Home

Primary links

  • top o the deck
  • Drupal for Beginners
  • about
  • links
  • give me some sugar

Drupal stuff

  • EDAM
  • STARDOM
  • Question Bank
  • Drupal musings
  • Drupal tips
Home

Key stuff on this site

Easy Drupal Admin Manual (EDAM)

SEO, Traffic and Revenue: Drupalace's Online Manual (STARDOM)

Drupal for Beginners

Subscribe to posts by RSS or email

Subscribe to Drupal Ace by RSS feed RSS feed 

Subscribe to Drupal Ace by Email

Donate towards my web hosting bill! Get a great host!

Share and save

Share/Save

Random piece of content

2008 is here: the Drupal Ace to-do list

Manuals on this site

  • Easy Drupal Admin Manual (EDAM)
    • Welcome to Your Site
    • First Steps: Please Read!
      • Understanding These Instructions
      • Important Terminology!
      • Best Practices for Site Admins
    • Super Quick Guide (for the experienced and the brave)
    • Logging In
    • Your Administrator Tools
    • Setting Site Basics
      • Setting Site Information
      • Configuring Your Theme
    • Creating Content
      • Node Types
      • Create a Page Node
      • Create a Story Node
      • Create a Blog Entry Node
      • Making Images and Other Files Available
      • Using Text and Image Editors
    • Organizing Your Content
      • Terms, Vocabularies, and Taxonomy: "Tagging" Your Content
        • Taxonomy Suggestions
      • Menus, Links, and Paths: Navigating the Site
        • Content Paths and URLs
        • Creating Links
        • Working with Menus: Administration Form (Drupal 6)
        • Working with Menus: Administration Form (Drupal 5)
        • Creating Menu Items on the Fly
        • Placing Menus on Your Pages
      • Placing Content on pages
        • Creating a page from a Single Node
        • Creating a page from a List of Nodes
        • Setting the Front Page
      • Working with Blocks
    • Maintenance Stuff
      • Maintenance and Construction Notices
    • Other Fun Things
      • Changing Color of Garland Theme
      • Free Aliases!
  • SEO, Traffic and Revenue: Drupalace's Online Manual (STARDOM)
    • Set a Clear Goal
    • Make a Good Site
      • Put out the Welcome Mat
      • Make Great Content
      • Build a Great Brand
      • Make Navigation Easy
      • Tune Site Performance
    • Drive Traffic
      • Promote your Site
      • Get Found with SEO
    • Build a Community
      • Build an Offsite Community
    • Monitor and Improve
    • One-Page Checklist
    • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 1
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 2
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 3
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 4
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 5
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 6
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 7

Recent comments

  • It worked

    adding $GLOBALS['tempUser'] = $user; worked but I find it worth noting that I had to delete...

  • very good document...

    very good documentation for beginners!!!!!! thanks!!

  • del penitential 62

    strike out abject
    eliminate penitent 5

  • Chat

    Thank you a lot about very beneficial to my work was very useful thank you

  • Drupal Resources f...

    I would start learning from the "Diving In" section above. That links to the good beginners'...

more

Drupal Ace's Annoyance Gallery

  • general info
  • annoyances
  • Drupal

Annoyances? In Drupal? Yep, we've got a few!

These will likely be short notes, so rather than individual posts, I'll maintain a single ongoing list.

The Annoyance List

Excess terminology

Have you noticed that what's alternately called "teaser" and "excerpt" is also called "trimmed post" in admin/content/node-settings? That's three words for one thing.

Confusing terminology

I do wish that there weren't node types called "page" and "story", as those are generic words needed for generic purposes as well. It's almost impossible to discuss pages in Drupal without using the word "page", which may be a page listing everything and anything except the nodes known as "page".

It'd be good for Drupal to avoid naming functional terms with generic words needed elsewhere. (And by "term" I mean "word", not the tags officially known as "terms". See what I mean?)

Share/Save
  • Printer-friendly version
  • Quote
Unknown Drupaloid's picture

Re: Drupal Ace's Annoyance Gallery

Submitted by Unknown Drupaloid (not verified) on Fri, 2008-01-04 17:42.

>Excess terminology
Agreed. Except that I don't think Excerpt is terminology used by Drupal core. BTW the term "trimmed post" was probably added because newbies complained they didn't know what a teaser was.

>Confusing terminology
Have you got any better suggestions for "page", "story", "term" ...
(If so then post them to the issues queue http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal)

  • reply
  • quote
Drupalace's picture

Re: Drupal Ace's Annoyance Gallery

Submitted by Drupalace on Sat, 2008-01-05 01:36.

Ah, the old "So, you got a better solution?" question. Always the right question to ask!

Well, it's a tough one here. We could replace "story", for example, with "article", but that's just replacing one generic word with another – nothing solved.

Neither of those is as much a problem as "page", though – that word gets heavy use in both the generic sense of any page displayed by the website, and the Drupal sense of a specific content type. It can confuse.

It's clear that a page (node type) is not synonymous with page (generic sense), as a page (generic sense) can be composed of multiple pages (node type). Or a page (generic sense) can be composed of multiple stories (node type) or multiple blog entries (node type) or multiple polls (node type), etc.

I'm going to mull better naming possibilities. But if no good new names come up, I hold fast to the idea that simple capitalization would be a big step forward: a page is any page; a Page is a specific node type. A story is a narrative that could be placed into any node type; a Story is a node type that could hold any type of text (narrative or otherwise). And so on, as outlined here: Clearer Terminology through Capitalization

Now, as for "term", that's another matter: a simple capitalization to Term would be fine, but it's easy to find a better name all around: "tag", a word that fits perfectly and whose meaning is instantly clear to web users everywhere. I've written this up in some detail, and invite any kindly interested parties to read the post: Why not call it "tagging"?

Anyway, you are correct that these things should be submitted properly to the Issues for Drupal list, where they can be discussed, acted upon, and/or just laughed at, as appropriate. Will do!... though, aye yi yi, I see it's going to be a long search through the existing issues list to make sure these topics aren't already covered.

(By the way, I see among the issues list that the objection to multiple names for teasers has already been made: http://drupal.org/node/193680 So I'll not bother entering that one.)

Thanks for the comment!

 

  • reply
  • quote
Unknown Drupaloid's picture

Terminology

Submitted by Unknown Drupaloid (not verified) on Mon, 2009-06-29 22:30.

Good point you have, well explained and makes lots of sense.

You should bring it up at drupal.org.

I just wonder why it bothers you to be laughed at (if it wud ever happen), some do and others take it seriously that's how we're made. Go ahead and give your great input while only counting those that understand your point.

I like your site and contribution.

  • reply
  • quote

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><br><p>
  • You may quote other posts using [quote] tags.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.

More information about formatting options


Relevant Content

The Drupal Ace logo has dealt these content suggestions from the deck.

  • Working with Menus: Administration Form (Drupal 6)
  • Drupal beginner documentation picking up steam
  • Working with Menus: Administration Form (Drupal 5)
  • Updating Easy Drupal Admin Manual
  • Drupal for Beginners
  • Why would Color-enabled themes work for all sites but one?
  • Limiting node access: three quick'n'easy tools

Learn Drupal, hands-on

Get the beginner-friendly ebook that teaches community site building via a live case study.

Drupal 6 Ultimate Community Site Guide

Read the review

Drupal mini tip

Site visitors seeing your ugly error messages on the screen (along with details of your Drupal installation path)? Once your site goes from dev to launch, you probably want to have errors recorded in the log but not splashed across the screen. Head to the handy Error Reporting settings found at admin/settings/error-reporting. 

It's a deal!

Dreamhost dealsDrupal Ace presides over his domain, proudly ensconced in his DreamHost eyrie. Won't you join me?

Promo code deal!

Just enter the code 49ER when you register for an account, and save $49 off the already-low price. No strings!

Read my hosting service review

Powered by Drupal, an open source content management system

Copyright 2007 and forever after. Made with Drupal, of course. On OS X, of course. Served up by DreamHost. DreamHost

RoopleTheme