Background

#2481435: [META] Analyzing current state of Drupal.org content and IA
We need a better way to organize content on the site. This does not mean we need too many content types to meet all the different use cases and personas.

We need to separate content from structure. Use content types to create content, use other means to bring structure.

#2497127: [META] Evolving Drupal.org front page
Exploring ideas around the Front page evolution surfaced the need for a set of high quality ‘top level’ section pages. Those pages will have calls to action specific to the section to convince/convert/inform/connect users.

Proposed Solution

  • Organize all content on Drupal.org in Sections around user tasks.
  • Each section has a purpose and an audience defined.
  • Each section has a primary owner(s) and a set of roles for users who can create or edit content within a section.
  • These Sections make up top level of the Drupal.org Site Map.

Defining a list of sections

Combining the list of major areas of user activity from #2481479: [META] Define major areas of user activity / tasks on Drupal.org with the current Drupal.org Site Map and various parts of the site that exist now, gives us the following list of potential Sections:

These will be the top level of the Site Map, therefore we should keep the total number of Sections reasonable. Most of them will have various sub-sections inside to accommodate all the content we have and user activity happening.

There won't be 1 to 1 match between areas of user activity and Sections largely because some of the areas are too generic (Information, Project management, Communication) to have a section of their own. Instead, they will be presented in (sometimes multiple) Sections based on the context.

#2516956: Create 'About' Section
#2533786: Create 'News & Events' Section
#1288470: Create 'Community' Section
#2533790: Create 'Learn' Section
#1487662: Create 'Develop with Drupal' Section
#2533684: Create 'Documentation' Section
#1414988: [Meta/Plan] Create a new Getting Involved Guide section
#2533804: Create 'Support' Section
#1576318: Create 'Security' Section
#2338301: Create 'Governance' section

Drupal Association

  • A central place for all information about the Drupal Association
  • Includes official Association blog
  • Assoc.d.o will stay as a CiviCRM installation to process membership and donations, as well as run elections
  • Currently assoc.drupal.org
  • Persona: all

Websites

  • A portal about Drupal.org and D.o ecosystem
  • Includes information about the site(s), style guide, personas, maintainers, etc.
  • Includes ‘Drupal.org blog’
  • Currently in /about-drupalorg and parts of various books
  • Persona: Skilled, Expert, Master

Infrastructure

  • A portal about Drupal.org infrastructure and services
  • Includes information about the hardware, APIs, services, testbots
  • Includes ‘Infrastructure blog’
  • Currently in /about-drupalorg and parts of various books
  • Persona: Skilled, Expert, Master

Site Map

To get an idea of potential content inside of each section here is a work-in-progress Drupal.org site map, based on Section:
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1v6g9GzLsiexTnTYlRat4sMv48OIMoflYvzEv...

Implementation

Behind the scenes each section is an organic group to enable content structure and permissions.

They will not look and behave exactly like the current groups.d.o, in most cases nothing will show to the user that particular part of the site is a group.

Building Sections as groups enables a lot of exciting possibilities:

  • Various types of content can be created inside of one section (e.g. not just book pages in book hierarchy).
  • Different content types will be available to different sections, based on purpose and use cases.
  • Built-in permissions system enables the concept of maintainers and editors for a Section of the site. This can hugely improve existing governance and decision making confusion.
  • Having definite maintainers and editors per Section will help improve overall quality of the content on the site, while still keeping some content (such as documentation) open for editing by any user in the site.
  • Content can be added to multiple Sections when needed (e.g. blog post is published in Why Drupal section and it also gets into News & Events Section).
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Comments

tvn’s picture

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tvn’s picture

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tvn’s picture

Bojhan’s picture

This is great to see, could you elaborate a bit more on how this sections came to be - which activities or task are they supporting?

I see for example "community" and "contribute" but also "Governance".

What really helps is an overview what goals, content and audience you are seeking to support with each Section.

tvn’s picture

Issue summary: View changes

I added short descriptions of Sections, as well as a drawing of a potential future site map, to show what could go into each Section. The idea is to have an issue per Section later, to flesh our specifics. However, before doing that our next step is to run a card sorting exercise or two to validate proposed list of Sections and make sure they make sense for our users. More details will follow.

dasjo’s picture

Is there a hierarchy/prioritisation planned for those sections? 13 sounds a bit much to me. For example Learn & Documentation sounds pretty similar?

tvn’s picture

Yes, there will be prioritization, in a sense that some of the Sections will make up top level menu and some will be less prominently placed in the IA, e.g. will be linked from the footer. You can see separation in the site map drawing I linked for example. Apart from that, we might consider merging some of the proposed Sections after doing the card sort.

tvn’s picture

Category: Feature request » Plan
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tvn’s picture

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tvn’s picture

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tvn’s picture

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Created placeholder issues for most of the planned Sections. Will be updating their issue summaries in the next few days.

apaderno’s picture

Assigned: tvn » Unassigned