[TYPO3-hci] A new approach to a less frightening start with TYPO3

[JoH asenau]

Hi folks.

During the HCI presentation at T3BOARD07 (which actually was really
impressive) we talked about the major barriers for newbies entering the
backend for the first time.

An interim solution could be having different login options from "easy
editing" over "advanced editing" to "fully blown admin".

I checked the possibilities that are already available and came to the
conclusion that there are two ways of handling this stuff that could be used
together for a less frightening start with TYPO3.

1. We already got the possibility to choose between different interfaces.
Currently there are only "backend" or "frontend" available although there
are comma separated lists for [BE][interfaces] and [BE][loginLabels] since
only "alt_main.php" and "../" are hardcoded in index.php.
But we could easily change that to have some php code executed before
calling "alt_main.php" in order to modify localconf.php and remove/install
different extensions there that would modify the backend look and feel.

2. We could introduce some more default users than just admin/password and
some default groups that could be assigned to them to modify the backend
look and feel.

Take these two together and you get an almost perfect solution. Just imagine
the following:

By default there will be two users in the DB
admin/password
+
editor/password

Logging in as admin will always give you the fully blown backend view with
this overwhelming amount of buttons and features.

While logging in as editor would give you the option to choose between
"easy", "advanced", "master" or whatever, each of them just assigning
another group to your backend user before calling "alt_main.php" thus
adding/removing features to the backend depending on your personal skills.

This could be done with some minor changes to "index.php" _and_ an
additional "assign_be_group.php" that would be called by index.php and
change the usergroup of the logged in users on the fly based on their
choice.
We could even use another localconf parameter containing a CSV list of
groups to be assigned for each of the skill levels, so that an admin could
offer this feature for any other non_admin user as well.

I checked the TER for an extension with a similar approach but couldn't find
any (so please correct me if I'm wrong).
If I get some +1 from you I will start to code a working example.

So what do you think?

Joey

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