backdrop-ops
Featured contrib projects
I had an idea about creating 'featured' projects for Backdrop. When new users want a certain feature, they can be overwhelmed with the choices that contrib provides, especially with seemingly duplicate modules that do the same thing in slightly different ways.
So I thought to suggest that Backdrop advertise 'featured' modules (can also be extended to themes and layouts maybe) that are the recommended way to perform certain tasks. For example, want a custom form, use Webform. Webform could become a 'featured' module, and these would be displayed at the top of search results, and maybe even have a page of their own, so new users know where to start with a new website. These 'featured' modules would essentially be halfway between core and contrib - officially supported/recommended by Backdrop, but still in contrib (and would likely be the first candidates for inclusion in core in future).
Other, similar contrib modules can still exist, and can even add extra functionality to these 'featured' modules (think Webform extensions), but where possible, effects should be combined in these 'featured' modules rather than duplicating functionality elsewhere.
(Originally posted here: https://github.com/backdrop/backdrop-issues/issues/2281)
👍 I think that I've either filed a related issue about this or made a comment about it in another issue, but can't find it now.
...here it is: https://github.com/backdrop/backdrop-issues/issues/1288#issuecomment-192813925
I'll copy that comment over from that meta issue...
... I do like the idea of categories and having a "Featured" (for new projects that gain rapid adoption) and "Popular" (all-time, most-installed) section. It's how for example AMO works for mozilla addons...
- they have a slider with "Mozilla’s Pick of the Month!", "First time with Add-ons?" and "Worry-free browsing" (that shows 3 of their security-related addons):
- and they have filters for "Featured", "Most Popular", "Top Rated" as well as by category. Also specific sections for "Featured Extensions", "Up & Coming Extensions" and "Featured Themes" etc:
I really like their design and they have a design where they seem to re-use similar sections in their in-browser addon selector:
The b.org side of this is to have some tag/flag that would toggle a project state to promoted/featured or not. Then we can have this flag either manually set by one of the site admins (promoted) or based on say a cron job that counts usage stats (popular). These could be views carousels of projects sorted by installation count and also limited say to 3.
Then, in the core side of things, we need to adapt and redesign the Project installer UI to have these projects in a prominent position.
I like this idea of having 'featured projects' provided this implies some sort of endorsement by Backdrop, implying that the project works correctly with the current release of core, has an active maintainer, and is a good way of achieving what it does. Popularity (usage statistics) is one measure but sometimes it is the rarely used module that is particularly helpful in an unusual situation. Voting might help but will not always lead to the most helpful answer. Perhaps look for nomination by a proposer followed by support by a number of others who use it?
We have this checkbox on themes and modules. Was this put there in anticipation of this feature?
It doesn't appear that this checkbox is being used, or am I missing something?
it doesn't appear that this checkbox is being used
That's correct.
We were trying to have "supported" themes that included support for all the basics like all 10 core layouts, the home page featured content view, taxonomy pages, etc. So that people would know if a theme was expected to work on most of their site or not. Some themes only work for very limited use-cases, so trying those on your own, likely very different site cab be disconcerting when nothing looks good :/
I don't think that's issue because there was somewhere else where we were discussing the requirements for a theme to be supported - and I don't see that in here.
