Does drupal.org need a new slogan?

drupal.org doesn't have any problems ranking on Google. I don't see any reason to change a slogan for SEO reasons. Optomizing your pages if fine, but the slogan isn't about pagerank.

Michelle

Wasn't there a discussion about the slogan not long ago? One of those vagely remembered things.

At any rate, I have no issue with the slogan changing because it's decided by TPTB that we need a better slogan. I'm just resisting the idea of changing the slogan to generic keywords to make the almighty Googlebot happy. :)

Michelle

I think the slogan is fine, after all open source CMS doesn't really do drupal any justice either IMHO as drupal does more then content managment.

community plumbing, I always thought that meant the users here and what they do, not that drupal strives for drupal use to build communities.

Here we are all plumbers, plumbing away at the pipes that is drupal.

SEO can become fanaticism at some stage.

"community plumbing" is still a fine slogan. Sure, it won't appeal to your average sales droid but that's not really the aim anyway. We are giving our software away for free after all.

I hate "Open Source CMS" and "Community plumbing" :) The reason:
A huge percent of my installations are business applications where I used Drupal only as the "Best PHP Framework for Rapid Prototyping". And it's hard to explain, that with the help from Drupal you are able to build stable complex WebApplications and that it is not just a blogger software like the 1000 others.

Wasn't there a discussion about the slogan not long ago?

Yes, there was a big thread on the webmasters mailing list in January 2007. Sadly, it wasn't in an issue, and the webmasters archive isn't publicly accessible, so for all intents and purposes, that thread didn't happen. As with many such threads, there was much discussion, but no action, since it wasn't an issue with a clear state. It basically just died off when people got swamped with other things.

In light of dww's comment, I changed the title. I don't agree with setting it to some generic keyword but, if people want a different slogan, let's discuss.:) Then it will be a recorded issue this time.

Michelle

"Does drupal.org need a new slogan?" Does it ever. "Community plumbing" is not very explanatory to newcomers/evaluators of Drupal. What about:

Free and open source Community Management System.

I think we have outgrown the "Community plumbing" slogan now.

A new slogan is in order. It has to say the following:

- A CMF as well as a CMS.
- Extremely flexible.
- Infinitely extensible.
- Wildly modular.
- Unbelievingly powerful.
- Fully Open.
- Still Free and Libre.
- Large and active community.

Playing on the druplicon drop, once can start with an ancient Arabic saying goes: "أول الغيث قطر" which means "rain starts with a few drops". So, maybe "Drops make an ocean" or "from drops to oceans"?

If we need to change the slogan then we should go with a suggestion such as Khalid made it, not a generic that tries to explain what Drupal is.

To me that's a rather big "If" and I'd defer the decision on that to Dries.

I probably could simply "won't fix" the issue. :p

General (F/OSS Community Management System) or specific (kbahey's suggestions), the slogan should explain what Drupal does. There is nothing wrong with a simple, straightforward slogan. It helps make Drupal more inclusive and dispels the impression that a user needs to be 'in the know' to 'get' Drupal :)

I know kbahey [probably] wasn't suggesting his points in #10 as actual replacements for Community plumbing, but I like a lot of them.

That said, I also like Community plumbing, and don't think a change is mandatory, for SEO or other reasons. If we change, great, but I'm not sure why it is necessary.

A very brief and completely unscientific review of a small convenience sample (n=4) leads me to think that "Community plumbing" fits in with our peers pretty well.

• Joomla => "...because open source matters"
• Wordpress => ? "Code is poetry"?
• Movable type => "Movable Type is a professional publishing platform"
• Typo3 => ?

I like Community Plumbing. It describes Drupal well even now.
I wrote this up a while ago so I wouldn't have to again.
http://www.blkmtn.org/community-plumbing.

Drupal.org is not a profit center. _{Yet another} 'Open Source CMS' sounds like a generic description rather then an unique and identifiable slogan which we already have.

By going it's own path years ago, by doing it's best to stick to standards and learning from mistakes, by building out it's infrastructure, Drupal has continued to advance as the skill, knowledge and expertise of it's community has grown. This has contributed to a growing number of companies and individuals using Drupal without having to change the nature of the community.

In my opinion, those companies should have tag lines that sell Drupal as a service.

"Does drupal.org need a new slogan?" Does it ever. "Community plumbing" is not very explanatory to newcomers/evaluators of Drupal.

That's why we have the text in the little orange block on the front page. If they are not going beyond the slogan in their evaluation, then they will not be a good fit for the community.

Webmasters queue is for changing things that need to be changed.

Let's decide this in a discussion area that is made for marketing people: http://groups.drupal.org/node/7634

Marketing is not necessarily community oriented. Marketing tends to be business oriented.

@sepeck: marketing is synonymous with promoting, too.

In a recent interview, Jay Batson of Acquia pretty much calls the "community plumbing" slogan a thing of the past. I'm curious how things will shape up in the near future.

christefano, no he doesn't. He says Drupal got a boost because of it's slogan marketed as community software. So in my reading it says it was an effective slogan.

Doesn't say it's a thing of it being in the past. It also has nothing in it suggesting a change in slogan is necessary. An interesting attempt to claim unrelated comments support your view.

Well, my dictionary actually does have "promote" listed as a synonym.

The quote refers to the slogan's usage in the past tense. Twice! From a marketing point of view, I see that that as an effort to manage brand identity.

An interesting attempt to claim unrelated comments support your view.

That's uncalled for. Please try to stay on topic.

Just because something is true or was a benefit in the past doesn't mean it is a call to change things in the present or future. The benefits of the slogan were clearly recognized and nothing in the article indicated a need for change or that it was detrimental in the present or future.

Jay Batson can manage Acquia and it's brand identity all he wants as it's his, he doesn't manage Drupal.org brand identity.

Not sure how what I said was 'uncalled for'. You seemed to be calling me to task about definitions and using what I saw as a rather unrelated interview comment to support doing so. I saw nothing negative in your comment or mine, just an interesting interpretation about the article.

I am taking the liberty to mark it "won't fix" now since it has not attracted any interest from Dries.

Pitching Drupal to a nonprofit org I developed the slogan:

Drupal: The Swiss Army Knife for Community Plumbing

http://netsperience.org/content/blog/drupal-swiss-army-knife-community-p...

It preserves the original slogan "Community Plumbing" while sounding more like a tool and less like a septic system.

Here is something much simpler:

Drupal: Infinite Possibilities

I'd definitely be comfortable wearing a T-shirt with this on it. It's a simple bitmap right now but if people like it I'll turn it into a vector image. Many thanks to kika and Steven for making the Druplicon "infinity eyes" so easy to work with.

("Infinite Possibilities" is already trademarked in a million ways but something like "One Framework. Infinite Possibilities." might work.)

@christefano: Please don't keep bumping this issue up over and over. Every time I look at my tracker tonight your post is marked new again. If you seriously want to change the slogan, I suggest jumping on the redesign group as this issue isn't even active and probably not being looked at.

Michelle

Remember a slogan need not (should not IMO) be descriptive - it's evocative.
So forget trying to describe what Drupal is/does and concentrate on coming up with something catchy. Relevant, of course, but memorable rather that prescriptive.
Coke: It's the Real Thing; Skype: Take a Deep Breath; etc etc (the other CMS examples are fine on that track)
I think that "Swiss Army Knife" is accurately evocative. Too bad it doesn't roll off the tongue.

I'm happy with the quirky "community plumbing" until someone comes up with a significantly better suggestion we can hit consensus on. Even though none of what I do with Drupal is "community" building.

A search for a tagline that describes what Drupal is elevator-pitch style is a slightly different question. Also very useful to come up with. But it's not the 'slogan'.

Um.... http://groups.drupal.org/node/7634

Please take ideas there.

Laura (who actually despises "community plumbing" precisely for what it "evokes")

concerned that "Swiss Army Knife" may be trademarked...

how about "Belgian Army Knife for Community Plumbing"?

Michelle, I wasn't intentionally "bumping" this. I was editing my comment.

laura s, the ideas have already been posted to that wiki page. The comments on that post are disabled, however. If you have a suggestion of where this can actually be discussed, please do everybody a favor and link to it.

decibel.places, "Swiss Army Knife" is indeed trademarked by Victorinox. The word "multitool" isn't, though. At least, nobody has come after us yet for calling Droplight the "multitool of social networking software."