Wordpress 2.6 is incredibly usable. Thoughts?

By tmallen on 22 Jul 2008 at 14:24 UTC

I've been a big fan of Drupal for the past year (my first project was for a colleague last September) and it's my platform of choice for most any site that isn't so complex as to warrant a from-scratch solution or a framework. I was fiddling with Wordpress 2.6 last night, and I think that there's a lot to learn from the Wordpress guys in terms of usability. Specifically, their Admin UI is excellent.

I'm considering a few steps to bring Drupal up to speed in terms of usability:

An installation profile that includes CCK, Image, etc: What most any content-focused site will need.
A new Admin theme that is as usable as Wordpress' theme (notice how I don't lose track of my content types when creating a new post, etc.? There's a lot in front of you, and it makes for a less back button-intensive experience)
Create a new, simplified TinyMCE module that's attractive out of the box: The current one is prohibitively difficult for newcomers, although I've never had problems setting it up. This issue is at the top of my list, as the TinyMCE module hasn't had a 6.x release since March and still is in development
Find some way to make image attachment, etc. as easy out of the box for Drupal as well. When I'm creating a post in WordPress, the "Add Media" icons make image, Video, and other media attachment very easy. I'm not sure to what degree this is being handled by TinyMCE

So, any insight? Are there any projects with a similar focus (not to mimic WP, but to learn from their UI)? Or existing groups with such a focus? If not, I'll start one, and any interested developers or users should definitely have a look.

Comments

You are probably right. I am

jaypabs commented 31 January 2009 at 05:09

You are probably right. I am also struggling with Add Media like features in wordpress. It is very hard to add an image in drupal using TinyMCE Editor. I have found somebody who have successfuly integrate this kind of features but there's a lot of hack.

I am playing with imagepicker module but still it does not add an icon in the TinyMCE editor. Imagepicker I think is the solution if they can add an icon in the editor.

Download free source code

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WorldFallz commented 31 January 2009 at 15:41

These days I recommend fckeditor with imce or fckeditor with image_browser. imo they are orders of magnitude better than any tinymce solution.

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