at 11:59

The changes I see in the screenshot seem to be a usability improvement overall. I will probably need to think about it longer to explore possible disadvantages but I have a couple of comments.

1. The help text added to profile.module could probably be improved (e.g., "in in")
2. From a quick glance, it seems that user.module currently provides access control but I'm wondering if access control will remain there after more development has (hopefully) been done here (e.g., node level permissions, taxonomy based permissions, permission groups). If it were to be moved to a separate module then these UI changes would make even more sense.

Comment #7

Dries CreditAttribution: Dries commented 27 January 2005 at 13:29

1. Shouldn't we switch the 'roles' and 'permission' tabs? Normally, one first configures some roles before assigning permissions (but I might be wrong).

2. 'add' and 'check' are slightly inconsistent. Elsewhere we have 'add foo' and 'check foo'.

3. Maybe 'users - configure - profiles' should become 'users - profiles'? And 'users - configure - settings' just 'users - configure'?

4. What worries me slightly is that the 'access' stuff is really about user-level access and not about node-level or block-level access. Either way, this sounds like a big improvement.

Comment #8

Steven CreditAttribution: Steven commented 27 January 2005 at 13:55

"1. Shouldn't we switch the 'roles' and 'permission' tabs? Normally, one first configures some roles before assigning permissions (but I might be wrong)."

You have a point, but this way the permissions screen, which is IMO more frequently used than the roles screen, is available with one click from the administer menu. Given that we regularly get questions about 'problems' that are simply permission misconfigurations, this would seem like a good thing. Not every site sets up custom roles.

"2. 'add' and 'check' are slightly inconsistent. Elsewhere we have 'add foo' and 'check foo'."

Hmm, you're right that we had "add foo" in most places, but then we /don't/ have "view node" and "edit node", but "view" and "edit". What is the reasoning behind this? In this case, each operation applies to the noun in the parent tab ('access rule').
A while ago Stefan made a large patch to further remove nouns in local tasks when their meaning could be inferred (and even in cases where this was less so, like the filter admin). This patch was committed.

3. Maybe 'users - configure - profiles' should become 'users - profiles'? And 'users - configure - settings' just 'users - configure'?

I'm not sure of what the current standard is for placing items under "adminster - settings" or under "administer". "Users - configure - settings" is already simply "users - configure", as there are no other subtabs left there.