Building a functional, beautiful site for end users is what most Drupal development efforts focus on -- but some of the most important and often neglected users of the new site are the content creators and editors who will have to maintain it. Planning for the admin experience these users will have can mean the difference between unsatisfied, frustrated content maintainers and maintainers who are happy with their new site.
For content maintainers, an uncustomized Drupal admin interface can be complicated, overwhelming, and downright scary. By making the system easier to use and more difficult to break, developers and site-builders can create better relationships with their content maintainers and ultimately their clients. There are a number of steps they can take to do this, ranging from installing and configuring modules that improve the interface, to customizing the permissions system to restrict access to areas of the site that can be unnecessarily confusing, to setting up more intuitive dashboards. Careful thought about what content maintainers need to do, and planning to help them to do it, helps them focus on their content and empowers them to take control of managing and maintaining their website with less developer assistance.
In this presentation, I will cover some of the steps I take to streamline websites for my clients. You’ll learn about:
- Helpful modules to improve content authoring
- Crafting roles and permissions for a streamlined admin experience
- Configuring the WYSIWYG
- Organizing content interfaces for ease of use
- Creating an intuitive administrative dashboard
- The importance of simple and concise training documentation