The "Try Drupal" page should clarify what is a partner offer and what is a community service

As already commented on the announcement I strongly agree with David on this. Having a blatant marketing programme so prominently featured misrepresents the community.

I agree, a bit too heavy on the advertising. If I knew nothing about Drupal, would I think that it is an Acquia and Pantheon product? I was surprised to see the announcement from Holly asking us to spread the word to advertise this.

I also agree with David here...

So I just looked at the homepage, and noticed that on the right there's a banner advertisement which rotates, but at that moment was hosting providers. That makes the 'Try Drupal' link look less like a paid advertisement since there's an obvious one next to it. The only difference being it's a much shorter list. Do there really need to be two hosting ads on the front page?

I was very surprised to not see simplytest.me listed on that page, given this is currently an important part of Drupal.org infrastructure for patch testing (albeit one that the Drupal Association doesn't support in any way that I know of). If you have dreditor installed then every patch gets a simplytest.me link, which is a massive contribution of time and effort from Patrick to Drupal.org that's not at all recognised by this.

A try Drupal programm can be indeed beneficial to the community. And there is already a Get Started With Drupal button, but I think it is not very helpful to newcomers because the landing page mixes too many things.

The Try Drupal page should be no more than a 3 step funnel that ultimately leads to installing and setting up Drupal.

The options presented on the Try Drupal page could be:

- First make clear what Drupal is - a stand alone piece of software that can run on any major environment and database engine out there. Be proud of it and list al major os/database combinations, including links to guides/tutorials on to how to setup drupal on those environments - the raw way.

- Then links on to how to setup/configure Drupal (platform agnostic).

- Finally say something like if you want to try it right now, but don't have the time or skills to deploy, these very friendly partners of us are giving away 24 hours of DaaS demos that will get you started in 30 minutes so you can play with Drupal without needing to worry about the deployment. Of course, these demos should require no registration or credit card info. Simplytest.me does comply with those two, unfortunately Acquia and Pantheon require registration. So the Simplytest.me link should go first and big and say no registration required - 30 minutes demo and the other two come last and explicitly say that you will need to register in order to try their demos and how long do they last for being free or what are the characteristics of the free tier if any.

So basically as it is now, this is not a Try Drupal programm, those were just nice words to cover a marketing campaign (even asking Drupal.org members to spread the word!). But it can be fixed.

I don't particularly agree with most of the sentiment. Yes, it is obviously a marketing campaign designed to generate revenue. I do, however, agree that the wording on the home page "Try Drupal" versus "Get Started" has no perceivable difference to a new visitor. Yoroy's wording of "Try a live demo now" is a lot clearer. I'm sure we can balance generating revenue with being a little less click-baity.

I appreciate the sentiment davidhernandez and I understand that Drupal needs to generate revenue, but advertising should be clearly marked as such, it shouldn't even come close to being 'click baity'.

I appreciate that there are organisations which do a lot for the Drupal ecosystem and we have to balance revenue generation with the needs of Drupal itself. Personally I think the proposal for a proper 'Try Drupal' area which could still link to those generous partners whilst offering/elaborating on the other available options...

Just a few more of my thoughts on this issue.

Thanks for flagging this problem.

Indeed, as others have noted, the new, prominent advertising link on our home page not only lacks transparency but also risks creating the impression that Drupal is primarily or exclusively a hosted service of a given set of companies.

I find the two criteria that David_Rothstein suggested above for a "Try Drupal" page appropriate.

What is needed to fix this pressing issue?

Some acknowledgement by the responsible Assoc folks would be a good first step.^^

Sorry it seems like we haven't acknowledged this, I was trying to keep the conversations on the original post so it stayed in context.

We designed this program because we do believe it can be both a great showcase of Drupal, and a revenue generating program. While we need to create new revenue programs to support Drupal.org, we want to do so in a respectful, mission-driven way. One of the things that we kept hearing from community members is that we should monetize anonymous traffic - those who are not contributing to the project. Since 95% of the traffic to the homepage is anonymous, many stated that the homepage would be an appropriate place to focus our revenue efforts.

We’re launching Try Drupal because it offers a feature for evaluators that was not available on Drupal.org, and it provides a revenue stream that goes back to supporting the community. This program is brand new, and we’re working on bringing in additional partners. We’re also discussing options to include services outside of our premium hosting supporters. We just had a conversation with the folks at SimplyTest.me and are working on a way to include that solution.

I also should stress that the homepage redesign is an iterative change, and with future updates you will see less of a focus on new revenue programs, and more of an emphasis on community focused content as we develop better landing pages. These changes, and the Try Drupal program, were highlighted at the end of March in a different issue.

Please stay tuned for updates on additional partners, and the future homepage changes.

Thanks for the additional context, Carrie.

I think the main piece of feedback I keep hearing over and over (aside from "Where's simplytest.me?" which sounds like it's being addressed) is that there's not any longer anything on the home page that would lead you to believe Drupal was a piece of free, open source software. (There are two links in the header/footer that say "download" but they're super tiny and easy to miss.) And that worst-case, people might reach the completely wrong conclusion and think that Drupal is actually a proprietary, for-pay product by Acquia and/or Pantheon.

These concerns however seem pretty solvable with some small copy changes, such as those suggested by yoroy in #2463205-18: First iteration of Drupal.org front page to support the content strategy work.

Hi Angie,

Thanks for summarizing the concerns, I definitely understand where everyone is coming from.

We have planned out a few more iterations of the homepage that will shift the focus away from the revenue programs and more onto community content that wasn’t ready for this phase.

However, until that happens, we don’t want visitors coming to the wrong conclusion about Drupal being a proprietary for-pay product either. We are taking a step back to consider a temporary fix, like these small copy changes, quickly. I’ll be in touch when I know more about the remedy.

Iteration should allow for roll-back
Actually, lets be iterative here - and roll this part back and find a good/better solution. Being iterative also means, going back for a bit - when the response is negative, to allow for a better solution. Iteration isn't just to favour forward intermediate steps, its also to take steps back - when the concept doesn't work.

I actually think the thousands of people we steer in the wrong direction (Drupal is a commercial product vs. open source) is a significant problem - and we shouldn't think lightly of it. I think the commercial partners, would agree - they don't want to be the triggers of a controversial avenue.

I didn't see this in the initial iteration, as we were focusing on the homepage. Next time I'd be nice to include the full scope of the discussion - as I feel we addressed this concern already to some extend, but did not know the full scope including this page.

Identified problem
As a user I have no idea to choose "try Drupal" or "Get started with Drupal". It's kind of a weird choice - as a beginner you don't know. Can you not try it in the getting started section?

We seem to have stumbled upon a two-fold problem:

1. The Homepage, does not present the user with clearly distinguishable ways to start with Drupal.
2. The "Try Drupal" page is solely commercial focused, and you need to carefully read to understand its a "hosted version + alterations".

Partial solution
The solution that is currently being proposed to tackle 1) make the label more clearly state that it is a "live demo" in the label and possibly the description. This seems really achievable, lets do it?

In order to tackle 2) requires a little bit more thought, but I imagine making it clear that this is one of the options (not all), linking to more and more clearly stating that this is not "the only way" to try out Drupal. You can actually just download it - this option should have equal prominence. Is this possible, what are our limitations with the "Try Drupal" page - did we promise these partners something?

I don't want to side-track the conversation, but as @webchick points out this is quite solvable - lets split it up in two issues, and work on it. We don't have to wait for a worked out remedy - lets just follow opensource practices and hash it out together?

Prominence vs. revenue
I really hope the DA makes a lot of money with this avenue, because its incredibly prominent and I am curious about the click-through but likely to feed a significant portion of beginning users off the self-hosted version. I'd be really nice if the conversion requirements of these programs, are public at some point - because this is much more direct sales - then we have ever done.

I'd like to have a conversation with the D.O team at Drupalcon LA about the process around this, its really hard to follow and some of the commercial decisions seem to take away from the community identify. The process seems too disconnected to ensure the larger community values are considered and incorporated (don't worry, we've had the same with D7UX - we learned a lot about this the hard way, I wanna avoid that you learn in the hard way too).

I wish we could upvote comments. +1 for Bojhan

I agree that there are some small edits we can make to get the text a bit more in line with the intent of the Try Drupal link on the homepage.

First, I worked with carrie.lacina to add some language to the Try Drupal page that helps clarify its purpose and points users that want to install Drupal from scratch to the Get Started page.

We also have a proposed text change for the homepage calls to action that use some of the alternate text from @yoroy. We included some text per @webchick's suggestion to make it clear that Drupal is free open source software (not proprietary) in the Get Started text.

We can implement these next week.

@bohjan, I'm happy to chat. We are all coming from a place of wanting to make Drupal.org better.

For the homepage this would be a huge improvement.

At issue here is the relationship of editorial content - presumed to represent the Drupal community - and advertising. The "Try Drupal" program as presented presents advertising as content.

Specifically, in this case, what appears to be neutral copy in a prominent place on our home page actually turns out to be advertising--which is only apparent after a user clicks a link, and even then only if the user scrolls to the bottom of the page.

There are two potential ways that this issue could be addressed.

The first would be what David_Rothstein suggested: make the "Try Drupal" page into what would be expected by the copy: a page with objective content rather than advertising. This is what I feel would best serve the community.

The second would be to ensure that any advertising is clearly identified as such and is integrated in appropriate ways. What we apparently don't have - and clearly need - is policy or guidelines on how advertising is to be handled on Drupal.org. This issue doesn't appear to have been addressed in for example the "takeaways" listed in this post.

The "Try Drupal" portion of the home page as currently designed falls into what's called in the industry native advertising: "online advertising that matches the form and function of the platform on which it appears". In introducing this form of advertising to Drupal.org, three key steps were missed.

• Is native advertising on Drupal.org acceptable to the Drupal community?
• If it is acceptable, what policies or guidelines should it meet? Here, there's a wealth of material available. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has material on native advertising including recommended disclosure principles. The Internet Advertising Bureau UK offers content and native disclosure guidelines. The Atlantic has advertising guidelines with relevant disclosure language. Also relevant is the Acceptable Ads Manifesto; see principle #3:
  

  Acceptable Ads are transparent with us about being an ad. If it's an advertisement, just say so! There's a place for ads, and there's a place for editorial. And there's even a place for advertorials or native ads if they're not camouflaged as editorial content. Good stuff is always welcome, but it needs to be genuine.

  I'm not saying that any of these is necessarily sufficient, but they could provide a useful starting place.

• If native advertising is acceptable and meets the standards, where on Drupal.org is it acceptable?

My view is, no, native advertising is not acceptable on Drupal.org. We shouldn't have gone there, and we should roll it back--that is, immediately remove the "Try Drupal" native advertisement from the home page. If any advertisement is added, it should be in line with other advertising on the site--which itself needs a lot of improving. [Aside: Currently, most ads on for example the home page are not necessarily distinguishable as such and so fail standards for disclosure. The annoying ads on the hosting ad page don't begin to meet the Acceptable Ads Manifesto principles, and the disclosure on that page is less than straightforward.]

Let's show respect for our community and new users. If there is paid advertising on Drupal.org, Drupal should at least be leading the way when it comes to responsible advertising--not bringing up the rear.

I agree fully with both Bojhan and Nedjo, and I don't see anything in the homepage changes which would either:

1. Clarify that this is advertising and that the Association may receive money from this
2. Introduce other options to 'Try Drupal' which do not involve these partners

I don't think its enough to just change the wording of the button or add simplytest.me. I would expect advertisements to be visually clearly marked as such and therefore support bojhan & nedjo's comments.

'Tried Drupal'

From a look at the current home page, it seems someone went ahead with the changes outlined in #17 despite clear and explicit feedback from multiple community members, including the original poster, that the changes in no way address the key issues raised here.

Technically, the patch in #22 looks good, though it will need to be updated now that conflicting changes have been applied.

Ultimately this is a policy decision rather than a technical one. The protocol for escalating an issue seems to be to add the "Drupal.org Content Working Group" tag to an issue on this project, so I'm doing so now. Justification per the working group page's criteria: "Issues arise for which there is no clear policy and one must be developed".

An inmediate rollback should be performed until a policy is established regarding what type of advertising is acceptable. This looks like an "I'd appologize rather than asking for permission" which is quite an attitude.... specially after respectable and known community members have expressed their concerns.

I would like to reiterate that this change should be rolled back. I have issues right accross this however part of the wording on the "Try Drupal" page illustrates my major gripe. (Emphasis Mine!)

Advertising programs like this help build a successful ecosystem around Drupal. These hosting companies are great choices, because they go out of their way to support the Drupal community directly. The Drupal community does not endorse these companies.

• What metric are we using to determine that these companies are indeed great choices?
• In what way, exactly, is being one of two choices offered on the homepage of drupal.org to be construed as, not an endorsement by the community?

My apologies for anyone concerned with the implementation of the changes in comment #17. I failed to include the issue number in the commit, so it did not trigger the comment to appear accordingly.

I hear the concerns regarding advertising. And I'm happy to continue the conversation. (I'm available for an in person meeting to talk, if you happen to be at DrupalCon this week.)

I appreciate the flagging of this issue with the "Drupal.org Content Working Group" tag. This program was reviewed with the Drupal.org Content Working Group before its deployment. It has also been reviewed in concept with the board and has been mentioned in public board meetings. This type of advertising was deemed as a acceptable way to honor hosting partners that help fund the site and provide a mission driven way to help evaluators of Drupal see a demonstration of Drupal that would pay for itself.

We have had conversations with the providers of simplytest.me and trydrupal8.com. There are issues to work out with them regarding scaling to that level of traffic and in regards to how it fits into the Try Drupal program as it was originally conceived.

We cannot remove the Try Drupal program page or the homepage link to this page; there is a contract with these partners who are helping provide these demo platforms. Additionally, it would be disrespectful to the community members and partners helping fund the hosting of Drupal.org and related services. Breaching that contract and their trust should not be taken lightly.

We can continue to iterate on the text while keeping the intent and structure of this work intact.

That's understandable, there are commercial forces at play here too. Let's have a quick-fix by implementing yoroy's change and then move forward to a more permanent fix.

@MJCO Both companies are featured service providers with a track record of formidable community engagement and long time community support. Please let us not forget, that while the program in its current state is ill conceived these are not shithosterXY companies that bought a sponsorship but truly valued community members. The community has deemed them worthy to be featured providers and this does not need to be talked down. More: https://www.drupal.org/node/1868316

@MJCO Both companies are featured service providers with a track record of formidable community engagement and long time community support. Please let us not forget, that while the program in its current state is ill conceived these are not shithosterXY companies that bought a sponsorship but truly valued community members. The community has deemed them worthy to be featured providers and this does not need to be talked down. More: https://www.drupal.org/node/1868316

dddave, my intention was not to disparage Acquia or Pantheon who both do great work for Drupal, the community and the association. My point, which rereading my post was completely unclear, for this I apologise, was that if this is indeed advertising space, the procedure for choosing the advertisers should be open and available for review and critique. It should indeed be possible for the provider list to be expanded given a set of criteria providers would need to meet. And again, to reiterate, it should be much, much clearer that this is paid advertising.

Your last point speaks to the problem/misunderstanding a lot of people are having regarding (especially) the usage of the frontpage and monetizing efforts. This definitely needs to be talked about in person in LA (I am not there but nvm). To be also clear: I have no association with the Association.
The conflict here is: How much, if any, influence should the larger community have over things like this advertising campaign and/or the usage of drupal.org real estate.
We are talking here about a Association initiative and I am not clear that the larger community should have any direct influence on such decision. Another but related question (as I said) is the usage of the real estate for said initiatives. We do have content working groups and quite some people working on further redesign efforts. This is again spearheaded and mostly implemented by Assoc staff (as far as I can see) and I personally feel mostly on board with the proposed changes. If these plans are communicated well enough is another issue (disclosure: I have some minor advisory role in these matters [esp. regarding Planet]) especially for the "broader" public not as involved with the daily webmastering of drupal.org.

This specific issue at hand is result of this underlying conflict imho. I hope some of the involved people here have a chance to talk about this directly in LA.

[...] I am not clear that the larger community should have any direct influence on such decision.

That could be true until Drupal and the community get missrepresented. The original implementation was cheating users to these hosting providers by confusing them on what Drupal is and is not.

And it is still tricky. You have the "Try a hosted demo" + "Get started with Drupal" side-to-side looking as if they were the same thing, when one of them is paid advertising and the other not. No matter how you look at it, the landing page is trying to fool the user that lands on it by presenting both options under a similar look and feel.

Is there the slightest chance that someone could get the drupal.org domain into an Adblock filter list rule?

If there is any doubt about that then this should be taken very seriously.

Agreed! That is definitely a fault line to be aware of.

I posted this related issue: #2496777: Update Planet Drupal guidelines to explicitly exclude advertising posts.

First - I want to say that I am sorry for not resolving this issue sooner. As everyone has mentioned, there is a lot of new here, and we wanted to make sure that the staff and board are in alignment and that we’ve carefully considered the issues raised in this thread and others.

In short, we believe that Try Drupal is exactly the kind of program that we want to succeed. It delivers revenue to the Association that helps us underwrite the staffing for the site. Most importantly, it is creating real Drupal customers, one of the key goals we have at the Association.

There are people in this thread that find advertising 3rd party programs or services (just edited this sentence to specify which type of advertising is found unacceptable) on the homepage unacceptable. It’s our position that advertising on the home page - and other areas of D.O - is acceptable, and within the scope of the Association to manage. We always want to do that in a way that supports the community and its work, so we would never put ads on the issue queues for example. We will continue to focus group ideas before they are implemented and we will improve roll out - I completely acknowledge that the roll out for Try Drupal was not great in many respects.

The issue we do want to address is the types of advertising we plan for the site and policy for how to handle them. You guys make great points about native advertising, and they are worth consideration. Here is what I would like to propose:

1. Set the status of this issue to “close/won’t fix.” The original topic of the thread was to remove Try Drupal from the home page entirely. The board and staff are aligned around this and we are not going to do that at this point.

2. Open a new issue for an advertising policy and share a staff and working group reviewed draft there for community input, as we did with the Terms of Service. The policy will not address if we can advertise, but will instead set guidelines for how we advertise - addressing issues like labeling of ads, ad content guidelines, etc. with the aim of providing an advertising experience that complements Drupal.org and supports our community values. Whatever decisions are made in that policy will be rolled out to Try Drupal and any other advertising initiatives.

@holly.ross.drupal: Thanks for the update.

There are people in this thread that find advertising on the homepage unacceptable.

I may have missed something, but what I've heard in the comments is not about homepage advertising per se. The Google Doubleclick ads on the homepage, for example, precede the issues raised here and have not been raised as a problem.

Open a new issue for an advertising policy and share a staff and working group reviewed draft there for community input ... Whatever decisions are made in that policy will be rolled out to Try Drupal and any other advertising initiatives.

Obviously (from my comments above) I agree that policy here is needed. However, this issue has already been identified and unaddressed for close to two months.

What kind of timeline would you foresee for that being achieved?

Set the status of this issue to “close/won’t fix.”

If the intent is actually to acknowledge and address this issue, then that's the wrong status.

Yes, the original poster had a particular proposed fix, but the issue title, description, and comments identify a problem to which that is not the only potential solution.

Another fairly obvious interim step would be:

Convert the "Try Drupal" description and link into something that meets industry standards for disclosure (that is, it's clearly identifiable as advertising).

That might mitigate the immediate problem while allowing time for policy development.

Thoughts?

I may have missed something, but what I've heard in the comments is not about homepage advertising per se. The Google Doubleclick ads on the homepage, for example, precede the issues raised here and have not been raised as a problem.

I revised my comment above. I know that we have "advertising" on the home page already, but the Double Click ads there point to *.d.o resources, nothing external. It's the advertising of external products and services that some folks object to.

What kind of timeline would you foresee for that being achieved?

Two things here. First, we are actively working on an advertising policy draft. We have one under internal review. We plan to push it out to the community in the next week or two, so that's coming ASAP.

I don't think it's fair to say the issue has been unaddressed for 2 months. We did update the button text, the paragraph text, and the text on the Try Drupal page per community suggestions. We feel that this is sufficient, and we have the authority to make that call. HOWEVER, we would much rather have a set of guidelines that have been community reviewed to guide these decisions. That's more in line with our values. So, we're working on that. Also, let me point out that there will not be consensus around those guideline. We do not expect that we will create guidelines that everyone in the community will be happy with. We will formalize a document that reflects the balance of community input as well as our internal needs.

Yes, the original poster had a particular proposed fix, but the issue title, description, and comments identify a problem to which that is not the only potential solution.

Given that I think we addressed the primary concern raised in this issue, I still suggest that we close this one and then focus on the more important topic of guidelines what will govern this an other issues. If it turns out the the guidelines that are adopted require that we change labelling or other aspects of the Try Drupal implementation, we can reopen this issue are start another one.

Most importantly, it is creating real Drupal customers, one of the key goals we have at the Association.

Is the profile of these customer really valuable to the community or only to those *3* hosting providers?

I understand that more people using Drupal is never bad for Drupal itself, but it does not mean it is good either.

From a related post (https://www.drupal.org/news/new-try-drupal-program).

However (sorry), I do agree that as Drupal has grown bigger, there has been a loss of community and much more of an almost corporate push to the large monetizing organizations; lost is the collaboration and mutual assistance accomplished by smaller, entrepreneurial people and organizations.

It has been particularly difficult to get response, find accurate documentation or to get help with D7 and sometimes I feel that many of the D7 contrib modules are in abeyance -- in rc or beta status, or seeking maintainers -- for a long time. Is this because everyone is awaiting D8?

This site, drupal.org, has become unwieldy. One of the things we learned when we hired Lullabot to mentor us early on (we can no longer afford them) was to make good and careful use of the issue threads and discussions. We were schooled in techniques of searching and deciphering good solutions (and modules) from bad. However, the threads have become so outdated, it has become exponentially more difficult to find information pertinent to the most recent versions. It's easy to find solutions for D5 but not so easy to find accurate information on D7.

Unfortunately I must agree with this.

Making the big guys bigger is the *easy* way to monetize, and does not necesarily mean that you are growing the community in a healthy and future proof way at all.

Is there anything that the DA can really do to stimulate the growth of the community - with quality - and decentralize revenue generation? That would be healthy and promote the irruption of new participants into the contrib/core scene.

WP has succeded at creating a (more or less) decentralized revenue generating ecosystem. That is why they have loads of great contrib - and I mean really great - instead of the thousands of half baked and half abandoned contrib that Drupal has now..

I am sure I can use the fingers on my hands to count the number of contrib modules that are properly maintained (ok maybe I'll need one extra hand). And the maintainers are not to be blamed for that, it is the ecosystem that is failing to promote and make their work sustainable because it provides little - or none - incentives or reasons to contribute back.

So here's where responding gets really tough because in 3 comments we're in several different places. But let me try here:

From Nedjo:

When I try this exercise, the impression I get right now is that Drupal is a consortium of three website hosting providers who have spun off open source software as part of their collaboration. (And frankly I still might not even register the "open source" part unless I'm looking relatively carefully.) That's a problem.

I do not disagree with you - but I don't think that's 100% because of Try Drupal. We need to do OTHER things on the page - like find a meaningful way to represent the community on the home page (the 1,000,000 accounts was just a crazy not real metric). I believe that the addition of that type of content will create that better representation of what Drupal is, not the subtraction of Try Drupal. So I hear you 100% about what you're not getting from the home page, just have a different approach for solving for that, and the next iteration of the home page will take that a step further in the next couple of weeks.

From Dave:

In short, we believe that Try Drupal is exactly the kind of program that we want to succeed.... Most importantly, it is creating real Drupal customers, one of the key goals we have at the Association.
Can you elaborate on what that means exactly?

What I specifically mean is that bringing people to Drupal is a process, and Try Drupal is making it easier for people to engage in that process - both because we have helped our partners build an experience that is easy to engage in and does not require payment AND because this service is now getting exposure on the home page to make it more visible.

I don't have numbers all the way through the acquisition cycle yet from our partners, but each one is getting about 5,000 clicker per month (that's an average across the partners). I'm excited to see how many of those trials convert, and if we can get some data back out of the partners, what kinds of customers those are. It's just really early still.

From David:

Is there anything that the DA can really do to stimulate the growth of the community - with quality - and decentralize revenue generation? That would be healthy and promote the irruption of new participants into the contrib/core scene.

WP has succeded at creating a (more or less) decentralized revenue generating ecosystem. That is why they have loads of great contrib - and I mean really great - instead of the thousands of half baked and half abandoned contrib that Drupal has now.

At this moment - no. We can't operate like Automattic does for Wordpress. The Drupal Association does not have control of the Drupal trademark or license, so we can't create 3rd party services like Automattic does. Although - I want these things. I know that there are lots of issues that affect contrib quality that we CAN influence. I would love to chat more about this with you, but I am not certain it is relevant to the topic in this post.

Lastly, I want to emphasize here that it is important for me to hear from all these voices. I am a string believer that perspectives other than your own are important for surfacing the best solutions and that well-managed disagreements are very constructive ways of solving problems. So when I say that I want to close this issue, it's not because I don't want to hear from the community. I definitely do. BUT - I want to focus that conversation on the advertising policy because I think that if we can agree (or agree to disagree on that), everything else will become much easier. Until then, we're just bringing philosophy to the table with no clear way to make a decision that everyone can agree on.

I will share once again that I think the initial impetus for this issue is not HOW to advertise, but to remove advertising from the home page:

I believe it is inappropriate for the primary action link on the front page of drupal.org to be an advertisement. People clicking on a link like that have every expectation that they will be seeing actual site content, and that's what they should see.

A "Try Drupal" page does sound like a really great idea, but to be linked to from that location on the homepage it should:

Have objective content - actually show people the best community resources for trying out Drupal quickly.
Make clear that Drupal is more than just a hosted solution; it's also free software that you can download and use however you want. (@yoroy's mockup at #2463205-18: First iteration of Drupal.org front page to support the content strategy work - which was not implemented - does a good job of making that clear on the homepage, although I think the Try Drupal page itself should do so also.)

That is not something that we are going to do, though we are continuing to work on improving the implementation with community feedback, and have already taken one step forward there - more coming.

Nedjo - for you in particular - I really respect what you are saying about the community. Both that it needs better representation on the home page and that we failed to include them in the Try Drupal roll out. I just don't think keeping this issue open is going to be helpful.

Sorry about that David! I was definitely having a time trying to keep it straight last night. So to be clear - you are also happier with Try Drupal on the front page as long as it is labelled as advertising?

I think if we can agree on something then it is that advertisements need to be marked as such. That's an industry standard that users do expect and I would expect us to follow that. It would be fair to the user

Is there a screenshot someone would be able to post of how others mark native advertising inline with the standards? I'm not familiar with those standards, myself.

Great. So I am hearing that the intent IS about labeling Try Drupal differently. We can leave this issue open for now, but when we open a new issue specifically for the proposed advertising policy, I will update the issue summary to reflect that we are going to sort the issue there, and then will be able to close this one out.

Sound good to everyone?

Also - I would like to echo Angie's request for examples. If you see an example of labelled ads that you think we should learn from, that would be very helpful.

Speaking of disclosure: I'm a member of the Drupal Association's advisory board. However, my comments in this issue are in my capacity of Drupal community member and don't represent the DA.

Assuming this ad is going to be on the home page, the question remains: what's the most appropriate form?

As catch noted, we already have an very close analogue for this new ad.

Both the "Try Drupal" ad and the "Looking for a hosting solution" rotating ad appear on the home page and direct users to another page on the site that consists of advertising for companies that provide Drupal hosting-type services. ("Try Drupal" appears to be largely a repackaging of the "Managed/enterprise hosting" ad program?)

The obvious way to add this new ad would be, as a standard ad, similar to the existing hosting ad.

I haven't heard any arguments as to why this new ad should be native. I acknowledge I find native ads generally distasteful, so I'm not likely to like them on our home page ;) Even so, there are more and less appropriate contexts, and this one just doesn't seem like a good candidate. It's too prominent. I can't think of a comparable website I use that has native ads this close to the top of the page. Can anyone else? Even a standard ad in that placement would be stretching it. A native ad? It makes me squirm.

@webchick

Is there a screenshot someone would be able to post of how others mark native advertising inline with the standards?

Unless we're using an ad blocker, most of us probably see native ads all the time without necessarily categorizing them as such. Many disclosures are variations on the phrase "Sponsored content".

A Drupal-related example of disclosure of non-native advertising is Drupal Watchdog--see the word "Advertising" above the ad at the bottom of the home page. (Another disclosure: I work for Tag1, the company that owns Drupal Watchdog, and I provide tech leadership for the Drupal Watchdog site.)

The sources I linked to above provide extensive detail, typologies, examples, and specific recommendations relating to native ads.

From the Interactive Advertising Bureau's "Native advertising playbook":

Regardless of native advertising unit type, the IAB advocates that, for paid native ad units, clarity and prominence of the disclosure is paramount.
The disclosure must:

• Use language that conveys that the advertising has been paid for, thus making it an advertising unit, even if that unit does not contain traditional promotional advertising messages.
• Be large and visible enough for a consumer to notice it in the context of a given page and/or relative to the device that the ad is being viewed on.

Simply put: Regardless of context, a reasonable consumer should be able to distinguish between what is paid advertising vs. what is publisher editorial content.

See pages 4-5 of that publication for 26 screenshot examples of native ads including a familiar form: the ads presented as search results by search engines such as Google's. Unfortunately not all of the screenshots are complete enough to include disclosure statements, but many do.

@David_Rothstein: thanks for those links, useful reading.

Just a quick update. Movement on this in two fronts:

1. We are sending our draft advertising guidelines to the Drupal.org Content working Group this week for their review and feedback, as well as opening an issue specifically for the guideline. The results of that conversation will be applied retroactively to all advertising, including Try Drupal.
2. We are also about to make the next iterative changes to the Drupal.org homepage which will include another round of edits that bring Try Drupal more in line with what's been asked for. I expect that the screenshot will be posted in an issue for discussion this week.

Both discussions will be time-bound, probably giving about 2 weeks for feedback. I want to stress that I think the advertising policy is the place where we should focus the conversation about advertising (not the home page iteration discussion).

@nedjo - thank you for the examples. I am reviewing with the team.

As @holly.ross.drupal mentioned, we have just opened up two issues that are aimed at moving this conversation a bit:

First, the next iteration of the homepage can be discussed at #2497145: Drupal.org front page iteration 2 June 2015. We have taken steps to further clarify the language in the Get Started section. This will also result in fixing the titles of a couple of second-layer landing pages.

Second, @clacina has opened a draft of a new advertising policy for Drupal.org. #2507867: Drupal.org Advertising Policy Please provide feedback in that issue.

With that, I am going to change the title of this issue. We are keeping language on the homepage that directs people to try a demo of Drupal. That link is not an advertisement. It is much needed content for evaluators.

The links on the /try-drupal page are "partner offers"—and could be labeled as such. While these offers are a form of advertising, they are definitely in support of the mission to maintain Drupal.org and connect evaluators with tools to try an installation of Drupal without needing to know how to create a local web server.

Right now our best option for these demos has been a vetted program of partner offered demonstration sites or services. That said, we could expand this page to include options that are a bit more inclusive of different ways to "try Drupal".

We currently, have a link to "Get Started" at the top of the Try Drupal page that we can make more prominent.

For other options that we include on this page, what would be an acceptable vetting process? We need to run this as a program where we ensure the options provided will be stable and available. That means someone is paying for that demonstration capability and needs to cover the cost of providing the demo. Distributions, like Erpal, OpenAtrium, or Open Publish, approach this in different ways. If they link to a demo, it is because they hope to convince customers to user their distribution, professional services or platform. Even demonstrations that are not focused on conversion, have to be financially supported. SimplyTest.me has ads and donated hardware that support it as a service. Would linking to SimplyTest.me with the ads on that page constitute advertising?

Ultimately, the Try Drupal partners have been doing what we hoped. They are connecting with new potential Drupal users and helping them convert to Drupal. We plan to expand that program to include more options, but any demonstration option that could lead to additional customer conversions should direct some of that financial support back to Drupal.org.

Now that the "Try Drupal" button is a prominent CTA in the header, maybe it's worth revisiting this discussion? Is this the most up to date issue?

These providers can help you try a demo installation of Drupal in 20 minutes or less

That doesn't seem true. The acquia landing page requires you to submit a form for a guided demo and the 1&1 link requires you to select and pay for a plan.

Am I daft or is this 100% sponsored content? I don't understand how we present this page as a first impression to new devs when it is just ads. This feels so cheap. :/

This feels so cheap. :/

I totally agree, and almost misleading. It was suggested to include simplytest.me on the Try Drupal page, but it was sadly turned down: #2498247: Try Drupal Program.

Since simplytest.me actually does offer a way of quickly trying Drupal, without jumping through any extra hoops like registration or handing over credit card information, including it on the "Try Drupal" page is worth contemplating, for sure.

There are some ideas around this program being announced/discussed/planned out at DrupalCon this week. No formal details yet, but the need to evolve how this works and create a more polished experience is clearly there.

One idea - not yet confirmed as a direction we can go - may be to try and rework the experience to a unified 'one click to try a polished Drupal demo' experience - and then to reformat the funnel for the partner experience to be a 'Want to take this demo work and turn it into a real site? Deploy on X, Y, Z or download an image'?

I guess One Click Drupal Installation is already there:

Try Drupal on something like without registration and all like as in

>>> https://simplytest.me/ <<<

#63 sounds amazing, but also a lot of work on both the evaluating side and the hosting side. In the meantime, does it make sense that to actually qualify to advertise on the Try Drupal page, hosting providers should be required to let people actually use a working Drupal installation? I tend to agree with @dddave in #61, it does feel like it cheapens d.o and Drupal by association (pun not intended).

I totally like #63 as a way better way to handle that.

I'm curious though whether it would be possible to improve the funnel experience by linking to a download page, like for example using a "Download" button next to "Try Drupal".
It could be a link to a download page with maybe the quick-start introductions from #2911319: Provide a single command to install & run Drupal + an automated download of the zip file, or anything similar.

Agreeing that #63 sounds like an awesome direction that would get us the best of both worlds (quick onboarding + commercial support for DA).

I was looking into Craft CMS today as one example, and their onboarding experience is:

1) Big ass "Try Craft for Free" button in the top menu:

2) This gives you two options: install or demo.

3) "Demo" gives you "your very own Craft demo site to fool around with." You just need to enter a name and email and agree to ToS. (Side note: opportunity for marketing placement in the footer, just sayin' ;))

4) Wait for an email to be sent to you. It took about a minute.

5a) The email contains site credentials (demo sites stay up for 48 hours, to reduce server overhead... also now you know you have a real email address... ka-CHING ;P)

5b) AND kind of a brief architectural overview of how the system is put together, which is pretty fricking rad, and we could do similar for Umami to give a quick orientation to the "big concepts" in Drupal.

5c) And closes with a list of "Learning resources" with docs, training course, etc. (Could also be "partners who could help you set this up," maybe?)

6) The demo site itself looks like a "real" site and you can poke around in the control panel to see how they have things set up.

I don't see a way from here to easily and obviously export my site off to bring to another provider, but then again we wouldn't really want people doing that with Umami anyway, since it's meant for only a "48 hour demo" purpose, like this. But there could be a static red bar above the admin panel that's like "Ready to try Drupal for real? Try one of our excellent hosting providers." or whatever.

-----

Anyway. The main point being that I went from "Hm. I wonder what Craft CMS is and how it works?" to "Oh, that's how." in about 5 minutes, and we need to shoot for something like that for Drupal as well. The current "Try Drupal" unfortunately does not provide this experience at all, forcing users to decide (or guess) on a provider before they even know what Drupal is and can do, making it (at minimum) a 20+ minute process, by which point they've already given up and installed WordPress. ;)

So I just logged back into my Drupal account for the first time in a long time - because I received an email reply to a topic which, at the time, I was fairly passionate about and reading the email stirred me enough to login and comment once again.

I still work with Drupal - I probably always will. I also work with Wordpress, with CiviCRM and with a few other bits of "webtech".

I find it mildly amusing that we've gone full circle on a 4 year old issue without any kind of resolution and we're still back at the same thing of "monetising" the visitors to the site for an open-source project for the benefit of a few corporate partners. Couple this with stuff like:

The email contains site credentials (demo sites stay up for 48 hours, to reduce server overhead... also now you know you have a real email address...
ka-CHING ;P)

Sidenote here - I appreciate that this may be a joke - but even as a joke it's worrying - Craft have the right approach to how this is handled: We use your name, email address, and IP address to create your customized Craft demo site. We do not use any of your information for marketing purposes or share it with 3rd parties. Here is our Privacy Policy.

and this:

but then again we wouldn't really want people doing that with Umami anyway, since it's meant for only a "48 hour demo"
purpose, like this. But there could be a static red bar above the admin panel that's like "Ready to try Drupal for real? Try one of our excellent hosting providers.

Sidenote here - a not-insignificant proportion of the "excellent hosting providers" don't actually provide hosting that's capable of properly meeting Drupal's resource requirements - but we don't check that as long as they pay right?

Makes me a bit ashamed of where this community may be headed - are we REALLY those people.

Ending on a high note:

The current "Try Drupal"
unfortunately does not provide this experience at all, forcing users to decide (or guess) on a provider before they even know what Drupal is and can do, making it (at minimum) a 20+ minute process, by which point they've already given up and installed WordPress. ;)

This I couldn't agree with more. But really as a community we need to have moved this conversation on more in 4 years - we haven't. We need to really think twice about whether we're an open source project and an open source community - or whether we're merely the free shop window and marketing department for a few partners. I don't mean to pick on Webchick's post - she and all the partners do a fantastic job and are very responsible for what Drupal is and what it's capable of - but that doesn't change the fact that this is an open source project and one which should, ultimately, be owned by and led by the community and not led from the nose chasing revenue at the expense of it's open-ness and it's ethos.

I am most likely in a minority in this scenario - and my contributions to drupal are utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I'm no longer immersed in this community to the degree I once was and I may never be that immersed again - but it's for reasons along the lines I've outlined above that I cannot become more immersed.

Take from this post what you will and please believe me when I say - this post is absolutely not intended to call out anyone personally and I have taken a single post to demonstrate points which are repeating themselves throughout the Drupal community and have persisted to varying degrees for years.

Mikey