SEO & Traffic from other CMS'
If we are going to generate more traffic for Drupal 6 I think we need to focus on current non Drupal CMS users - since they are familiar with what their CMS can / can't do. Drupal 6 is more elegant than Drupal 4/5 and deserves some attention from them. The drupal.org site is way more organized (one thing that turns new Drupal users off) than it was a year ago and there is talks of a new UI for Drupal.org. Now is the time to really dig in with marketing efforts.
Let's create some sort of plan to introduce WP, Joomla, and the other CMS users to Drupal. That means thinking like WP (and others) users and comparing everyday CMS activities with a specific CMS to Drupal. But to get those users here we need to start doing all of this marketing in such a way to pull those users to here or to our blog, which would link back to some related Drupal content. In other words, we need to start using some good SEO practices that in the long run will help Drupal in great ways.
We have some darn smart Drupalers here, I know a decent SEO plan should not be hard to make between us. Can we all create a list of rules and derive a plan from that? I don't mind blogging about Drupal, I planned to actually, but I want to make sure we are all doing this in such a way to help build the Drupal base and doing "marketing" at the same time.
I look forward to helping Drupal in this way.
Ical feed
This is good idea
I think a fair comparison, highlighting Drupal's strengths compared to other CMS's would be great.
An extension of "Is Drupal right for me?" would be welcome.
Kieran
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Amazon, Thanks and note
Amazon,
Thanks and note taken. I do plan to blog more on this.
One thing I think would be interesting to other CMS users from Joomla and Wordpress is a side by side comparison. IE, let's clone x with Joomla vs Drupal etc. Time it, make it a case study etc. The downside to that, it is somewhat biased, from my perspective since I am not an avid user of other CMS'. What do you think? I wouldn't mind at least trying to do this just once. I may learn something in the process that can contribute to the CMS (Drupal or other)
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Elvis McNeely
Blogging about Drupal and web development: http://www.elvisblogs.org/drupal
Offering Drupal, eCommerce and Web services: http://www.lafayetteweb.com
Something more interesting...
This post was brought to my attention by a developer from one of our "competing" open source projects, and brought up the fact that we'd all be much better served by compiling documentation to pull people from proprietary content management systems than other open source ones. Attempting to "poach" from other projects is not really the best use of our time.
So what about Sharepoint vs. Drupal, WebCT vs. DrupalEd, etc. Case studies interviewing companies about "Why we switched from Evil Corporate System that was costing us $300,000 per month to Drupal, and LOVE IT!"
Webchick, Yes, the title
Webchick,
Yes, the title isn't friendly. I was trying to make a point. Drupal has been unfriendly in the past. Those folks went elsewhere. And now, slowly, some are coming back to Drupal.
In time more and more non Drupal users who use the "other" cms will give Drupal another try. But, how long will that take? With better SEO practice Drupal can get the traffic it deserves (from other CMS' users). Drupal.org is has horrible on-page SEO. Strip the CSS and look at the document structure and you will see some common mistakes throughout most pages. I brought this up in IRC and folks balk at it. But, as someone else has brought up on another group, there is no H1 tag on Drupal.org pages. That sounds useless to most but just that alone would increase drupal.org traffic.
OH, I regress! LOL - Looks like someone has made some changes to Drupal.org page structure and Google has / is giving serps now - Read http://drupal.org/node/223630
to know what I am talking about...
But, onto your points. Yes, comparing other licensed systems would have a better benefit on corporate related users. Thanks for the tips.
Regards
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Elvis McNeely
Blogging about Drupal and web development: http://www.elvisblogs.org/drupal
Offering Drupal, eCommerce and Web services: http://www.lafayetteweb.com
Feature by feature comparison
Hi there,
I was thinking for a while of the best way to compare cms and this is what I will try to do in the coming weeks: instead of doing a full comparison in one article I will publish several articles on one specific feature or theme. For example it could be features such as installation, custom content creation (CCK), etc... but also topics such as : business models and eco-systems, supports, etc...
I've decided to start the comparison with the following : Ez Publish, Joomla and Wordpress. To my mind Ez Publish is the most serious competitor to Drupal (especially in France) and I hope that I will also be able to use this comparison as a benchmark to make propositions for the Drupal development team...
PS : I will write the articles in French and then translate them in English. help would be appreciated so that I could have a well written article ;-)
Alex
http://www.ineation.com