First, let me tell you a story. My experience upgrading to Bd 1.2 If the monkey had to suffer, so must you experience the pain. :p

It's an experience that shouldn't be too different from a normal user.

The drama: Promising candy but making them get it on their own

I upgrade to Backdrop 1.2 without a hitch.

Yay! btw, love that I only have to replace one folder, core, to upgrade. Less thinking on my part. I like stupid simple.

The biggest talk point I kept hearing was "Backdrop now comes with a rich text editor!" Sweet. So, I immediately went to edit an old post but saw nothing of the kind. The immediate thought was

huh? Oh no. Maybe I didn't upgrade correctly. T.T There's no real confirmation I upgraded successfully to 1.2.

I panic and check the Status Report page but it says "1.2.0"

Huh? What gives? T.T

Somehow I go to the module list page and notice a disabled module called CKEditor (expected "rich text editor" but being smarter than the average bear I drew the connection. Will average ppl as well? One day I hear "CKEditor" and another "Rich text editor")

I go on and enable it.

Oh ok. haha, I get it. I'm so silly. That's so simple ... now goes to edit a post WTF??? Where's my RTE? T.T Grrrrr..... I hate Back... this doesn't make any sense at all! I enabled the module. No errors thrown. There's no config link in the "CKEditor" section of the modules list.

rte

Only after thinking a bit do I recall how it's done in Drupal and I figure that I may have to look at admin/config/content/formats to get my RTE.

NOTE: New users won't have old Drupal knowledge and habits to fall back on. For them, this could be game over and give them a TERRIBLE aftertaste with Backdrop. Ignore this if you're only catering to Drupal users

I then mess around with those settings, jump over other hurdles (#1202 how was I ever supposed to know about this? Sigh. I always turn on aggregation thinking it's the optimal way to speed up the site), and then finally get my RTE.

Why does this have to be so hard?!?! You really are part of the Drupal family!

At this point, I'm annoyed even though I was able to solve it on my own.

The problems: The two points of conflict

  • Info dissemination: Since I heard a RTE was coming to Bd by default, I expected I wouldn't need to do anything once I upgraded. Nothing told me otherwise that I would need to enable a module. If I need to have old Drupal knowledge or go into forums/github to figure that info out, that's a UX fail already.
  • No config instructions Let's assume I already knew I needed to enable the core module. Fine, free pass. I enable it but Bd makes it seems like everything is fine afterwards. How am I suppose to know I need to go mess with text editors and formats? Moreso, since there's no "configure" link next to the CKEditor module section (in the module list) rte Makes it seem like there's nothing more to be done.

The Plan:

End of rant.

No worries because... I. have. a. plan. ^_____^

Here's my solution. I propose that Bd displays a "Success!"/"Welcome"/"Walkthrough" page whenever the CMS is upgraded and Bd has added new and major features (I suppose you could also do it for all upgrades)

It'll be similar to the page you get whenever you upgrade Wordpress, except they use it mostly to hype up their new features. Instead, Bd can use this page to not only announce major features but how to make it work. Walk through users with what's new and what they need to do (if anything)

welcome

Imagine you upgrade to Bd 1.2 and immediately after running /update.php, 1. it redirects you to a page that confirms you do have the latest version. 2. you scroll down, and notice it mentions the RTE feature. It tells you that since you upgraded, it's not on by default and it goes on to inform you what you need to do exactly with links and all. 3. as a bonus, if you scroll further down this page, you'll see a section that tells you of any major issues with the new Bd version (that section can dynamically update) since its release like #1202.

In this way, whenever you upgrade to a new version, you'll have all the relevant info you need right there and then (kinda like the browser module). No need to go to searching at forums or a page like this (barbaric) to see what's new or what you need to do.

What do you think, no good?

PS: We could even add a link to this Welcome page from the dashboard #495 for reference. PSS: hehe. Sorry for the long post but all monkeys like attention. OK, how about, "If I had more time, I would've made it shorter?" ^_^

GitHub Issue #: 
1225