Creating a better administrative interface for Drupal

One problem with Drupal is that the UI sucks for beginner users. They have great difficulty finding all of the most important administrative menu items they want to use. Since Drupal tends to group administrative items by general functionality and by module, it can tricky working where something is located for a beginner. Not to mention the fact, many beginning CMS users are terrified to death of 'clicking the auto-destruct link' by mistake and screwing up their work. This fear is not ungrounded, as many Desktop applications have a strange red X in the top right corner of the page that is terribly destructive when accidentally clicked (assuming one is not used to reading dialogs carefully before clicking Yes). So the solution in Drupal is simple. Create a page where all of the most useful administrative items are linked, and make sure that each type of functionality is in blocks which are displayed only to the user who has access to do that item.

• David Wees's blog
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