The Drupal ad for the Free Software Magazine, designed by the Drupal community, has been finalized.

As we already reported, we chose Josh Stevens' idea for the ad. However, most people preferred Chris Messina's later variation with slightly different layout and graphics. Because the deadline was approaching rapidly, Chris' version was further improved and finalized not so long ago.

The finished ad focuses on Drupal's variety and large install base by asking the question "What do so many online communities have in common?", to which the answer is (obviously) "Drupal". The background contains a large list of both popular and lesser known Drupal sites to illustrate the point. Read on for a peek at the final result.

Here's how it looks. I've also uploaded a larger version so you can check if your own Drupal site happens to be listed. Thanks to everyone who helped out!

Comments

media girl’s picture

I like it. Really this is great stuff! Can't see if mediagirl made it from the short list to the ad -- anybody know if this magazine is distributed in the US? I hope I get to see it in print!

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mediagirl.org

Steven’s picture

You can see it clearly in the larger version. Note that on paper, the links are quite readable. I did a test print... too bad you can't click on the dead tree version.

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media girl’s picture

Now I really want to get a copy! (Maybe I also should get some new glasses!)

This is the first time I'm seeing the mohawk and tie -- that is priceless! Who says artwork can't be done by committee?

Take a bow, everybody!

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mediagirl.org

jdoejdoe’s picture

Love the ad but I am really surprised that the folks at Drupal chose to highlight an obscure (Alexa ranking ~1.1 million) hate site like MediaGirl.org. Perhaps, like her site says "I guess all I had to do was bitch a little and all worked out."

There are many worthy Drupal-powered websites out there that we can use as examples without giving the impression that Drupal is made up of venom-spewing, fringe weirdos. But, I suppose if that's what the world ends up thinking of Drupal, who am I to disagree?

Again, nice ad but we might want to re-consider highlighting hate-filled, agenda sites like hers.

And yes, I am posting under a pseudonym because I fear that backlash. I have no desire to have my website defaced by a person of peace and tolerance.

Steven’s picture

The point of the ad is to highlight the diversity and number of Drupal sites. We simply cannot do that without including some controversial sites, especially with the huge amount of CivicSpace sites out there, who are almost all political in nature. In today's climate, I think GayInRealLife.com or Oasismag.com are much more controversial and/or likely to draw in a negative reaction from some. Yet Drupal is ideally suited for sites like this, and I've never heard anyone say before "those sites are using Drupal, so I won't".

But still, the point of the ad is not to endorse the individual sites on the background. Heck, 25% of them aren't even printed in a readable fashion, and many are covered by the text and graphics.

I was the one who assembled the list, but I put out a call for Drupal sites and anyone was free to make suggestions. I also put the list up on my site with a link from Drupal.org, updating it as I went on. Anyone was free to comment if they thought a site was inappropriate.

My criteria for selection were, in descending order of importance:

  • Geek sites
  • Sites with a large community
  • Sites with a "new media" subject
  • Sites with a unique graphical design

I think these made sense given the ad's target audience and Drupal in general. MediaGirl is perhaps not that geeky, but it satisfies the other three. There are sites on the list which score much less on these than MediaGirl.

Due to the deadline, I only had a few hours to assemble the list. I spent all that time visiting hundreds of Drupal sites. Did you do the same?

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jdoejdoe’s picture

Again, I thank you for your hard work on a item that is obviously important to the Drupal community. I do appreciate what you do.

In reference to endorsing sites, I think that the appearance of a site address in a Drupal ad is a de facto endorsement of that site, or at least that is how it will be perceived regardless of intention.

I do not agree that the MediaGirl hate site satisfies any requirements other than a perceived buzz created by her active(?) participation on the drupal.org site which seems limited to "bitching" about this or that and haraunging volunteers to fix issues that impact her ability to spew her anger at all 30 people who check her site.

Her Alexa ranking is here: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=mediagirl.org . So much for the second criteria. Compare those numbers to http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=www.blogsofwar.com/

I suppose that you could say feminist anger toward all things male could be considered "new media" but I thought Gloria Steinem had been doing that stchick for about thirty years now. All MediaGirl has done is put up a hate site in a new format, and a not even visually appealing one at that unless you find "anger red" appealing.

I do understand that you were rushed for time and that they call them "dead" lines for a reason. It was your decision and you did what you felt was best, that's the way things work. However, as Drupal is a community as much as a piece of software you must also understand that in the course of human interaction there will be conflict and so there is in this case.

I feel that Drupal treads a dangerous path by aligning itself with anger and hate. These emotions tend to spread like a virus and contaminate all those they contact, including those who reference them in ads.

Gunnar Langemark’s picture

Drupal is probably one of the potentially most powerful "democracy augmentation tools" (dat) in the entire history of mankind. If that potential is to be realized, the Drupal community should be aware that the test of true democratic spirit is to defend the rights of those you disagree with - including their right to p... you off.

As such I think mediagirl.org may prove to be a very usefull ressource to the mostly white young male (I think) Drupal community.

Be aware though, that drupal users and developers count both sexes, all races and a plethora of ethnic groups. Also more than one or two sexual orientations and a number of different religions (and I'm not talking about Linux vs M$ here!).

I believe that although mediagirl.org does show signs of some resentment towards those of us carrying the XY set of chromosomes, it can hardly be considered a true "hate" site.

We should - in my opinion - be careful not to dismiss anger and resentment and act as if these emotions are not acceptable. You cannot do away with anger and frustration simply by making it taboo.

So I don't think that Drupal should endorse the opinions of mediagirl - and I don't think that Drupal does.
But I do think that Drupal should support the right of mediagirl.org to exist and express said emotions.

I'm turning 42 this summer, so I've had my share of feminist/post feminist etc. "puke" while growing up. I spend years as a post graduate student among hard core feminists here in Denmark, when I studied youth media culture. I don't particularly like everything those women think and say.

I notice that your country is registered as Afghanistan. Maybe I'm taking some things for granted here. Please let us know if you have special considerations that we should know of.

Best

Gunnar Langemark
http://www.langemark.com

jdoejdoe’s picture

Gunnar,

I agree that Drupal is an amazing tool in the democratization of the world and a great enabler for bringing power to ordinary people. True democracy and power allows for the speech of those you disagree with. However, please note that I am not attempting to subvert the right of little hater girl to speak her piece. I am disagreeing with Drupal's de facto support of an insignificant little hate site. I see no use that her site provides for white males or anyone else other than the anger-filled, with which Drupal should not be standing. This anger is pervasive and virulent and consumes all those who come near it. We should be aligning ourselves with those who wish to enact positive change in helpful, progressive ways.

A definitions hate speech:

"The variation of Internet hate speech that we examine here can be defined as extremely offensive personal insults and characterizations that are directed against an individual's or group's race, religion, ethnic origin, gender, or sexual preference, and which may incite violence, hatred, or discrimination." http://www.unc.edu/courses/pre2000fall/law357c/cyberprojects/spring99/pr...

I would say that mediagirl falls into that definition.

I would also like to end this discussion before I end up giving her too much free publicity that might raise her site from the duldrums and actually move her into the top 1,000,000 sites on the web.

BTW, I am not from Afghanistan. I said before that I fear the backlash from the "enlightened, tolerant" crowd. Thus I hide who I am and where I am from. Kinda scary that I feel that need for that huh?

Gunnar Langemark’s picture

OK
I hear You.

Now we know each others position.

Best

Gunnar Langemark
http://www.langemark.com

Steve Dondley’s picture

You do a lot of jumping up and down and provide absolutely no evidence for any hate speech on media girl's site. There is nothing hateful about that site. The only thing hateful is the very rude treatment you are showing here. Sorry to politicize this thread but I can't allow your false and disruptive statements to go unchallenged.

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Get better help from Drupal's forums and read this.

sepeck’s picture

nysus, ignore the person who only created an account to attack from the saftey and comfort of anonymity a perfectly reasonable, if opinionated site.

-sp
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Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

Steve Dondley’s picture

Sorry, but that would be negligent. It's the old cliche of "bad things exist in the world because good people do nothing."

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Get better help from Drupal's forums and read this.

media girl’s picture

"Hate"? It's an interesting interpretation of feminism, but hey, to each his own. You can relax, though -- we don't do defacing. I'll leave my response at that, as this has strayed off topic far enough.

Thanks again, Steven, for including mediagirl.org among such esteemed company.

CdnStrangequark’s picture

I first visited mediagirl.org when I was looking for layout ideas for another one of my drupal sites. The only thing that particularly struck me about it then was the rather...strong...red. (No offence though Mediagirl...I'm just not a huge fan of red...i'm more of a robin's egg blue type)

After having read this whole sub-thread, I was a little shocked. So I went back to have a more in-depth look at mediagirl.org to see what I missed the first time.

Hate-mongering? Feminist anger towards all things male? Radical?

I don't know...I just didn't see it. Anger towards oppression in general, yes. Anger towards inequality, yes. But I didn't see any hate-mongering, or anything remotely similar to it. In fact, I didn't even think the content was really all that controversial. Maybe I'm numbed to controversy? I doubt it. I think somebody's just overreacting.

jdoejdoe, chill dude, it's the web. I just can't see any ill-intent directed at Drupal because of this.

-s:s|}{
strangequarks.ca

PS: Thought it a little strange you said this, jdoe: "I have no desire to have my website defaced by a person of peace and tolerance." Now personally, I like it when people of peace and tolerance come around to my website. In fact, I'd love it if a lot more peaceful and tolerant people joined in.

dmjossel’s picture

The ad looks great.

However, just one minor point comes to mind; hope it isn't too late to make a minor change.

The text should probably read "grassroots campaigns".

"Grassroots" is used as an adjective to describe things. "Grassroot" isn't a word.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=grassroots

factoryjoe’s picture

Yes, you're totally right. But I think we've missed the deadline on this one. I'll fix it and send it off to Steven again just in case.

Dries’s picture

Better to send a new copy to the editor of the magazine? I bet Steven is sleeping for the next few hours.

laura s’s picture

I agree -- these fellows are much less demonic. Hard to find a green guy with a mohawk demonic! Even more so the beaurocrat with the tie.

I understand the copyright is what, creative commons? I ask out of courtesy: Okay to post on our websites?

.:| Laura • pingV |:.

_____ ____ ___ __ _ _
Laura Scott :: design » blog » tweet

CdnStrangequark’s picture

I'd be interested in knowing the answer to that as well. It looks fantastic!

iraszl’s picture

Wow! It looks great! It's nice to see how the community can work together to create an excellent ad as well.

It maybe just personal, but the line height for the headline is a bit too small and for the body copy a bit too big.

PS: Thanks for including creativebits!
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http://creativebits.org

factoryjoe’s picture

The "headline" line-height is based on the leading of the URLs. I didn't want the heading to overlap the URLs in those "zones" so I made the line-height less than in previous mockups since the addition of the URLs changed the overall look of the page.

freyquency’s picture

Thanks for putting my site down there at the bottom ;)
Looks cool. I agree that it should be "grassroots".

And media girl -- it was a print magazine for the first couple of issues. I see that they are only taking electronic subscriptions now. I'm not sure if they mean 'web-only' or 'web-transaction-only' by that... But it was print/free pdf...

Robin Monks’s picture

They have both PRINT AND ELECTRONIC subscriptions, and you can just get this months issue, should you so desire. This issue will be released free 30 days after the print date.

Robin

I ♥ Bugz
Blog - Twitter

stevensj2’s picture

It's good to see the community put together so many good ideas :-)

One concern though: I greatly hope that a CMYK version was sent for the print version? CMYK colors are much different than RGB we are used to seeing, and if an RGB image is converted to CMYK for print, the colors get changed - especially greens, which may end up muddy/yellow looking.

EDIT: read in another thread that it looks amazing on paper - awesome!
-----------------
Josh Stevens
Nautilus7 Design | www.nautilus7.com

Steve Dondley’s picture

Someone should sell this in a frameable size. I'd buy it. Some of the proceeds could help fund Drupal.

Steven’s picture

Funny you mention that... Dries also mentioned the idea of printing this poster-size. Of course we need to see if this is feasable: posters are not exactly the most shippable items, and often printing is not economical for small amounts. We don't have a shop of our own, and taking daily trips to the post office is not a long-term solution ;).

I do know of one service for prints: DeviantART. You need a subscriber account to sell prints though, they require a one time signup fee.

Edit: scratch that. DeviantART doesn't seem to allow ads to be printed, unless we could convince them that it is in the Wallpaper category. Don't think so :(.

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Steve Dondley’s picture

I'm sure it would be possible to find an outfit like http://www.signaturesx.com/gofeb_posters.htm that could handle the logistics for us.

Boris Mann’s picture

Michael Tippett -- he might be able to help out with the printing aspect. Shipping is the annoying part, however it might be feasible to bring them along to some locations -- e.g. OSCON.

laura s’s picture

I think this is a great idea. It might also be worth setting up a Cafepress-type site (there might be something better, Cafrepress is simply an example) to sell Drupal shwag -- coffee cups, t-shirts, etc. There's a natural market right here. Proceeds could go to the general Drupal fund. Probably not a few of us would like to buy something like that!
===
Laura
pingV

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Laura Scott :: design » blog » tweet

Gunnar Langemark’s picture

That's an excellent suggestion.
I learned that Drupal has more than 20k registered users. WOW. Three years ago it was nothing like that.

Also:
If Drupal wants to be widely used and accepted by admins around the world, there ought to be two "sites" on drupal.org - a developer site and an admin/user site. That way the marketing of Drupal could be done exclusively with users in mind - without all the developer talk adding to the geeky perception of Drupal.

Gunnar Langemark
http://www.langemark.com

iraszl’s picture

Developers and admins are usually the same person I think.
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http://creativebits.org

Gunnar Langemark’s picture

There are a few hundred Drupal developers.
There are tens of thousands of people who have downloaded Drupal. Some thousands installations must be out there. Most of these are probably done by people who never write one single line of code.
These are two distinct species.
I would recommend that they be served a special diet each.

Gunnar Langemark
http://www.langemark.com

Steven’s picture

Take a look at the drupal.org front page... how much hardcore developer stuff is /really/ on there?

IMO we should try keep the Drupal community as open as possible. Things like the recent ad collaboration would not have been as successful if it had been stuffed away in a "developer" section.

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sepeck’s picture

As occasionally as difficult as this is, I believe we are better served by the present mix. The hard developer stuff is really in CVS and Project messages which most users don't see. Also drupal-devel mailing list. The actual development content of ost Drupal.org posts are small. However when these discussions do occur, we have a wider audience and a wider viewpoint from devlopers, admins and those who do both.

I suspect that we benefit greatly from that diversity.

-sp
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Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

Gunnar Langemark’s picture

There's not much developer stuff on the frontpage of drupal.org
That's not the problem as it was a couple of years ago.

So I was wrong saying so. Sorry.

However, there is a problem with drupal.org. It does not sell Drupal at all!

It is an interesting and informative frontpage for those of us already familiar with the wonderful capabilities of Drupal.

But what about the thousands who want to install a really good software package to build and expand their community, intranet, website, blogging site etc.?

The advertisement thread made me look at Drupal again. It is still for the chosen few.
I've been asking from time to time if Drupal really wants the broad user base, and it seems clear to me that increasingly that is the goal. Drupal wants to have many users and many installations. That takes communication skills.

Why would ANYBODY want to install Drupal and not one of the hundreds of other open source CMS packages, Portal systems, Blogging tools etc?
(It is that Drupal is a mature system with a very large, active and well functioning (well behaved) developer community. It is that Drupal is on the fast track in expanding its usefulness for every concievable kind of web2.0 project. It is that Drupal is so incredibly well integrated. It is.... If you want a system to build on and to outlast your next few wild ideas - install Drupal!)

Who did actually choose Drupal? And what do they say that can help you make a decision?
(This is where the testimonials from Doc Searls, Marc Canter, The Bryght team (Roland Tanglao), Yahoo, Christina Wodtke, Dan Gillmor, and quite a few other web-celebrities go! We have them! So let's bragg. These are the most qualified witnesses to make it evident to everybody that this is indeed a great tool)

What is it that makes Drupal stand out?
(This is where the comparisons done by more or less "independent" parties go. This will make it clear that the nukes are techically inferior to Drupal, that some other systems are too hard to learn and manage, that some other systems are much more shallow in scope, that some other systems are developed by teams of one etc..)

This is what should be on the front page of drupal.org.
Because it sells Drupal to those who have not yet made a decision. Most of those who have not made a decision will NOT search for this and they will not go beyond the front page to find the information. Some of this information is already available on drupal.org. It is just not easily found.

Gunnar Langemark
http://www.langemark.com

sepeck’s picture

You are right. A year ago I would not have agreed with you. It's only recently that we have grown to have enough specialized poeple who have stuck around and took an active interest in non-dev related stuff.

We now have a documentation team that has enough members to specialize in their chosen areas. We have teams and interest from an even broader spectrum. We have more and more site admins answering questions on the forums every day. We have a new marketing group that is taking the load off folks and adding ideas.

So. Here's the challange. Start a new thread. Call it What should go on the front page and suggest some idea's, mockup, what ever. We know that Dries will change stuff when there is consensus and it is a good idea. I think what Steven did with the front page and Blue Beach is great. Link improvement etc. What more do you want....

I know you outlined some above, but I think it needs a new thread. :)

-sp
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Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

Gunnar Langemark’s picture

Will do!
(Update: Have done)

Please note that I think the frontpage is a really big improvement over previous ones.
I don't have negative feelings about it.
I think that the challenge is to serve the future users - and that challenge is changing.
More non-tech users are bound to find Drupal - and we want to give them a good start with the system - better theming, better installation etc.
Serving them as well as possible on our frontpage is a good idea in that respect.
So I will start a new thread.

Gunnar Langemark
http://www.langemark.com

laura s’s picture

I am inclined to agree that breaking up the site into developers vs. users/admins would not be the best. I know that I wouldn't like it. One of the best ways I learn is by reading threads where admin, theme or use issues drift into development issues, and I have to figure out what people are talking about. It's been great.

--Not that breaking up the discussions (as CivicSpaceLabs does) would preclude that.

However, on the front page, pointers to the areas of the handbook for users, admins, developers and themers might be nice to have right there on the front page. Some people have issues with the handbook -- I do, too -- but with a living and growing CMS, the documentation needs to live and grow, too, so failings here and there or now and then should not indict the handbook as an essential resource.

Having the pointers on the front page might help to gently nudge site visitors to the handbook before they rush to post a question.

===
Laura
pingV

_____ ____ ___ __ _ _
Laura Scott :: design » blog » tweet

iraszl’s picture

Cafepress is a neat idea. I'm happy to design a range of items if you want. Let me know!

Here are some funny items I designed for my own site some time ago:
http://www.cafepress.com/creativebits
(I'm looking into redoing the whole shop, so I'm not really advertising these items on my site, but when I did they were selling well.)

laura s’s picture

I'm not surprised you've had success with them.
===
Laura
pingV

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Laura Scott :: design » blog » tweet

factoryjoe’s picture

I have someone who might be able to help with this. I'll let you know how it goes.

Anyone want a Drupal T-shirt? Perhaps we could start designing some new swag in time for OSCON?

Chris

Orgy mAn aka n0body’s picture

Really cool stuff.
Can anyone create 1024*768 wallpaper from this image?

http://drupal.org/files/FSM_ad_big.jpg

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n0body.com