Background:
Dries approached the Press and Marketing group to come up with a new leaflet to be used at the OSCON conference as well as other conferences that key Drupal community members will be attending this summer.

The original request is found here:
http://lists.drupal.org/archives/drupal-docs/2005-06/msg00010.html

Scope:
The mailing-list thread noted above includes some preliminary discussion about project.
The main goal of this particular project is to create a general brochure that is not targeting at any specific industry or user type. The reason for this is the the deadline for completion will not allow for multiple brochures. It has also been determined that the audience at OSCON is quite varied - from non-technical people (including press) to hard-core techies and system admins.

The idea is not to sell Drupal to 'everyone', but the document should speak to some of our key targets including personal site admins (e.g. bloggers), corporate site developers, and community site developers.

The overall goal is to have multiple brochures created - each one targeting a specific industry or user type, but that is beyond the scope of this particular project.

Time line:
The text/copy for the brochure must be completed no later than June 15th, 2005.
The preliminary graphic design must be completed no later than June 22nd, 2005.
The FINAL deadline is June 28th, 2005.

Call for help:
A forum topic has been created to enlist contributors to this project. See: http://drupal.org/node/24174

Preliminary progress report:
Attached is a mochup / visualization tool/page I have created based on some suggestions from Josh in the forum, and inspired by Steven's response to Josh's post. It is very rough and not meant to be pretty. It is hoped that the file will inspire some discussion. Feel free to edit and resubmit the file to this project with your additions.

andre

Support from Acquia helps fund testing for Drupal Acquia logo

Comments

andremolnar’s picture

I've tried to come up with some text for the brochure and was hoping for some feedback. I was thinking that something like this could be included in the first fold-out of the brochure. It is a general description of a CMS and goes through some benefits of CMS's and Drupal in particular. (Standard disclaimer, I am not a writer - I hope that if people feel that this text is in the right direction, someone more skilled than I could re-write or improve the text).

***

What is Drupal?

CMS is web development speak for "Content Management System". And that is just another way of saying, "a really simply way to create, update and maintain your own web site without any prior programming or web-design experience."

Drupal offers all the benefits of a typical CMS. For example:

- never having to call someone to add, update, or delete content from your site. Doing it yourself is no more difficult than sending web-based e-mail - and like web-based e-mail you can do it from anywhere in the world provided you have an Internet connection.
- Allowing you to delegate the creation of content to others, but still leaving final approval for publication with you or someone you trust.
- Allowing you to decide who can or cannot view content on your site.

Drupal keeps your site visitors in mind:

- Implementing content categorization and search tools means that finding information on your site couldn't be easier for your visitors.
- Interactive features keep visitors of your site engaged and provide simple means for your target audience to communicate directly to you and each other.
- Drupal has been designed to be 100% accessible. Accessible design means never closing your door to visitors with special needs and maximizing your potential audience.

- and because Drupal is both modular and scalable, as the number of visitors to your site grows and their needs change, your Drupal powered site can accommodate those changes quickly and seamlessly.

Because Drupal has striven to maximize your site visitor's experience while minimizing the effort required to provide that experience, Drupal is often referred to as a "Community Management System" or "Community Building System."

Why Choose Drupal over another Content Management System?

Besides the fact that Drupal is much more than a 'CMS' consider the following.

Drupal is Stable:

If Drupal powered sites like Spread Firefox can handle 50,000,000 visitors (and counting), you can count on Drupal to keep your site running well after your 100,000,000th visitor.

Drupal is Supported:
The community of developers from around the world investing their own time to improve Drupal is growing as is the community of people that volunteer their expertise to support new users.

Drupal is Here to Stay!

In short, you can count on Drupal. Any investment you make (in time or resources) to implement Drupal is secure and is sure to be returned many times over.

And if that wasn't enough - Drupal is Free Software released under the GNU Public License. Free refers to much more than just price. You are free to modify the software, free to improve the software, and even free to sell the software if you wish.

****

andre

cel4145’s picture

Some ideas and suggestions. Realize that these are based on how I would do it personally:

  1. Anyone who does not know generally what a content management systems is--either an IT administrator, corporate type, developer, etc.--probably is not ready for Drupal. Even journalists covering OSCON should know the term (and if they don't, I don't think we want them writing and publishing a review).
  2. Given (1), rather than beginning by defining Drupal as a content management system in which you define CMS, begin with defining what Drupal is (I know, I'm biased against the sole term of CMS applied to Drupal :) Or if you do define it as a content management system, immediately go for a more robust definition. So here are two different openings (taken from elsewhere). One tries not to pigeon hole Drupal as a CMS.
    1. A dynamic web site platform which allows an individual or community of users
      to publish, manage and organize a variety of content, Drupal integrates many
      popular features of content management systems, weblogs, collaborative tools
      and discussion-based community software into one easy-to-use package.
    2. Drupal is an open source Content Management System (CMS) which allows
      an individual or community of users to publish, manage and organize a
      variety of web content. Drupal integrates many popular features of
      content management systems, weblogs, collaborative tools and
      discussion-based community software into one easy-to-use package.
  3. Overall, the text seems too long. I don't believe people will read that much. I'm not even sure it can fit in a readable font size.
  4. I'm not sure the ordering of the pages/text flow is correct for how people read (looking at the brochere example). I think that most people, after looking at the front page, open a brochure all the way up. If you take this approach, realize that the interior three pages don't have to be three columns but can be formatted as one large landscape oriented page. Also, if it's not columnated this way, it will encourage people to open it up. That would leave the page with "

    inside: (Continues discussion from oposite facing page)" on the back.

andremolnar’s picture

Thanks for the feedback.

The text IS long. Way too long. In fact it is exactly 2x too long (based on a single 1/3 landscape column at 11pt text). I put it all out there to get the ball rolling and initiate some discussion about some of the messages we might want to include. I don't think we can include all of it - or at least not as it is written now. (But, maybe we can use some of this in a Drupal handbook page or other marketing materials when we are all done ;-)

I also agree that defining and selling Drupal as 'just another CMS' is the wrong idea.

The idea was:
Communicate what a CMS is - and what some benefits of CMS are.
Communicate that Drupal offers all those benefits AND much much more
Communicate: Content Community! Management System

The reasoning for this approach was based on feedback Steven's friends and family gave him when reviewing the old brochure.
"That's great, but what does it do?"

Regarding Layout:
I think you may be right about people opening the brochure up all the way. Ultimately I think it will be the responsibility of the graphics team to decide what works best given the text we produce. Once again I was just putting an idea out there.

andre

andremolnar’s picture

Laura wrote:

Speaking for myself, for me it was about 6 days from learning what CMS meant and having a Drupal site up and running. I don't think knowing acronyms, abbreviations and jargon is a prerequisite to being able to grok what Drupal offers. So while I do not agree with your point about CMS, I do agree that it's best to simply focus on what Drupal does.

Sales 101: Features vs. Benefits

Features: What it does.
Benefits: What you can do with it.

Which approach is more likely to appeal to this OSCON audience? Figuring that out might be a way of picking out the copy to keep and the copy to cut.

I would say a little from column a) and a little from column b)

What we can assume about the OSCON audience:
Probably know what a CMS is in a general terms - and many of the web people may already be using a CMS - but maybe have never thought about what makes one CMS better than another. Also, they may not have thought about all their needs that could be met by using a CMS beyond the immediate need they see being filled (e.g. needed something to make a blog with, or needed something where it was easy to write an article and attach files and publish them on-line, or needed something to help organize a project development community.)

For those that already know what a CMS is and are shopping for one - features can be a selling point and a way to compare products.
For those looking for a web solution and are vague about CMSs - its the benefits that will capture their imagination.
For techies its almost always about the features and details - not so much what it is, but 'how it works'.

And this is the dilema with the OSCON audience - there is going to be a broad spectrum of 'types'

So - if we do assume that most people there already know what a CMS is - then its all about what makes Drupal better than all the rest. What are Drupal's 'better' benefits? Which means that we can trash the entire bit about 'what is a CMS'. We can also drop the general CMS benefits - and go with benefits that are unique to Drupal.

I think we can assume that there will be quite a few techies. So the existing architectural diagram is something that they would appreciate... and a couple of blurbs about some techie feature/benefits (like caching systems, and templating systems, and multi-site deployment from a single code base) would go over well.

Advertising 101b:
I like to think of benefits as what a feature means to the client... or a response to "so what". Also, anything that meets a need is a benefit. Drupal has a powerful taxonomy system. So what. The answer to 'so what' is the benefit.

Just some more food for thought.

andre

andremolnar’s picture

Another attempt at a first page:
Here is another go. I think that the consesnus is that the audience at OSCON will know what a CMS is. So, if they know what one is and are considering implementing a CMS solution the focus should be on: what makes Drupal better than all other CMS'.

All the research and documentation about 'how to choose a CMS' says that people are looking for the following:
Stability, support, multiple authors with granular access control to both authoring and content, scalability, modularity and themeability (templating).

This page covers:
What is Drupal.
Stability and support
And has two competative advantages (standards compliance / accessiblity and 'freedom')
(Essentially this is a re-write of the existing first page - with a little added focus on benefits).

The existing diagram of Drupal architecture addresses modularity and scalability.

We will still need content on access control, and templating. I'm still in favour of including some geeky features like multiple site deployment and caching (and its benefit of speed - Drupal is faster than most CMS').

A note about the following: I did check for length and this would fit in a 1/3 landscape column at 10pt.

****

Drupal is a Content and Community Management system which affords a broad range of individuals and groups the power to publish, manage, and organize a variety of contributed content.

Drupal integrates individual and community blogging, collaborative writing, community discussions, content aggregation and friend of a friend modules into a single easy-to-use package.

What Sets Drupal Apart?

Caring about your community: Accessible + Standards Compliant
Drupal has been designed to be 100% accessible. Accessible design means never closing your door to visitors with special needs and maximizing your potential audience. This accessibility is achieved by embracing standards such as XHTML, CSS and separation of content from presentation which have the added benefit of improved search engine ranking.

Stability
If community sites like SpreadFirefox(tm) can handle 50,000,000 visitors and the slash-dot effect, you can count on Drupal to keep your site running well after your 100,000,000th visitor.

Support
Very few products like Drupal can boast about the size and expert knowledge of their support community. Drupal.org is home to hundreds of developers and thousands of users regularly contributing to support forums and an already extensive documentation library. Several organization also offer specialized Drupal hosting and consulting services.

Freedom
Drupal is Free Software released under the GNU Public License. Free refers to much more than just price. You are free to modify the software, free to improve the software, and even free to sell the software if you wish.

andremolnar’s picture

Another Section for review:

****
Feature Rich: Drupal adapts to your needs.

With dozens of core features and over 100 contributed modules there are literally millions of possible configurations available with Drupal. And, enabling or disabling core functionality is as simple as a mouse click. This means that as your site needs change, Drupal adapts to meet those needs quickly and painlessly.

Whether you would like to add image galleries, a full e-commerce store or simply enhance your community's experience, Drupal has the tools you are looking for.

***

A section for power-users and IT admins to come shortly.

andre

andremolnar’s picture

More text for review:

****

Drupal is powerful: Features power users and IT administrators demand.

How is it that time and time again Drupal sites survive slash-dotting? Drupal has been built for speed and is smart enough to adapt quickly to the load visitors put on your site. Drupal's built in chaching and throttling mechanisms keep your site responsive even when faced with massive surges in the number of visitors.

How fast is Drupal? Drupal consistently ranks near the top of its class in benchmark tests regularly performing many times faster than other popular CMS products.

****

andre

andremolnar’s picture

And Finally - some more text. This needs work - but it represents a real benefit to power admins.

****

Multiple sites - One Installation - One code base to maintain.

Imagine running dozens of unique sites dozens of unique site configurations without having to maintain dozens of installations. Imagine upgrading several sites to the latest version of the software at once. With Drupal this is a reality. Adding additional Drupal powered site to your servers is as quick as uploading a single file.

How much time and resources would that save you and your IT staff?

****

andre

andremolnar’s picture

FileSize
2.9 KB

After a number of off-line discussions attached is some updated text and wording.

Still to do:
Select a few key features and write short to-the-point descriptions of the benefits they provide.
Alternatively we can keep the use-cases from the existing brochure.

If you would like to make changes, upload a new version of the attached file indicating the changes you have made.

andre

p.s. yes - next time we will wiki.

andremolnar’s picture

Robin Monks wrote:

I think the themes section, or a node edit view would be good
canidates for screenshots. And what about these modules:

+1 for the themes section screen shot.

Buddylist Banner E-Commerce Event Organic Groups Privatemsg Recipe SiteMenu Textile Wiki

I'm okay with any of these + taxonomy + localization. I haven't used many of the extensively so we would still need a volunteer to write a single sentence that describes the feature and its benefit.

What is the consensus?
Should we name off a few of these key features
OR
Keep the use cases (e.g. corporate, community, campaign, education, personal)?
OR
Somehow include both by possibly including names of some key features/modules that each use-case makes use of.

andre

andremolnar’s picture

Just getting this into the project page:

Some quick comments:

- The opening doesn't tell me anything if I'm not at home in the world of CMSes. I think this is an important aspect, and something that I noticed myself when I showed the old brochure to others. They said: "Nice, but what does it DO?". Phrases like "establish online presence" or "manage online activities" are a lot more vague than "build your website". I participated in a student-organised website contest at my university a while ago: most sites were simple, plain, non-interactive affairs. When polling the other contestants about this, most of them said "yes, but I'm not a programmer and I don't know anything about PHP / MySQL / ...". When I talked to them, I tried to make it clear that with systems like Drupal, you can set up complicated features without touching a single line of code.

- Mentioning "friend of a friend" in such a prominent position at the top seems wasteful: it is not a core feature and very few people are familiar with it. Perhaps it should be "user identity" modules.

- Search engine optimization should mention clean URLs. They are an important feature. And not only do we have clean URLs, but we also allow arbitrary custom URLs. And with pathauto module, automatic, meaningful URLs derived from the content. We could add a bold claim: "Drupal sites consistently rank high in search results.". It is what several of our users have said:
http://drupal.org/node/20033

- The "stability" "speed" and "power" sections seem to overlap a lot. Even if there are subtle underlying differences, it is my experience that this is lost on unfamiliar readers and perceived as repetition instead. Perhaps they should be merged into a single section "Performance and stability", while "power" should be aimed more at modularity and flexiblity.

- A title like "Power that expert users and IT administrators demand" is completely ineffective and near-impossible to use in a nice design.

- The "feature rich" section seems to mention Drupal's modularity as a side-effect... in the last brochure this was a very important section covering one full "flap". It illustrated effectively how many features, which would be hardcoded and/or inflexible in a traditional CMS, are removable and customizable in Drupal. Now it's more like "yeah, you can turn stuff off if you don't like it, and modules have something to do with it". This hardly describes what Drupal modules are and the way they can hook into every aspect of the CMS and integrate every feature with every other feature, or how most features (like the profile module) are built as a flexible system rather than a fixed set of functions. While underlying architecture is not directly important for end-users, it is important for customizability and flexibility. If you don't include a big "architecture" section, at the very least you should

- All in all, I think many people are a lot more familiar with the term "open source" rather than free. "Free", to me, reminds me more of how Drupal doesn't tie you down to fixed things, but how every component is built as a flexible, customizable system. "Freedom" as a section header just doesn't strike me as effective (especially when you consider how that certain country *cough* has been abusing the word recently).

- The text introduces a lot of concepts, but lacks concrete illustration and examples. The last leaflet's use cases were nice in this, but we could improve it by tying examples directly into the listed points.

- Perhaps we could include a "what do people say about Drupal?" section. There are plenty of nice quotes on the forums, like the one about search results.

- The text needs a definite proofreading: "Bryte" "several organization" ...

And as a graphics person, I think it is really a bad idea to write the text, then have it 'poured' into a brochure. Brochures have a very specific design to them and are read in a certain fashion (I tried to illustrate this in the brochure thread on drupal.org). This text doesn't seem to be written with presentation in mind, and that's a pity: presentation and content should go hand in hand. It also seems too short to fill a whole brochure..

To be honest I can see no remains of the last brochure in this... it feels as if you started from scratch! A lot of discussion preceded the creation of the last brochure with some nice ideas and try outs to learn from:
http://drupal.org/node/7782
The last brochure had several problems, but it did many things right as well. It would be silly to ignore all that...

andremolnar’s picture

FileSize
67.5 KB

Attached is a very very rough inner layout.

Obviously there are balance and other serious design issues here. But, it does illustrate how much content there is... how much room remains... and may spark immagination for alternate layouts.

In response to Steven's comments:
Given the space - it does look like we could include some his suggestions: A definition of CMS - AND what is Drupal - (possibly along the top)
A quote or two (testimonials).

Under - or near the architecture diagram - we can include the names of a few features with one-liners describing what they do.

***

Notwithstanding a certain country *cough* (as Steven put it) - bastardizing the word 'freedom'. Would the word 'freedom' not resonate with this OSCON croud. Or since its the "Open Source" conference should we opt to use that term instead.

My personal feeling is that 'freedom' is a benefit of open source - and Open Source is simply a proper noun? Thoughts?

andre

andremolnar’s picture

p.s.

I think I've been won over by Andrew's and Steven's point about the redundancy of some of the text. Is there another way of expressing stability in the first section without overlapping the stuff in the second section?

Stability is an important thing to express because it is what people are looking for in a CMS - but maybe not the way I tried to express it.

andre

ezheidtmann’s picture

I like the use of "freedom", despite recently introduced negative connotations. How about this wording for that paragraph?

Freedom
Drupal is Free Software released under the GNU General Public License. This means you have the freedom to modify the software, the freedom to improve the software, and the freedom to sell the software.

chx’s picture

it is spelled Bryght.

peteThomas’s picture

For the June 28th deadline, go with the product fiche, but as a copywriter there are some issues...

--> the three essential needs of a first-tier brochure are
(i) capturing attention
(ii) getting readers to the the next step (in this case, sending people to a 'welcome to drupal' section on drupal.org)
(iii) go to (i)

--- the current brochure is more a description of drupal than a call to action, and would be best used as part of the second step (the welcome to drupal stage)

--> impact is everything -- use bold images, focus on audience segments -- search istockphoto for compelling images that might snap readers out of mid-afternoon lethargy

--> a global campaignable concept would help, something that could run from posters through press releases to brochures. This needs to be repeatable and memorable. And short.

Here's an idea (the copy would be built around the opening statement and would highlight the benefits of Drupal)

-- My e-commerce site up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My grassroots revolution site up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/people/men_and_women/651047_sold...

-- My client's small business website up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My Hollywood gossip site up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/people/564937_i_know_a_secret.ph...

-- My client's chamber of commerce website up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My rainforest festival site up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/people/body_parts/498193_hippy_g...

-- My student fraternity site up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My boss wanted an intranet up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/people/people_at_work/407949_put...

-- My Dublin Core-compliant term paper up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My Christian Bale chatroom up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My dad's ambitious parenting site up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/people/children_various/295497_m...

-- My transport economics courseware up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My sexy librarian styleguide up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/people/men_and_women/501606_come...

-- My virtual tour of Peoria up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My conspiracy theory blog up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My virtual tattoo gallery up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/people/young_adults/644994_red_h...

-- My government information site up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My hospice support campaign up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My Billy Ray Cyrus achey-breaky fansite up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/people/young_adults/385647_count...

-- My virtual newsroom up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My gender studies bookstore up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/people/young_adults/548044_howdy...

-- My database of celebrity suicide notes up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My executive blog up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My document management tool up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My neighbourhood's website up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My virtual newsroom up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

-- My postdoctoral research peer network up and running in hours?
I used my pal. Drupal.

rivena’s picture

Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

I am closing because of age!... and the conference is over. :)

Anisa.