Add social media links to the footer

I think we should add those. Many FOSS projects use Twitter and Facebook nowadays. Both Twitter and Facebook are (or should be) good communication tools for us -- especially given our size.

As I understand it, this is only a arequest to add a static link to these URLs, not the actual widgets that these provide. I am ok with that.

In case that more is wanted we should take care to not allow either of them to track our users, see https://drupal.org/project/socialshareprivacy

killes++

We should not add the widgets. It'll make d.o pages much heavier and introduces external points of failure. Links are fine.

Links ... with icons and appropriate alt/meta tagging.

WE are a social media provider. Where would the links stop? Are we going to add every social media outlet? Personally, I don't use facebook, so the facebook link is of no use to me, but I do use twitter so I would find that useful. I also use Google+, so that needs to be there too. What about all the other social media outlets - geeklist, reddit, disqus? Where does it end?

It might really confuse and dilute our own message and information if we add others.

Disagree. Why should every website contain ads to Facebook and Twitter on every page. I think it looks trashy and is essentially just a commercial.

I'm sure users of these networks can locate what they want. We could additionally provide links on an about or contact page if we don't already.

I'm curious if the twitter link should link to @drupal only. There are multiple twitter accounts run by the assoication, i.e. @drupal_secruity. I think we might need a link to a directory page. Maybe something like this. https://uwaterloo.ca/social-media/

@drupal_security is run by an individual and does not work well.
@drupalsecurity is run by members of the Drupal Security Team and not the association.

I could see a "Drupal on social media" link that points to a book page as a way to provide links to all these things without adding too much visual or text clutter.

+1 to adding Twitter and Facebook social media icons and linking those to the main Drupal accounts.

Drupal has two pages on Google+ so we'd need to sort out which is the valid one, but that and/or LinkedIn might also make sense.

They can be unobtrusive.

+1 also to creating a directory of social media accounts associated with Drupal. I created an issue: #1719270: Create social media directory of accounts associated with Drupal

I think highlighting any other social media would require Groups.Drupal.org to stand out a bit more in the footer because that is where our community lives.

@lizzjoy

I think every group on groups.drupal.org should get a social media links. Probably displayed on the right sidebar.

I believe this should be a seperate issue. I don't know where the best place to create it, or I would create it myself.

Can you get a facebook username for the page?
http://www.facebook.com/username

I think http://www.facebook.com/drupal is a lot prettier than http://www.facebook.com/pages/Drupal/8427738891.

what do you think?

thanks!

I totally agree with what you say +1 for your comment...
A big "No" from me too.

this is a good idea http://drupal.org/project/widgets/ to implement a social media widgets

#8 sounds like the most manageable and least ugly option.

Personally, I don't want to see any icons for other services .
I encourage my clients to use social media to drive traffic TO their sites, not AWAY from it.

I think these social media links shouldn't be added to the footer.

• The footer only contains links to *.drupal.org (with the exception of buytaert.net). Adding links to other sites under foreign control breaks with it.
• Drupal shouldn't advertise (by adding their links with their logos and/or names on every page on drupal.org) and thereby strengthen or hype those servies/sites.

I see value in linking to those foreign site accounts (→ to state that these accounts are official). But this shouldn't happen in the footer on each page here at d.o, but on a contact/about/social-media page (which could be linked in the footer).

I'd request that any and all information made available elsewhere be made available here on d.o as well.

I agree with @no2e at #16 comment. Links are definitely the way to state that these accounts are the official. More, you can find great tips for drupal on twitter and you can take advantage of the facebook sharing options to evangelise Drupal.

I propose to add social links at the front page under the map and integrate with facebook and twitter in order to add facebook posts and tweets with #drupal hashtag as new tabs in the news area.

+1 for use of icons.

highermath: I'd think for instance that tweets only direct people to links on *.d.o somewhere, rather than having information unto themselves. (I don't do Facebook so I have no idea what the equivalent is there.)

I would also like to see a twitter tab with all the #drupal related tweets on d.o.
As for the links there could be a menu link on footer with the title "social" that links to a page with all the official drupal social links. That would be very useful and also discreet.

+1 - this is good.

It is good to build a social media audience for many reasons, cause it really benefits to technical and non-technical people to keep in touch about new releases/news and all. ATM Drupal has a huge follower base on Twitter but not on FB so adding those links will benefit to create lot of new followers/fans so +1 for the idea.

Ref #12

I suggested this to Dries that the FaceBook url become facebook.com/Drupal and he agreed if it were possible it should be.

I made official enquiries to establish this on behalf of the Drupal Association but have had no success. The request was made earlier this year. There is a form you can fill in on Facebook to request the change but as of now it came to nothing.

Facebook are most unhelpful in this regard.

Whilst many developers do not favour Facebook, the number of Fans on Drupal's Facebook strongly indicates that there are those who do.

I took ownership of http://www.facebook.com/DrupalCon in December last year. It had been neglected, we had 56 followers. With just occasional posts and organic growth we now have 1002 Fans. This has really started to grow fast now.

#22 I don't think it is necessary to publish Tweets on the homepage of Drupal.org, those who use Twitter know how to find Drupal related posts. Real estate on the home page is far better used.

We must certainly avoid using #hashtags as a filter for being listed in Tweets on D.O, this will be abused in hours.

#8 This is the correct way to proceed. Drupal has more Twitter accounts than you might realise (and these should be better promoted and more encouraged to allow segmentation of message)

I agree with highermath. With Drupalcon only a week away, this should be ironed out in Munich and be fixed the following week.

Links with a nice icon is more than enough and will not cause privacy concerns

I am not a designer., but it looks a bit off. Can't we add to the existing textlinks?

I see some alignment issues as well. They should be a little more left (to align with the text links) I would consider increasing the vertical space between them and the navigation links.

That does look better, thanks highermath. However, today during the sprint, these icons happened. I think they look pretty great: #1719270: Create social media directory of accounts associated with Drupal I suspect they'll be patched into the Bluecheese theme. Thoughts?

+1 to @highermath's mockup.

I would like to suggest adding to the right of the icons a link to the Social Media Directory that's in the works (#1719270: Create social media directory of accounts associated with Drupal), because we do have many Twitter accounts, for example, that may be of interest to people, and the page is directly related to this. Too much clutter?

I think that Facebook is as opposite to open culture as it only can be. I would hate to see Facebook links on every page of every *.d.o site. And there always will be questions "what about G+?", "what about anothersite?".

I love the idea of one social media directory providing a list of "official" accounts, there are so many more of them than just @drupal. We should link to that page from footer, adding "Drupal on social media" to Drupal News column, below Association news.

Agree with #18 and #21 - information should be posted on d.o/g.d.o first and then linked to it from social media instead of being posted only on social media sites.

I think that Facebook is as opposite to open culture as it only can be.

I would agree, but I don't see that as an argument against placing the icon link in the footer and using Facebook to drive up awareness of Drupal and attract more users, developers, designers, site builders, attention in general. We promote where the people are, not where we'd like them to be.

I'd be in favor of including g+ as well. Do we have an official g+ page?

Agree with #18 and #21 - information should be posted on d.o/g.d.o first and then linked to it from social media instead of being posted only on social media sites.

In general, that's what's been happening. E.g., see the tweet history for https://twitter.com/drupal and I see no reason for that not to continue. It's a good way to go, imho.

We promote where the people are, not where we'd like them to be.

By having these icons on every page of the site aren't we essentially saying that's where we want them to be? "Go there for all the latest announcements etc."

Do we have an official g+ page?

I found this one https://plus.google.com/113325464728592995596/posts not sure how official it is.

By having these icons on every page of the site aren't we essentially saying that's where we want them to be? "Go there for all the latest announcements etc."

Actually, I don't. My own sense is that this is different from, say, the Stackoverflow discussion about having support action happen elsewhere. Pointing out Drupal's presence on Twitter and Facebook doesn't dilute the focus on *.d.o, imho. I see it more as, "When you're on Twitter and Facebook, follow us!" What's happening on Twitter and Facebook? Links back to *.d.o, mostly. It's another way to get alerts as to what's happening on *.d.o.

I'm all for having links to Google+ & Twitter in the footer. Might even make sense to have LinkedIn & Facebook too.

Let's start with something small and go from there.

It might even be useful to promote tweets when there are good things we want to promote (like say fixing bugs and adding features in Core).

Might be another way to promote modules/themes and those who maintain them too. If you like module/theme X then tweet about and and thank the maintainers (we could even automatically add their twitter accounts if provided).

Anyways, this issue has stalled for a year. Related issue #1740114: Add social media links to the footer

Here's a rough draft of what this could look like on Bluecheese. I expect it to improve with others contributions.

I think it would be useful to see something for LinkedIn, but not sure that there is anything easy.

The DA would have their own social media links. Not sure who else.

I just borrowed other folks images, but it would be nice to have a consistent library that was organized in a sprite of course.

I think it would be fine to start with them in the bottom right hand corner. That's a simple way to do this anyways. There are many more elegant ways, but this is a start.

not sure that looks good @mgifford.

Ya, it was thrown together, but it's something to get us talking. It's also posted here:
http://search_api-drupal.redesign.devdrupal.org/support

Is it the icons? If so which set of social media icons would you prefer there are a number of free libraries
http://themezee.com/free-social-media-icons/
http://rohitink.com/sociocons/
http://visionwidget.com/free-social-media-icons.html

Is it the location? If so, where do you think they would be better placed? I just found a space that I thought would work for many.

I have nothing invested in this other than seeing this issue move ahead so that it takes less than 2 years for us to add social media links to the drupal.org site.

I think it's both icons and location. footer doesn't have a good space for these. we probably need to change it a bit . otherwise it always feels a bit off putting it anywhere. don't you think?

It would be easy enough to just put them in a block on the right sidebar. Just a simple list of icons at the bottom of the left menu of every page would work fine.

There's nothing about using images here I could see https://drupal.org/style-guide

It just doesn't make sense not to have them, and it's so trivial to add them to Drupal. We just need to have a decision about how it should be done on drupal.org.

Hi all,

Since this thread was started a new URL has been introduced https://drupal.org/social-media which I strongly believe is a good solution. Visiting this address you will realise there are many social media channels being used by Drupal.

This page is linked in the footer under news > Social Media Directory

So in some part the matter has been resolved. It is arguable that the link could be given more emphasis using a graphic for example but equally there are many links on the home page of d.o which deserve attention.

The benefit of having a directory page is that it can be updated independently of long debates needed to introduce additional social channels on the home page.

So short of making an image which links to this directory, I think we have a solution I am happy with.

Thanks,

Paul

I agree with #48, the social media directory we created is a good solution. It is linked from the footer, and has much more links than we'll ever be able to add to the footer.

@tvn but it does not enough exposure imo. a simple facebook twitter icons are enough. it's not hard to do. these two are most important ones.

we can keep the page too.

I'm inclined to agree with pdjohnson. He has been working with the Drupal Association on social media and can speak with some authority on it, see http://www.pauldjohnson.co.uk/blog/your-part-improving-drupals-social-media for example.

Additionally, the patch has numerous problems:

• The images are hosted on 3rd party sites.
• They are positioned off-screen, creating a horizontal scrollbar.
• The icons are too large and attention-getting. They are less important than actual page content.