[Typo3-dev] Make configuration simple

[Franz Koch]

Hi,

> People still call the learning curve of typo3 steep. One mayor reason 
> for this is in my opinion the complex configuration system. There are 
> different places of configuration and diffierent formats.

How about a "configuration-module" in the backend and put all the 
different configuration possibilities in there? Could be a first step in 
the right direction of centralizing the configuration.

Currently the configuration is not only spread in different formats and 
languages, but also spread over the whole backend here and there. Ok, 
you might say, most of it is inside the "Tools"-module in the backend 
menu, but the configuration is no "tool" - so why not making a 
"configuration-module" and put _everything_ there.

My idea:

-------------------------
Web
-------------------------
Page
View
List
Info
Access
Function
-------------------------
DAM
-------------------------
...
-------------------------
User Task-Center
-------------------------
Recent Documents (the current doc-module)
Workflow
Notes
Messages
etc.
Preferences (currently 'setup')
-------------------------
Tools
-------------------------
DB check
Log
Indexing
AWStats
phpMyadmin
etc.
-------------------------
Configuration
-------------------------
Templates
_Backend_ (all pageTS and userTS related stuff)
TemplaVoila
User-Admin/
Ext-Manager
Configuration
Install
-------------------------
Help
-------------------------


And with _Backend_ in the configuration module I mean a backend 
"extension" in which you can also browse the pagetree and only edit the 
TS. But not only edit - also list and search all pages or records where 
a TS (e.g. pageTS) is applied to (on large sites it is hard to keep 
track where what is defined) etc.
Therefore I'd for example remove the pageTS-field from the page header 
and also following the concept of removing/reducing the various 
pagetypes, so that there is left only "Page", "Mountpoint", "SysFolder", 
"Recycler" (whatever this one is for - never used it) - but this is a 
different story.

I think this would already help, because all the configuration of the 
Backend, which can be edited/limited via pageTS and userTS, is centralized.


Just a quick thought.
-- 
Franz Koch