How Drupal will save the world - Simplicity for beginners, complexity for experts - get in quick

Written in reply to: How Drupal will save the world.

I experienced the same with modules (having to search for hours), and I think I know at least two ways to make Drupal more accessible to newcomers.
A bit of background: I just setup my third Drupal page and I find new modules even now. The pages were of three slightly different but very similar types:

• A newssite, needed mostly taxonomy.
• A personal site, needed book and taxonomy, as well as themes.
• A site for a free roleplaying system. Mostly needed book.

But even though the pages where quite different, I find myself reusing most modules.

And it took me hours to hunt them down.

To make the modules more accessible to newcomers, they should be more organized.

One way to organize them would be, to give them another sorting done by type of page I want to use them for (usecase). A blog, for example, needs different modules, than a newssite. But there will be much overlap.

Then users could simply check "I want a blog. Which modules do I need?"
Still they'd have far too many to choose from and the choice needs to be simplified for first-time users. To do that, users should be able to sort modules by popularity

Ways to sort by popularity:

• Download-count: The number of times they were downloaded during the last month or six months.
• Vote: Allow users to vote for modules and show the votes.

The second way to make Drupal more accessible would be to create rich compilations. That means: Don't just offer a "general drupal, search your modules by hand" download, but also some specialized precompiled versions, best with adapted config already included.

Some ideas for downloads:

• Drupal Community Bookwriting
• Drupal Community Newssite
• Drupal Personal Webpresence
• Drupal Blog
• Drupal Webshop
• Drupal Wiki
• Drupal Forum
• Drupal Rich Community Site (Forums, Community Book, Blogs, Webshop, Wiki - the full package)

These should then be the downloads a visitor first sees, to make the Drupal site a site for users.

Examples:

• Drupal Community Bookwriting: http://1w6.org - mine, german. If you like it, I'll gladly send you the details of the setup. http://1w6.org/contact .
• Drupal Community Newssite, if not perfect: http://gute-neuigkeiten.de - my first drupal installation.
• Drupal Personal Webpresence: http://draketo.de - my second Drupal installation, misses Photo-Albums (since I don't yet need them) and similar to be a full fledged personal webpresence.

- All parts of the design on these sites are licensed under free licenses (one of them being the GPL). -

These two ideas still give experts the full power of Drupal, but enable newcomers to get a site running quickly.

If you like the idea, please feel free to contact me: http://1w6.org/contact