Tabula rasa is not an effective onboarding strategy
First impressions matter. The first glance has a lot if impact on further expectations. Drupal core doesn’t do well there. As webchick points out, after installation the opening line is “you have no content”.
Yeah, thanks.
This empty canvas makes Drupal appear very limited in functionality. Which is the exact opposite of how Drupal is advertised (flexible, extensible, there’s a module for that!)
This is not news. The issue for adding sample content is over 10 years old. The image I posted earlier is from a core conversation 6 years ago. Eaton and moi presented on Snowman in Prague 3 years ago.
But now we do have Drupal 8, with essential features available right out of the box. We have a new release schedule that encourages shipping new features and improvements every 6 months. And we’re settling on a better process for figuring out the part from initial idea to fleshed out plan first, before implementing that plan.
So lets work together and come up with a plan for sample content in core. Which means answering product focussed questions like:
- Audience: who do we make this for?
- Goals: what do these people want to achieve?
- Features: which tools (features) to provide to make that possible?
- Priorities: which of those tools are essential, which are nice to haves?
But purpose first: audience and goals.
We’re always balancing product specifics with framework generics in what core provides. Pretty sure we can do something more opiniated than our current default “Article” and “Page” content types without painting ourselves in a corner.
We’ll discuss this topic during upcoming UX meetings and in the UX channel in drupal.slack.com (get your automatic invite here).