DrupalCon Prague 2013: FOR THE LOVE OF THE CONTENT EDITORS
Channel: Drupal Association
Date: 2013-09-25

The devil is in the details when creating a content management system, but it's the details that often get left out.

Client cares about how the site looks; developer cares about how the code looks. But rounded corners and nicely commented code don't help the poor content editors.

WHY SHOULD I CARE?
Simply, it's in the best interest of the vendor to deliver a product that people don't hate to use.

Especially if the client doesn't seem to care, it can be really easy to ignore the issue of usability. But even though they may not care during development, they will be made to care once it's delivered.

As a former content editor I can attest to this! Ignored we were, until the day came when we had to use the thing. Day after day, we slogged through it, cursing the evildoers (i.e. 'the vendor' and 'the project lead') who inflicted this torture upon us!

WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT THAT?
You can help! And it's not even that hard, or expensive!

Out of the box, Drupal is... OK for content editors. But oftentimes post-major-development, it's... bad.

There are a lot of simple things you can do to make life easier for these users, and it doesn't require major customisation. It can also make training easier, and reduce support requests that come from not understanding the system.

A few basic guidelines for your team can produce a hugely better result. So it's easy, it's valuable, and it makes people happy - how could you say no to that?

Topics to be covered include:

Ask the right questions before you build
Help text is your greatest weapon
Contextual links - check the permissions dummy!
Advanced content search was not a requirement because it was assumed to exist
So you developed it - have you ever tried to use it?
And much more!