The Drupal association has launched an affiliate header advertisement for the hosting forum. We estimate the advertisement will lead to over 60 000 impressions in the next 30 days, based on traffic for the last 30 days.
Siteground was chosen to launch the program due their sponsorship of the Drupal conference in Barcelona, contribution of Drupal themes, and their willingness to undergo a basic Drupal security review. Sponsorships for the next Drupal conference are available here: http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/drupalcon-boston-sponsorships
If you are interested in advertising your hosting services, please consider a campaign for placement targeting with Google AdWords ads on Drupal.org.
If you are interested in an affiliate program, please contact us with:
1) Link to your affiliate program. Terms of any special rate you are willing to offer the Drupal association. The Drupal association has researched market rates for offers to Joomla, Wordpress, and other projects.
2) An explanation of your contributions to the Drupal project.
3) Contact information for a technical administrator who can answer basic questions about Drupal security.
4) A link to your record with the better business bureau to show that you are responsive to complaints.
5) Indicate whether you have direct access to the data center, or whether your company is mainly a reseller.
If you would like to support the Drupal project, please consider becoming an organizational member of the Drupal association.
We would like to extend an invitation to join the Drupal community at the Drupal conference, March 3rd-6th, 2008. Please consider participating in the business fair to offer your produtcts. If you would like to offer products for the Drupal conference showcase and case study contest, please contact the contest organizers.
Comments
Questionable choice for a sponsored host.
How much research was done into Siteground's customer support and business practices? Remember, just because a company is willing to give money in exchange for links and banners does not make them a good host.
http://drupal.org/node/140062
http://drupal.org/node/190527
http://gallery.menalto.com/node/53890
http://forum.siteground.com/showthread.php?t=4083
http://www.ripoffreport.com/searchresults.asp?q1=ALL&q4=&q6=&q3=&q2=&q7=...
http://www.ladishes.com/sgscybercrooks/
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=598654
I'd also like some clarification on who wrote their ad. Is it supposed to be an ad or an official endorsement? This is a point that should really be made clear, and the current wording is ambiguous at best.
As a contributor, donor, and member of the Drupal Association, I'm really concerned with the way these advertising projects are being run. The Drupal Association needs to build its image as a open and responsible entity, and no amount of money should influence a decision to promote a product or service. The reputation of the entire project is in your hands, be very careful not to trade short-term financial gains for long-term credibility issues.
The Drupal Association would be wise to learn from the mistakes of others.
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John Forsythe
Thanks for the feedback
To answer your question, members of the association wrote the ad in collaboration with Siteground.
We've been very careful with the advertising so far, limiting it carefully to just three areas of Drupal.org: hosting, paid-services, and books. No one is trading short term gains. We've carefully rolled out advertising and solicited feedback as we've made changes.
We've had a good working relationship with Siteground and have been talking to them for almost 8 months now. We heard some complaints, it's a tough competitive business under going a lot of changes, and we were sensitive to get concrete feedback. This is the first list we've been given, and I'd like to give siteground a chance to respond.
We are going to be reaching out to approximately 72 different hosting companies that have posted in this forum. We will be looking for advertising partners and sponsors for the Drupal conference.
Thanks for raising this to our attention, we are listening and will respond quickly.
Kieran Lal
Board member of the Drupal association
Coordinator of the security team
Coordinator of the test driven development team
Kieran Lal
This is a good opportunity
Dear Kieran and members of Drupal Team,
This is a good opportunity for webhosts to be able to showcase themselves at drupal forums. I hope that you may consider DVH for a similar campaign in future. This is surely a good way of monetizing traffic for both the webhost and the drupal association.
Just visited the link to 2007 Drupalcon and it says 600 euro amount sponsored by Siteground. The current Drupalcon does not provide any details of any package for Webhosting companies. For 2008 drupalcon, DVH would be interested in knowing if you have a similar sponsorship method available to get showcased at drupal.org for the year 2009 when the siteground campaign ends.
We are not a big company as yet by godaddy/siteground/bluehost etc's standards, but we work hard to provide the best service to the drupal site owners. and most importantly drupal webmasters have been very happy with DVH for our infrastructure and support quality.
DVH is willing to sponsor theme development and we are also always open for an audit/benchmarking of our hosting service by drupal association. Kindly provide more details of how DVH can earn a similar spot at drupal.org. This is an exciting program! thank you!!
Regards,
Steve
http://www.DrupalValueHosting.com
...
John,
I would like to point out that the parallel you attempt to draw in completely inaccurate and mis-leading. A parallel I find disturbing in it's implications. The WordPress issue was caused by hiding the relevant keywords off the users browsers. The link on Drupal.org is in limited placement and very clearly indicates it is a paid advertisement. I really think you are being extremely unfair with your insinuation that the labeling of a clearly worded advertisement is comparable to a hidden keyword link farming experiment by a different project.
I self host, but do know people that have used Site Ground in the past and were happy with them. I also have known people who were unhappy with them. I really have no personal opinion one way or the other not having a need for hosting.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Why I brought that up.
I bought up the WordPress issue because it illustrates what can go wrong when you choose to associate with the wrong company.
A couple facts about Siteground:
Here's their business address, as listed with the New York Department of State:
888 8th Avenue, Apt. 17A
New York, NY 10019
That's a residential apartment in this building. That's right, a hosting company whose business location is a rental apartment.
Here's their record with the New York Better Business Bureau.
In the last 12 months "The Company has failed to respond to complaints" 88% of the time.
It's painfully obvious to me that the Drupal Association has failed to properly research the companies it's endorsing. The Association has a responsibility to its members and to all Drupal users, to put as much effort as possible into selecting appropriate, credible, and reliable advertising partners for Drupal.org, and I feel that obligation is not being met.
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John Forsythe
...
Um, the parallel is different and you seem to have ignored what disturbed me about your post. It's clearly labeled as a paid advertisement. Very clearly. The parallel you linked has no bearing on a clearly labeled paid advertisement. It is an issue which I am very much aware of as well as the Association.
I believe a clearly labeled advertisement will be read for what it is, 'A clearly labeled advertisement'. There are hundreds of developers that work from home. I know a major Drupal host that also has his office in a home. His data center is in a few racks in a collocation facility down the street. His ability to have a virtual office for his support team does not seem to have impeded his ability to host thousands of sites including some very high bandwidth, high profile Drupal sites.
From your reaction you also seem to really have an ax to grind with SiteGround. As I said, I have known people with both positive and negative experiences. I have a full time job however and that does not include time as an investigative researcher. That would frankly be a full time job for multiple people (lawyers) to separate out the legitimate complaints vs those with a grudge vs those with praise and endorsements and would be a dangerous road to go down.
I don't believe it is our place to make this judgment. We do not have a program to 'certify' hosts, nor do I think we should have such a program anytime in the next few years. A paid advertisement implies we were paid to place this ad here. Amazon is working to expand this to others. A paid advertisement implies only that it is a paid advertisement in my humble opinion.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Showing the ad is judgement.
No matter how clearly an ad is labeled as an ad, the direct effect of any advertisement is to send new business to that company.
By consciously selecting Siteground as an advertiser, and by placing their ad on every page of this forum, you are making a judgment. Whether you mean to or not, you've judged them worthy of sending our users to. This is not a decision to be made lightly. An 88% failure-to-respond rating from the Better Business Bureau is not trivial.
Drupal must take into account the quality of service and the ethical standards of advertisers, or risk damaging its reputation forever. I'm not suggesting any kind of certification program, I'm suggesting that the association has a responsibility to look into the business practices of new advertisers.
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John Forsythe
with respect
Your first example and verbiage was used to claim we were doing something wrong was what I found disturbing. The example did not hold water, it implied deception on the part of the association which is completely without merit. There was and is no deception in a clearly labeled ad.
Your continued insistence on demanding an investment of time and energy to certify / validate advertisers combined with your obvious ax to grind against a vendor is somewhat disturbing and threatening. If we 'investigate every provider and on that basis reject them, then I suspect we begin to assume a legal responsibility to explain why we reject someone and that gets into scary legal territory.
It also really demonstrates why we should go with clearly labeling ads as ads and not get into certifying host providers individually. I believe a clearly defined statement on the ad policy in regards to ads on Drupal.org would help.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Drupal isn't the bad guy here.
I don't believe Drupal is acting willfully to deceive people. My point is that there are often unintended consequences when it comes to choosing advertising partners without adequate research. If there are going to be advertisers on Drupal.org, it's in everyone's best interest if those businesses are upstanding members of the community.
It's already been mentioned that Drupal is auditing Siteground for security issues, so your argument that you can't investigate providers does not hold any water. If you can look at their security implementations, you can look at their customer complaint record.
"I believe a clearly defined statement on the ad policy in regards to ads on Drupal.org would help."
I'll gladly second that motion.
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John Forsythe
Very useful
John, thanks for taking the time to back-up your concerns with research. It goes a long way to earning the communities respect and allows us to have a positive discussion. We are working to resolve this ASAP.
For the record, the affiliate program doesn't bring in any short term cash for the association. It's all about long term growth and supplying yet another revenue stream. The revenue supports the growth of the Drupal project and the projected doubling in size of the community with the release of Drupal 6. It takes a long time to create a sustainable marketing place for affiliate advertising.
We are trying to be proactive with generating revenue, and not wait to have a server fund raising campaign after the servers have crashed.
Cheers,
Kieran Lal
Board member of the Drupal association
Coordinator of the security team
Coordinator of the test driven development team
Kieran Lal
ad copy
Hi John,
Thanks for the feedback.
I wrote the copy and it was reviewed and enhanced by 6 people prior to posting.
The goals were:
1) Remind or inform Drupal.org visitors about the contributions that Siteground has made to the community and show other potential advertisers that a history of supporting the community is a good thing.
2) Be clear that this is an advertisement
3) Do not state any specific endorsement - hosting is a tough business and even the best hosts have a hard time every now and then. We didn't want to make claims that we couldn't back up.
Here is a breakdown of the statements.
Depending on your definition of "long" this is a fact. For the things I know of, their active involvement in the community is about a year old which is hitting "long" to me.
These seem pretty clear to just be factual statements - they link out to pages (within the Drupal*.org world) which show this point.
And this statement is just to make the advertising relationship clear.
Can you clarify which pieces of it make it feel like an endorsement or ambiguous?
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Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
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Morris Animal Foundation
You're speaking on their behalf for money.
When an ad talks about a company in the third person, it reads like an endorsement. Siteground should be talking for themselves, not paying you to talk about them. Is the Drupal Association doing paid endorsements, or is it accepting advertising? It's a fine line, but an important one.
When you say "If you are looking for a host", there's an implicit "we recommend this one because..." that goes with it. And at that point, it's no longer an advertisement in my opinion, it's a recommendation you're being paid to make.
It should also be noted that the "free" Drupal themes Siteground offers contain advertisements that the user is contractually bound not to remove. Is this in violation of the GPL under which the themes are released? Does the Drupal Association endorse this practice?
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John Forsythe
GPL source
I believe the theme is part of the distribution and would be subject to providing the source. However, siteground is distributing the theme to their servers so I am not sure GPL2 is invoked.
I suggest that a Siteground customer investigate.
John the Drupal association is not going to wage a proxy battle against the 72 other hosting companies in this forum. Please continue to be diligent on behalf of the Drupal community. However, you clearly have a financial relationship with Midphase, via AN hosting. http://blamcast.net/articles/drupal-hosting
Keep it friendly and informative. I'll be getting in touch with the leaders of those 72 companies to ensure the Drupal association has a relationship which improves our ability to support the Drupal community. It's not just about money, it's about making sure the issues you addressed, can be resolved through a business relationship on behalf of members of the Drupal community.
Once again, I sincerely appreciate you raising these issues, and I forwarded you the associations email to Siteground to help resolve these issues.
Kieran Lal
Board member of the Drupal association
Coordinator of the security team
Coordinator of the test driven development team
Kieran Lal
Thanks for the response.
Please see my post above. I have no reservations about endorsing legitimate companies as part of my personal business activities. I'm not a non-profit organization, I'm an entrepreneur, and there are obvious differences in what is expected from both.
I should mention that AN Hosting/Midphase is an accredited member of the Chicago Better Business Bureau, and has an outstanding record of responding to customer complaints.
inferences and legal responsibility
The inferences you made were not implied, but if a reasonable person might make them then they should be removed. We removed the "If you are looking for a host" since it doesn't add much value to the copy and may be misunderstood. If you have more advice on improved copy that is very welcome, but I don't want to deviate from the goals stated in my last comment.
The Drupal Association now has two Board Members who are interested in working on legal issues this next term. It is premature for the Association to take actions against license violations or perceived license violations. The GPL gives rights to various people, but perhaps chief among the parties that gain rights via the GPL is the end user. If someone wanted to they could hire their own lawyer to investigate the issue of whether or not they are allowed to remove the advertisement. I believe that the folks on the Drupal Association board working on legal issues intend to produce some FAQs so that issues like this can be addressed more easily but, like I said, it's just too early for that right now.
I haven't looked into their theme files, but there is more than a small chance that they do have the right to provide the themes under those terms. It's a complicated question which is expensive to answer. While I personally don't really like the terms of that license, I don't see why we should begrudge them the recognition of their contribution.
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Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
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Morris Animal Foundation
I agree, should Drupal
I agree, should Drupal Association be writing ad copy for paid advertisements? Shouldn't it be the responsibility of the advertiser to come up with their own ad copy?
I have no ax to grind with Siteground, or any other hosting company in particular. There are bound to be people who are disappointed with their hoster, especially those on value or any other shared server plan. Sometimes the quality of experience is related to what server they end up on and the traffic/usage levels of other websites hosted on that server.
But the advertiser should be responsible for their own ad copy. If they are incapable of coming up with their own ad copy, they should contract with someone that is capable. I hear there are agencies out there that specialize in advertising.
I did not know that Drupal Association was one of those such agencies.
multiple reasons
I wrote it for a couple reasons.
First, I felt it was important that we recognize what many consider to be the "right" way to interact with the Drupal community - i.e. providing sponsorships for conferences and contributing code/themes/support/etc. to the community. Hopefully this will motivate other hosts to contribute in similar ways.
Second, I wanted it done quickly ;)
I did send it to our SiteGround contact prior to posting. If they wrote it then we'd probably still want to edit it so that it's not overly annoying/outlandish.
Is your concern that we wasted our time on this or that there is somehow a difference in the ethics of the situation when we wrote it as opposed to them writing it?
I just want to be clear. I agree that in the future we should go for more of a review process than a writing process.
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Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
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Morris Animal Foundation
Thank you for taking time to
Thank you for taking time to answer and to ask for clarification.
What I was trying to get at was that a company that advertises should create their own copy or hire someone, whether it is an individual or a company, to write the copy for them. They are a business and that is part of the cost of advertising/doing business. Any business not willing to do that themselves or not willing to bear the cost of someone else addressing their advertising needs should not be advertising.
Or to put it another way, should future advertisers be able to expect Drupal Association to write ad copy for any ad space they want to purchase?
If you wish to write the advertisement for them on your own time as an individual, that is your perogative. I was just trying to say that it should not be done under the aegis of the Drupal Association.
Btw, I did not notice this initially, but were there other sponsers of Drupal Barcelona? If so, the 'We sponsored Drupal Barcelona' should be changed to 'We were a sponsor...' or something that does not imply that they were the sole sponsor of Drupal Barcelona. Unfortunately,I was unable to attend so I do not know the answer to that.
I agree with you that having companies and individuals contribute to the community, in various forms, is the 'right' way to interact with both Drupal and Open Source.
The word "they" is the key
I agree it is confusing whether this is an official endorsement or not. The biggest issue for me is the word "they" -- to me that definitely says the Drupal Association is endorsing and recommending this product.
StephTheGeek.com | Themer for CivicActions
Ads should never appear within non-ad content
Very interesting thread here. John's done some excellent research on Siteground and raised some very important concerns, I think. I'd like to add my $0.02 and say that, regardless of how good or bad an advertiser might be, regardless of how clearly worded the identification of advertising as advertising, an ad should never, never, never appear within editorial content (or the equivalent of editorial content). And that's exactly what has happened with the SiteGround ad, which I've seen here http://drupal.org/node/205195 and now on this entry.
I think there's a place for advertising on drupal.org (though I would second John's concerns and say companies should be very carefully selected, and not just on the basis of the money they fork over). But I would say that place has to be clearly differentiated from the place where user content goes. Put it in the sidebar, in a special "Advertiser Services" section, but not at the head of a forum posting and certainly not between the head and content of the posting.
Oh, and I think the text that appears to the left of the block ad here does suggest an endorsement. Now hearing about the details of SiteGround's services, I'd say keeping this ad, particularly in its current placement and with an apparent endorsement, is akin to promoting a buggy .dev module to "recommended" status. Drupal users (and would be hosting buyers) deserve better from drupal.org.
thanks for the feedback
Thanks steph and femrich for the feedback - for issues related to the theme can you add them into this thread: http://drupal.org/node/213000
Drumm is willing to work on changes to bluebeach to accomodate these things, we just need to agree on some mockups before hand.
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Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard | Learn more about Drupal - buy a Drupal Book
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Morris Animal Foundation
There has been no activity
There has been no activity for six days on the thread that is supposed to be addressing changes to the advert (http://drupal.org/node/213000). Despite strong and specific objections raised to the ad in its present state, the ad continues to sit there. When can we expect some action on this? I suggest, until the concerns raised are addressed that the ad should be discontinued.
What's going on with this issue?
It's been 6 days and people are still misinterpreting this as an endorsement:
http://drupal.org/node/215073
Can we take some immediate steps to rectify this situation, or is Drupal locked into a contract? Leaving things they way they are is not the right thing to do.
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John Forsythe
I've got the lead.
Hello, I've got the lead on this from the association standpoint.
We are making changes constantly based on feedback. We changed the text several times to accommodate the concerns, including making changes today.
We asked for a response from Siteground to the association and have received it. We learned that many of the complaints pointed out were to an older business entity. I'll leave it to SiteGround to craft their own public statement. I will say that many businesses are shocked and terrified by the hostile nature of many comments and the personal nature of the attacks here and in other places on Drupal.org. So let's keep a more civil tone.
I'd ask that members of the forum be tolerant, and recognize that we are looking for long term solutions. We've been working on advertising since August and have received very little complaints as we've rolled out these changes slowly and with great care. That is until now. The Drupal project has always been a project that took risks and tried different experiments, and made itself accessible.
There is no long term contract in place with SiteGround. We are collaborating with SiteGround, members of the association, active members of this forum, and members of the community at large to make changes which balance practical needs for revenue to help support events, legal, financial, and infrastructure needs.
We take your feedback seriously, but we are also tempering it with other forms of feedback.
Kieran Lal
Board member of the Drupal association
Coordinator of the security team
Coordinator of the test driven development team
Kieran Lal
Just got ripped off by them
Kieran,
Just FYI. I researched these folks out, have a transcript of their sales rep telling me they supported Joomla/CiviCRM, so I advised a friend to use them when OpenSocialSites shifted from a managed service to a "Coop". Then a month later, after the screwed up the site transfer they abrogated the CRM part. Deleted it from the existing site, and are refusing to honor their sales person's position. They claim the new version uses resources they can't support, but refuse to put back the old version they deleted which even they admit works on their shared hosting.
Complete bait and switch fraud. They are now offering a "solution" of moving to a 15 times more expensive VPS plan.
These are the people you are going to give the implicit stamp of approval to? I'm opening a fraud case with the BBB as we speak.
If you want, I will happily share with you the entire email exchange with them.
Bottom line folks, don't use SiteGround!