Admin Menu Survey

Administration menu survey results

Survey background

The survey consisted of six questions with the option to upload screenshots of administration menus. The survey was shared with Drupal agencies of various sizes, in order to get a range of responses while controlling for response quality. The survey received 16 responses total as of November 20, 2023 and concluded on December 20, 2023.

Thank you to the following agencies for their participation!

• 1x Internet
• Cambrico
• Lullabot
• Ymbra

Survey results

The survey respondents identified limitations with the existing administration menu links and configuration flexibility. There is an existing need and desire to customize the administration menu. Customization is necessary to improve the existing user experience for both content editors and site administrators. Survey respondents found their own solutions to some issues. They would like the Drupal core to offer additional configuration options for the administration menu. The number of ways that respondents currently customize the administration menu indicates that there is a need for people to make changes to the administration menu.

The survey respondents indicate that they customize their site’s administration menus to varying extents. However the eight default administration menu links are commonly used. The majority of respondents do include the default links in their admin menu, and then customize the toolbar from there. Sensible defaults are important because people are starting from what exists, and making changes to customize the menu further.

Several respondents indicated that they customize the administration menu for content editors. A default content editor menu in Drupal core tailored for content editor’s needs would save development time and effort. Some of the respondents describe how they already make a distinction between the needs of a content editor and a site administrator. One respondent said that customization “Depends on roles and concerned project: An editor should have all [links] related to work with content”. Another respondent said “We need to divide [menus] between site builders and content managers. The menu structure [Content, Scheduled Publishing, Media, Workflows, Webforms, Redirects, People, Reports, Logs] is what the content manager needs on a daily basis, and what is hidden between features for site builders. Drupal's mix of the admin menu is very confusing, most of the features for site builders are only required on development, but not on production environments.”

Improvements to modify the existing administration menu in core will reduce the effort that is required to improve the administration user experience. Codifying the approaches that people already use in the Drupal ecosystem into best practices for administration menu customization will support both content creation and site maintenance.

Number of content editors

Almost half of the respondents reported that 1-5 people create and edit content on the site, closely followed by 6-25 people. Only one respondent indicated that the site has more than 100 people who create and edit content. Two respondents did not indicate how many people create and edit content.

The Drupal ecosystem includes Drupal sites with a small number of content editors, and sites with a large number of editors. Even within this small sample size, the range indicates that toolbar customization is needed regardless of the content team size of the site. Given that customization is common, customizing the admin toolbar for content editors in Drupal core needs to be possible, and straightforward to do so.

Top level links in the administration menu

The survey asked “What are the top level links included in the administration menu on the site?” The majority of respondents indicated that they include the eight Drupal core default admin menu items. The eight default links in order of number of responses

1. People link: 14 responses
2. Reports link: 13 responses
3. Structure link: 13 responses
4. Configuration link: 13 responses (note that includes two responses that are “Configure”)
5. Help link: 13 responses (note that includes three responses that are “Help and Support”, and one response that is “Help and Admin”)
6. Content link: 12 responses
7. Appearance link: 11 responses
8. Extend link: 11 responses

The majority of respondents do include the default links in their admin menu, and then customize the toolbar from there. This indicates that within this survey group, the existing default links do make sense to include for their content editors. The ability to customize the administration menu for content editors is a fundamental need. The survey results are not conclusive enough to determine whether the default links are appropriate for all content editors by default. A possible reason that there is not more content editor-specific customization is that it is too time intensive or costly to create or customize the administration menu for content editors currently.

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Thanks everybody that made this possible!

PD. If I've missed somebody please comment here so I can give you credits, even if the issue is marked as Fixed.

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.