The 2026 Drupal Business Survey is open. Your response will help shape the future of the Drupal business ecosystem.
By clacina on
One of the Drupal Association's primary missions is to grow the adoption of Drupal. We are about to launch a new program on April 15th called Try Drupal. The program will make it easy and fast for evaluators to try Drupal and have a simple, great experience while on Drupal.org.
We’ve created Try Drupal with our Premium Hosting Supporters to make it easier for CMS evaluators and Drupal.org newcomers to test and work with a Drupal demo site. The Program will showcase a selection of Hosting Companies where a new user can quickly (in less than 20 minutes) sign up and have a Drupal demo site up and running for them to use for free.
This is part of the Drupal Association’s initiative to develop a new revenue stream through advertising programs on Drupal.org. This revenue will help fund various site initiatives by the Association to improve Drupal.org performance, and make it easier to use and more secure. After interviewing many members of the community, we determined that new advertising products should be useful to Drupal.org visitors, support our mission to grow the adoption of Drupal, and should not interfere with visitors contributing to the project.
To ensure a positive Drupal experience, partners need to adhere to the following guidelines:
- Users are directed to a self-serve sign up platform
- Users can create a free account for the demo site that accommodates a trial installation of Drupal 7 or 8
- Users can create a website in 20 minutes or less
- The demo site should be available to the user for a minimum of one day upon sign up
- The partner cannot include a paywall or require a credit card upon sign up
The Try Drupal program will be featured on the homepage of Drupal.org. It will launch with a larger iterative change to the homepage, with an emphasis on helping users move from newcomer, to learner, to skilled Drupal community members.
It’s important that we fund Drupal.org improvements, and that we do so in a responsible way that respects the community. We anticipate rolling out more key advertising programs throughout 2015, stay tuned for more updates. Thanks for taking the time to read about our initiatives, and please tell us your thoughts!
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Comments
Great initiative, and cudos for trying out new ways of getting funding for drupal.org.
But I for one can't be bothered filling out forms, and I am probably not the only one, so why not include a link to http://simplytest.me/ on the "Try Drupal" page? With simplytest.me you can get a demo of Drupal up and running in 30 seconds.
I guess the question is: Shold the focus be on generating revenue, or showcasing Drupal, or could it be both?
Thanks for the feedback! We designed this program because we do believe it can be both a great showcase of Drupal, and a revenue generating program. One of our requirements to ensure a positive experience for newcomers is that the user should have access to the demo site for at least a day, and some of our partners even provide access for up to a month.
Users of SimplyTest.me only have access to a demo site for 30 minutes, although I believe if you fill out a form and register, you gain access for a few more hours.
This program is brand new, and we’re working on bringing in additional partners for more of a variety of solutions. We’re also discussing options to include solutions like SimplyTest.me or others that are not premium hosting supporters.
Please stay tuned for more updates as we continue to grow this program!
Carrie
Very excited to see this program!
As another option, we having been running TryDrupal8.com for some time now. We have taken the backend through a few iterations to ensure folks can get access to an instance of D8 for 24 hours by simply clicking a single button and have access in literally 2 seconds.
I do think that if the goal is to truely increase adoption highlighting solutions such as SimplyTest.me and TryDrupal8.com would be a good idea.
Honestly, I would like to explore the possiblity to push test instances to a premium hosting provider via TryDrupal8.com AFTER a user has touched the CMS and decided it is time to get a more persistant site up. Does anyone have any thoughts on that? We have been playing with Pantheons CLI tools to see if this is feasible.
Thanks!
Nick
Hi Nick,
I'm currently speaking with your colleague Michael trying to set up a call to discuss. Hopefully we will be able to connect this week.
Thanks,
Carrie
Its proberly me, who cant find it but where it the program placed on the homepage??