I was just in the process of showcasing Drupal to some people, for use in a corporate environment. The site resources of course are pretty good, what with the Drupal-Sites and Sites which use Drupal pages. I then used google, and was able to identify a lot of aesthetically designed sites powered by Drupal. But in my opinion, there's one feature we lack - which, other CMSs like Mambo have already adopted.

The Idea

I think the community would benefit a lot if the Drupal Dev team was to set up a Drupal Site Award, given out in various categories - Some which come to mind offhand are

- Best Designed Site (Personal)
- Best Designed Site (Corporate)
- (Or any category which might crop up later)
- Best Innovation (In terms of hacking at Drupal to produce a hitherto un-thoughtof feature)
- Best Module
- Best Theme

And others...

Advantages

There are various advantages of having such an award set - Apart from being able to sport a "Best Award in X Category" button on the felicitated site, there also comes up a centralized database of the best sites powered by drupal, all over the web. This is extremely helpful for people who are trying to migrate to an open source CMS, and have come to evaluate Drupal. At one glance, they can see the extremeties of not only technological aspects - modules, integration with APIs, etc, but also how Drupal is fast emerging as one of the best site frameworks on the internet.

Decisions and Judging

The awards could be distributed on the basis of popular opinion polls, which can lead to the elimination of most of the sites. The top 'n' sites could then be evaluated by members of a panel constituted of the dev team members, and others as deemed fit.

(BTW, I've searched on google, and didn't find any references to any such ideas either incubating, or previously discussed. So don't flame me :). The drupal.org search also doesn't reveal anything specific. I also think there was some discussion on awarding the best contributed theme to Drupal, but that kind of fizzled out)

Comments

qgil’s picture

The idea of having Drupal awards came also in the Truly corporate Drupal sites but I think nobody will flame you because it was precisely said that perhaps we should open a new thread to discuss it.

I think the idea is great, and can help improving Drupal website and drupal core (by noticing the best practices out there). It may come out with a lot of new freely available code in terms of cntributed themes and modules.

I remember one year ago or so WordPress was just a simple, cool weblog for those caring about the % non-free of Movable Types. They lacked themes though, they improvise a contest, it was a total sucess, dozens of new free themes came of tat and now... some WordPress themes have become so popular that are being ported to Drupal!

Marcio Bastos-1’s picture

i would include this site www.fashionata.be on the best visited drupal sites!
it is nice 100% customized drupal site.
cheers?
Marcio

viksit’s picture

Would any of the devs comment on this? :)

--
vIkSiT
www.viksit.com

robertDouglass’s picture

I'll bring it up this week in Antwerp

- Robert Douglass

-----
www.robshouse.net
www.webs4.com

kbahey’s picture

I think is a great idea.

We certainly need more themes. Things have been improving in the theme area though, with things like Pushbutton, Negen9, and the just-released-today Friends Electric. All these are available to anyone, and all in a span of just several months. A year ago there were very few themes out there when we had Drupal 4.4.

I assume that you will be coming up with the thousands of dollars in cash for th award! Right?

Just kidding! This is about competition, excellence and recognition, not about money.

I am for that idea for sure.

--
Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

radiofreebc’s picture

Cool idea! I think this is a great community, and we should be proud of what people are building with drupal. Pretty addicting stuff...

Jeff Birmingham (www.ekosTV.com)

mikerouse’s picture

Hi,

When I was looking to make my decision about whether to adopt Drupal over Mambo this would have been really useful.

I use Drupal for political sites and an awards system could help boost usage of websites in politics as the word "awards" is what politicians really like!

I'm all for this idea.

Mike Rouse
www.covcf.org.uk
www.heatherwheeler.co.uk
www.brian-connell.co.uk
www.elmdon-matters.net

Amix’s picture

Sounds like a great idea :), over the past months I've seen tons of beautiful drupal sites that deserves an award it would be exciting to see this really take off.
__________________________________________________________________________________
www.DrupalBased.com - Showcasing Drupal Powered Sites.

Edward Davies’s picture

Did anything happen with this idea?

leontong.brightlemon’s picture

I have mentioned this idea to the DrupalCon London organisers at a recent Drupal Association meetup. I had the same thought process and have some experience building an awards site and in the related offline event.

It turns out the Drupal Association have also thought of this idea for DrupalCon London... I am currently waiting to hear back - but have mentioned that BrightLemon would be happy to allocate regular time between now until August to make this a reality.

Leon Tong
Director
BrightLemon Ltd

Ben Finklea’s picture

This is a great idea and it's time to make Drupal Awards happen in time for Drupalcon Denver. We need a community-created, grassroots event that publicly recognizes the excellent individuals, companies, and projects that have made Drupal great. Projects and people should be nominated by the Drupal community, voted by the Drupal community, and are recognized as the best of the best that Drupal has to offer.

This would create significant buzz about Drupal. As has been expressed by many, Drupal does not get the press and attention that it should considering the number of high-profile sites that use it. This event is one piece of the solution.

I'm willing to take this project on and make it happen and even donate some cash and marketing from Volacci to do it. I'd need to have some help. Would anyone be able to volunteer some time to help? Let's form a committee. Shoot me an email if you're interested.

There's a lot of work doing something like this. Setting up a site, creating the rules, getting the word out, evaluating nominations, picking finalists, awards, sponsors, etc. It's as much or more work as putting on a Drupal camp. But, the value is far-reaching for Drupal.

Who is with me? Let's do this!

--Ben Finklea, CEO
Volacci

grupalduru’s picture

All the best... I gotta skip Denver... family trip to Disneyland around that time... fun fun fun

Ben Finklea’s picture

Done.
http://www.bluedropawards.org/

I would love to have help. Please come on over. Right now, it's me and a handful of other people. This should be a community project with lots of participation.

Thanks!!!!

--Ben Finklea, CEO
Volacci

Jean-Paul Vosmeer’s picture

Hello Ben,

it looks like the website www.bluedropawards.org is not up to date anymore.
Looks like the project ended in 2014.
Is there a ongoing project to revive the platform? Or a new reward season coming?

hope to hear from you.