Header text on "Before you Start" page is intimidating [#469464]

From Troodon in the Galway Group - see #449924: Notes regarding Getting Started and Cookbook docs - This person found the Before you Start page http://drupal.org/getting-started/before quite intimidating, and I agree. It is indeed a HUGE section.

Here is what he/she said (in part):

Lots of scary tech background. It's useful but perhaps rename it so newbies dont get scared off feeling they have to understand this all right away e.g. “Drupal technology”, “Background Drupal information”, “Drupal fundamentals”, “Drupal technology concepts”, “Drupal concepts and technology” etc?

Would it be a good idea to change the text so it doesnt imply you have to read/understand this all before you get stuck in? [Perhaps:]

This section of the Getting Started handbook provides background information to help you understand the concepts and technology that underpin Drupal.

My suggestion would be to leave the title as Before you Start, and to change the wording as this person suggested, or perhaps to something like:

This section of the Getting Started handbook provides background information to help you understand the concepts and technology that underpin Drupal. Look through this section now, so you know what's here, and then refer to it later when you find you need to understand its content in more detail.

I would have edited the page myself, but I don't have sufficient permission to edit it.

Comments

Comment #1

jhodgdon

she/her

English

commented 21 May 2009 at 18:48

Title:

"Before you Start" page in Getting Started is intimidating

» "Before you Start" section in Getting Started is intimidating

Comment #2

jhodgdon

she/her

English

commented 2 June 2009 at 00:21

Issue tags:

+locked to admins

Tagging, as I cannot edit this page (I have doc admin priveleges)

Comment #3

jhodgdon

she/her

English

commented 3 June 2009 at 17:11

As another comment, I was reading through the Before you Start section, and I got to this page: http://drupal.org/node/19828

At the top, it says

This topic assumes you have Drupal installed and created some content successfully. You now want to build the website you have in mind but don't know where to start. At this point it may help to know more about some central concepts.

But this page is a sub-page of "Understanding Drupal concepts" http://drupal.org/node/21951, which says:

Before you install Drupal and begin playing with it, it’s a good idea to get an overall sense of what it is, and how it works. This section gives you the big picture, helps you to frame how you think about Drupal, and assists you in determining whether it’s a good fit for your project. This small investment of time up front will help you immeasurably in the long run.

So this is inconsistent. We're supposed to be investing time before we install Drupal, but then we get to a page that assumes we've already installed Drupal. Bad!!!

Comment #4

jhodgdon

she/her

English

commented 3 June 2009 at 18:50

One more note:

I think the General Concepts page needs some editing: http://drupal.org/node/19828

Needs to be organized better, with headers that better reflect what's in the page. Also it probably needs some information on Taxonomy, which is a central concept in Drupal (in my opinion, anyway).

Comment #5

jhodgdon

she/her

English

commented 4 June 2009 at 00:50

OK. I've edited the General Concepts page http://drupal.org/node/19828 (in a pretty major way) to take care of #3 and #4 above.

I still think it would be good if a super-duper-doc-admin could edit the http://drupal.org/getting-started/before page (as stated in the original issue report) to make it a little less intimidating. But I think other than that that the section is in good shape.