The devil is in the details when creating a content management system, but it's the details that often get left out.

Client cares about how the site looks; developer cares about how the code looks. But rounded corners and nicely commented code don't help the poor content editors.

WHY SHOULD I CARE?

Simply, it's in the best interest of the vendor to deliver a product that people don't hate to use.

Especially if the client doesn't seem to care, it can be really easy to ignore the issue of usability. But even though they may not care during development, they will be made to care once it's delivered.

As a former content editor I can attest to this! Ignored we were, until the day came when we had to use the thing. Day after day, we fought with the CMS, cursing the evildoers (i.e. 'the vendor' and 'the project lead') who inflicted this torture upon us!

WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT THAT?

Sure, Drupal core has its UX flaws. But we don't build sites using only Drupal core, so this is no excuse. Now as a Drupal project manager, I feel a responsibility to save the content editors from my earlier fate.

There are a lot of simple things you can do to make life easier for these users, and it doesn't require major customisation. In addition to increasing client satisfaction, it can also make training easier, and reduce support requests that come from not understanding the system.

A few basic guidelines for your team can produce a hugely better result. So it's easy, it's valuable, and it makes people happy - how could you argue with that?

This session is aimed at anyone building Drupal sites who is interested in content editor experience. Do you want to do it, but just don't know how? Do you want to convince your boss that your team should be focusing on it? Do you want to find out how to get clients on board?

Topics to be covered include:

• Who are these 'content editors'?
• Where to start
• Contrib modules that can help
• Ask questions - any questions
• Help text is your greatest weapon
• Contextual links - check the permissions dummy!
• Advanced content search was not a requirement because it was assumed to exist
• So you developed it - have you ever tried to use it?

And much more!