Make the Maintenance Page Kick Ass

this is the maintenance page as it stands in bartik:

I'm not sure what more we can/want to do with this... I can see using an oversized icon (a clock maybe, or some gears, or some tools) in light gray floated to one side, but that doesn't seem very Drupl-y (as far as core themes go) to me.

Thoughts?

bleen, disable the database and see what happens.

ok ... when I turn off mySQL (in MMAP) I get an error page in the style of garland, even if the custom theme (and admin theme) are both set to seven.

How can I set up d7 to use Bartik for that page? Only then can we decide how that page should look

You have to hack core. Somewhere.

Nope. No core hacking is required. Since the database is down, Drupal has no way to determine what the theme has been selected (since all config is stored in the database).

HOWEVER, any config can be overridden by hard-coding the value inside the $conf array in your site's settings.php file. There's actually a comment in settings.php specifically about how to set the maintenance theme.

$conf['maintenance_theme'] = 'bartik';

If you set the maintenance theme as described in #7, before installing Drupal... - Bartik rocks (see screenshot, I don't know how to make it appear in the comment.)

On top of the list of steps there is something... it looks wrong, but it is there, no matter which browser.
This something is <h2 class="element-invisible">Installation tasks</h2>

#3 looks perfectly fine to me, no need to kick ass. Just be clear about what's going on, there's nothing else to offer for regular visitors anyway.

@georg The .element-invisible heading is possibly a core issue. See #766444: Add !important to CSS attributes of .element-invisible in system-behavior.css.

IMO, it doesn't make any sense to copy override the .element-invisible rule in Bartik just to add !important. :-\

Honestly, I would propose not having a "special looking" page. Although it is awesome to make it look special, it tends to cause confusion rather than delight. Because at least in the last picture seem to be shifting away from anything looking closely to the actual site.

Sorry, I am a little confused. Why would Garland show up, when you have Batrik enabled? And what you are pointing out is exactly why it shouldn't be special - it should be close to the theme look.

Because the theme you set for your site is stored in the variables table, but if db failure occurs then the maintenance theme is in code, which is the default theme unless set in settings.php - currently this is Garland, but is proposed to be Bartik, so yes, for db failure this is important. If you are really smart then you also set your site name in settings.php also so you dont get "Drupal" as the site name when the db fails ($conf['site_name'] = 'My Drupal site';)

Core is weird. Even if that is the case, this isn't the right place to slide a new core default in? Because if that is the case, why not just add it to Garland?

Bojhan: The proposal is to make Bartik, not garland the default theme for D7. If that happens, then Bartik will be the theme used by all d7 sites when their DBs are unavailable (unless the site owner has explicitly specified otherwise in settings.php)

Alright, I don't think its necessarily set at all that Batrik will take over the default spot and honestly that should not be used as an argument here.

Rather lets just argue the page itself, jen explained to me its only for the maintenance page I guess thats fine then.

I'm reopening this and moving it to Drupal project. I just used set this as my maintenance theme in default.settings.php before installing (That looks great btw). Here's a screenshot of what's wrong: http://drupal.org/files/issues/bartik_install.jpg (Warning messages show below success message, which states to check for messages _above_). I know this is not a regular use case, but here's a patch anyway.

Whats wrong with good news before bad news :P

I am somewhat concerned you are changing a default here though.

I just moved $messages from below $content to above $content. Unfortunately I don't know the theme enough to be able to tell why $messages is where it is. If someone does use it during installation (by setting maintenance_theme in default.settings.php) they will not see error messages during installation because some pages are pretty long. Plus when you're done Drupal tells you to check for the messages above, seems kinda strange to show up below =)

Yeah so I really don't know. I'm pretty sure close to nobody will actually do what I did, so I guess it doesn't matter. Just wanted to throw it out there and hate pointing something this small out without posting a patch.

hey .. what happened to the site name?? It's missing from the screenshot in #26

Is #26 still relevant, I just looked at the docs:

/**
 * A custom theme can be set for the offline page. This applies when the site
 * is explicitly set to maintenance mode through the administration page or when
 * the database is inactive due to an error. It can be set through the
 * 'maintenance_theme' key. The template file should also be copied into the
 * theme. It is located inside 'modules/system/maintenance-page.tpl.php'.
 * Note: This setting does not apply to installation and update pages.
 */
# $conf['maintenance_theme'] = 'bartik';

Can we mark this as fixed?

I just installed head and this is still there (see attached screenshot). Like I said, this is not such a likely case to be done but since Bartik is used as an example for Maintenance Theme in default.settings.php and this is a small change that is unlikely to break something, why not use the patch? $messages is only in the wrong place in maintenance-page.tpl.php.

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I can see, the description does not change anything since Bartik comes with a maintenance-page.tpl.php.

@aschiwi ... the *much* more common case when this page will be seen is when a site's database is borked for whatever reason. With the patch in #26, that error will look like this:

Not so hot.

Comparatively, without the patch, you get this:

This is a compromise I can live with...

slightly better spacing:

Totally with bleen18 on this one, normally we don't support extreme edge cases - if we did we'd be still be waiting for D7 in 2012. The compromise is good, sorry I cannot RTBC this as its a design change and I think Bojhan and Jen should see it first. The code looks fine.

Are those the same? Currently using an iPad while my computer is being repaired :( so can't check

Ah, now I see why $messages is printed below, that makes sense. I'm totally okay with the compromise. The spacing is different, #messages has a margin-bottom of 15px and h1 has a margin-bottom of 0.5em. It makes a visual difference of 1px. I wouldn't really mind that difference.

Nice catch ... this patch has even better spacing:

Great, thanks!

Alright, looks good. I think it makes complete sense to have the error title above the error message. And the spacing is way better.

I don't see how this is related to the install screen is related to this issue? Either way, lets check for a,b,c - from my initial testing it seemed fine (the subtitle didn't change much). Since we can't really figure out d) unitil you encountered it as a bug - I am going to mark it back to RTBC, whenever the first three are throughly covered, all to keep an eye on releasing drupal :)

We may not like it but all core themes must work as the admin theme ... because users can make that choice in the GUI. Supporting Bartik during install is a bit wihy-washier, but I think this change is benign enough that since we can, we should...

This meets all the requirements in #42

MAINTENANCE MODE - all is well

WHEN THE DB FAILS - all is well

BARTIK DURING INSTALL - all is well

Database isn't a fail, I thought that was expected, there is nothing we can do about that.

@45 ... I meant that this screenshot is what you get when the DB fails :)

Is it just me but doesnt the blend of fonts, font sizes, font styles, font colors and spacing look all a bit messy?

I think bleen just means "a database failure" as in that's what it looks like by default without any Variable overrides such as $conf['site_slogan'] = 'Test Site Slogan';

#39: bartik-maint-page.patch queued for re-testing.

I have a better idea, let site owners choose their own damn maintenance theme =)

@49, they can, just as they have been able to since I can't remember when, certainly D5 & D6. Something has be default.

#39: bartik-maint-page.patch queued for re-testing.

~

Reroll. Will actually review tomorrow.

The overlay link should not be shown.
Bartik's color.css should not be loaded (you can't see the site's title).

Patch (hopefully) coming.

class="element-invisible element-focusable" was left out of maintenance-page.tpl.php when it was added to html.tpl.php.

Also, removing a redundant #header fixed the color of the page title.

Tested, rockin'.

RTBC++

Here's the after screenshot:

When I was in sprint mode, I just fixed the bugs. I put 0 time into aesthetics. I figured we could get the bug fix in first, and then reopen it for visuals. However, I just noticed that this issue is tagged as a feature request :)

Should I move my bug report and bug fix to a different issue? Or do you think it'll be fine combining it with whatever you come up with to make it look nice?

Lets switch it to a task since its something that just has to be done. Fix it all in one hit - bugs + aesthetics in one patch.

"Drupal" as site name is set by Bartik itself:

template.php line 54:

$variables['site_name'] = filter_xss_admin(variable_get('site_name', 'Drupal'));

I mistook #66 as a suggestion to unset the title in template.php, which would theoretically be better than hiding it via CSS. However, because we only are hiding it when the db is offline, the CSS way is cleaner.

There are 1-2 whitespace things, but I'd rather get this in and then catch it in #889256: Clean up CSS coding style.

I'd say RTBC, but half of the patch is mine and I'd rather Jeff do it.

Yes, I think its better to hide with CSS, at least then its probably easier to undo and make changes if someone wants to.

Sorry, but that CSS hack is jankalicious. :\ Bartik needs to set the bar for best practices because we expect it to be copied/pasted/modified A LOT.

We're already preprocessing the maintenance page in template.php anyway, and from a couple seconds of grepping, it looks like there's a $variables['db_is_active'] you can check, and unset the site name if it's there. Make sure to leave a comment why you're doing that.

Also, this is no longer a feature request, from what I can tell.

I'll rework this tomorrow.

As I said earlier, that was so easy I feel lazy for not trying earlier.

Summary of changes to the maintenance page:

• Adjust CSS selectors to properly color the site title
• If the DB is offline, hide the site title
• Add the correct classes to the skip-link
• Remove the highlighted region because it is never used
• Set a better color for the border

+++ themes/bartik/css/maintenance-page.css	18 Nov 2010 01:23:25 -0000
@@ -7,8 +7,9 @@ body.maintenance-page {
+  min-width: 0;

This patch looks great, except I dont understand this one line... why?

Powered by Dreditor.

It's an override of #page-wrapper {min-width: 960px;} from layout.css, to ensure that width: 800px; actually works.

Looks good to me:

The greatest site ever? That must be a screenshot of drupal.org's maintenance page! :D

Committed to HEAD. Thanks!

Note that this introduced a regression at #1334344: During update, Bartik throws an error that $site_name is not defined.