drupal

I know I'm a bit late on the monthly challenge this time around, but between the Usability sprint and Drupalcon I've been a bit too hectic to get a post written up. So this will be a short month, but hopefully we can rock it anyway. This month the focus will be on spiffing up our handbook by reviewing what we have and applying the style guide to it. Much like how the coding standards make working with Drupal code a lot nicer (especially for newbies), having consistency and clarity in our handbooks will make it easier for people to understand the firehose of information on any given page. I found that the best way for me to learn Drupal coding standards was to review existing code and help fix it. This month's task should not only help us clean up the docs a bit, but also get more people familiar with the fact that we even have guidelines as well as tucking some things into the back of their minds for next time they write or edit.

A grand tradition of Drupalcons is to end with a day of sprinting. Sprints are most often associated with a bunch of hackers chewing on code. Well, our community is more than code or coders. We are a rich community both in people and in the broader work we do to keep Drupal-land humming smoothly along. At this Drupalcon, like the last two, we'll be having an all-day documentation sprint on the last day, March 7. This year we will be a bit more organized and we have a whole room set aside just for us. And just who is "us?" This year a big goal of mine is to really get the word out that everyone can help with docs. We need people from all skill sets, backgrounds and languages; newbie to code ninja. Documentation work is not just about writing. Even taking one hour to hop in to help will push Drupal forward in leaps and bounds.

Aside from general docs work, like the monthly challenges and our current projects, my main priority the last few weeks (and into the foreseeable future) is getting a new Help system into Drupal 7 and making it kick behind. The patch to get the base system in is very close and we just need a bit more work to tip it over. Drupal 7 is aiming to be one incredible release and it is now time to really focus hard on things to make it useful to mere mortals: usability and documentation. If you care at all about the everyman in the CMS drama, then it's time to put on yer grown-up pants and get to work.

What needs to be done right now

Currently what we really need are reviews and feedback. Here are the major pieces we need eyes on:

I had a great time at SANDcamp this weekend. It was great to catch up with friends I hadn't seen in a while and I met lots of cool people. Most of the time I was trying to suck them into the Drupal community. ;-) My keynote was "It's the people, stupid!" and I've attached the slides here. I had great feedback from the presentation and we had some recurring jokes from it running through the weekend. I also want to thank everyone that stopped by the documentation sprint. That was a blast. We got lots of new eyes on the docs and I got most of the demo site for the new core Help system patch set up (more on that in a day or two).