The following article is an interesting read, I don't know if anyone else has posted it.
http://nicklewis.smartcampaigns.com/mambo-vs-drupal
In terms of my opinion, I tend to agree with the author. I think the marketing effort around Drupal needs to be stepped up in terms of the message, not just the material. I would recommend that the Drupal community look into getting a marketing person to redesign the marketing effort around Drupal. I would be interested in working with such a person, if one can be found to retool the message Drupal is sending out to the world. I think we can learn quite a bit from other CMS's such as Mambo/Joomla about how to reach out to our target market, rather than going after just the developers that service that market. Any opinions? I have tried to help somewhat with this with http://www.drupalshowcase.com which I think has been a decent resource to market to people out there what Drupal can do for them, as it's been doing for other people... However, something more direct needs to take place on drupal.org. I know I may not be the best person to be starting this topic, but I think plenty of core developers might agree with me?
Comments
great site
The article was interesting, but I was more interested by www.drupalshowcase.com. I found it very helpful to see what others have done and what modules they have used.
I wonder if there might not be a page on drupal.org that has a list of links to these other pro-drupal sites. I only found this one by luck.
monjohn
Near Raleigh, NC, USA
Yes!
I've been mulling over this concept for a while now. I tend to judge the quality of a site quickly based on the quality of their design, messaging, and usability. I believe it's usually a reflection on their budget and therefore their professionalism.
For example compare http://www.ziesingbooks.com to http://www.amazon.com and you can immediately tell which one is the "more important" site.
When I came to Drupal.org and http://mamboserver.com in the process of evaluating OS CMSes about a year and a half ago, my immediate impression was that Mambo was the more proven, professional, and stable solution. In fact, I bid out a project totally based on Mambo. It wasn't until I started reading the documentation and looking at the code that I realized that I needed to look into other solutions.
I totally agree that Drupal.org could use a design/marketing overhaul. And I would be happy to contribute. I realize that people may like the simplicity and utility of the current design, but I believe something with more of a design sense would go a long way to attracting more designers, developers, and end users to the project. I think that ultimately drupal.org should be its own showcase and not depend on other sites to give a hint that Drupal can be used to develop beautiful sites.
-Jeff
p.s. No offense to Ziesing Books. Their site was chosen at random from many many badly designed bookseller sites on the web.
--= Jeff Robbins | www.lullabot.com =--
their product
BTW, DonatGroup lists Drupal as one of "their" products.
http://www.donatgroup.com/content-type/our-products/.html
Sounds a bit strange, but
Sounds a bit strange, but they aren't claiming that they wrote it.
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Drupal services
My Drupal services
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Drupal services
My Drupal services
Consultants
Comming at this from a different angle, I've been working on a handbook page that will help consultants market Drupal to their clients:
Overview for consultants
My theory is that better consulting, leads to more paying clients, leads to more features for Drupal, equals better experience for all users.
Cortext Communications
Drupal Themes & Modules
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Drupal Specialists: Consulting, Development & Training
Robert Castelo, CTO
Code Positive
London, United Kingdom
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how to reach out to our
Oh, you are the guy who can tell me what our market is? :p
Seriously, there is no clear cut opinion among Drupal developers where "our" marked is. The problem is probably that Drupal is so flexible that t can be used for a lot of purposes.
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Drupal services
My Drupal services
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Drupal services
My Drupal services
Market Segmentation
That's true, so you segment the market. Essentially to me, Drupal is good for anyone looking to develop a web application with community features. But in terms of this post, I was thinking we definitely need to be going after the same types of people that are considering using Mambo... Why? Well, because the larger the community, the more modules we have, the more we can do with Drupal. I mean Ashoka has now adopted Drupal, and being a developer on their project, we'll be shortly releasing a lot of modules pretty quickly as open source, with the blessing of the community, back to the community. Now if I had not gone out and helped their project manager see that Drupal was right for what they were trying to do, they might have gone with something else. But essentially, what I am saying here is, yes the market is large... Now let's try to capture a market segment of it that's already well defined and that would be the case with Joomla/Mambo. Drupal is levels above that platform in terms of doing anything outside of what comes out of the box. So let's look at what their messages is and try to match their message. Then after we feel comfortable that we've taken some of their market share, move on to other markets such as the market for people looking for lightweight content management systems for their intranets. In some segments Drupal might not have the right feature set, but if the company has enough resources the feature set can be written and contributed back to the community relatively quickly... at this point you can probably tell that I have a business background :P
I think it is terrific that
I think it is terrific that you made the effort to convert Ashoka.org to drupal. I can see a big ripple effect in the non-profit sector as a result of this; not that other non-profits are not already using drupal or civicspace, but Ashoka using drupal is like (for want of a better analogy), the New York times using drupal and other newspapers following suit.
As you can see, I am from the non-profit sector:-)
Re: Marketing Drupal
Like a few others, when I was looking into open-source CMS products about 6 months ago, I came across Mambo/Joomla, Drupal, Zope/Plone and a few others. Of the PHP products, Mambo and Drupal seemed to be the two with the biggest followings.
But Mambo was a clear winner in terms of "buzz". It was winning awards (of what value it was hard to say), it had the most contributed modules, it had the most "user-friendly" GUI and so on. The best that seemed to be said about Drupal was that its internal design/code was the best.
I read a lot of (reasonably independent) comparisons of the two products, and compared several others at CMS Matrix (an excellent site by the way). And while I found they had similar features, Mambo was the most recommended.
After this I tried out both products and a few others. Being a bit of a tech-head I appreciated the way Drupal worked, even though I had to follow detailed instructions to install it. So I used it for my own website.
For my next client though I used Mambo and found it much easier to install and found the eye-candy in the GUI quite impressive. Installing new modules was much easier than Drupal.
But then I actually started to use Mambo (or Joomla as it was by then). And it drove me crazy - it was quite difficult to use. So much so, that when Drupal 4.7 is out, I'm going to convert the client's website to Drupal.
But the point for the Drupal community to note is that it lost the battle to be first choice for this client. And if the client's website was in any way complicated, switching would not be an option.
I don't really have the answer as to how to turn this around for Drupal, but I'll make a few suggestions.
1) The installation must be automated. Have a look at Mambo/Joomla, WordPress, etc. All you have to do is un-tar your files into the right directory, create an empty database and then browse to www.example.com/install.php (or similar). You then follow a few simple steps in your browser, entering your configuration data and the rest is done for you. Compare this with Drupal's INSTALL.txt. (As a side note: is it possible to use the db prefix in drupal without having to manually edit the sql files? I haven't seen any doco on how to do this. And it's a big plus in the other tools to be able to have several tools using the same database, with their field safe from clashing because of the prefix.) Note that drupal's update.php script is superb - we just need something like this for installation.
2) Installing new modules must be simplified. In Mambo you upload the module ".tgz" file through its GUI and Mambo does the rest, untar, configure, etc.
3) Drupal needs a more graphical GUI. The new controlpanel (available under Drupal 4.7) is a good start. But more needs to be done.
Note that none of this gives Drupal much more functionality (and for tech-heads may seem to just get in the way). However, these features should make it easier for users of all levels to adopt Drupal. And make it easier for the perhaps less technical press to get enthused about it, and so on.
Diito
dshaw just wrote my story. That is the exact process that I went through, first mambo/joomla then drupal. And it was for the same reason.
I would also echo all three recommendations. The suggestion made above to "market" it to consultants or developers is a good one. But one of their key criterion is how "user-friendly" it is for the end user.
Near Raleigh, NC, USA
Marketing Drupal
I generally agree. But be wary with grahical GUIs and added eye candy - IMHO Drupal appeals to NGOs and non-profit organisations because it is immensely superior to Mambo etc. for creating high accessibility sites, which often are a requirement in that market segment, whether because of the target audiences or whether they are often financed with public grants that have accessibility guidelines attached.
If we complicate matters in that area by going more graphical, we must do it optionally - the ability to cut the crap and provide the best in interface useability for children, the elderly, blind and disabled audiences must be preserved.
Sevo
Re: Marketing Drupal
I guess I should clarify. I think the GUI/eye candy is important for the administration interface. The actual website, as viewed by the audience, remains unchanged. This should keep the NGO/NPO market happy. Although I think accessible websites should be a goal for Drupal generally.
I found the administration GUI for Mambo/Joomla quite impressive to look at (and it came with rave reviews) but difficult to use. The website produced (as viewed) was still reasonable.
I think increasing the adoption of Drupal should be aimed at those creating websites, not those viewing websites. When I'm viewing a website, I don't care what product is behind it - I just want good access to the information. When I'm creating a website I do care what tool is being used and that it is easy to use.
Drupal is easy to use, and would hopefully remain so if my suggestions were implemented. The aim of the changes is to increase adoption of Drupal by making it more attractive to a wider range of website authors / maintainers.
(Your point about being able to disable the eye candy is valid. Sometimes (often?) lo-tech can be the best option. I know I still do a lot of work from the command line. But I think I'm a highly technical user - the minority in terms of the potential market for Drupal.)