One of the most important financial sources for Drupal Association are membership fees. They help fund community projects like DrupalCon scholarships, grants, Drupal.org improvements and more. Currently, there are 800,000 d.o user accounts and only 3,000 of them are Association members. We are looking for ways of increasing this number. If we can grow our membership we will be able to raise more money for various community projects, most importantly for Drupal.org itself.
In a recent survey we asked the Drupal community: What could/should the Drupal Association be doing to build up memberships?
And we heard loud and clear the suggestion to make membership obvious to anyone who downloads Drupal or who visits Drupal.org. ( Here are the survey results
Recently we also launched DA newsletter to keep community informed on what we've been working on, what is happening and how we help Drupal project flourish. We would like to add information about this newsletter somewhere on Drupal.org also, with the hope that it will reach more people and educate them about Drupal Association.
We would like to hear community opinion - where and how could we make Drupal Association more visible on Drupal.org?
I've put together some ideas for your consideration:
To see these ideas on the site pages, see this slideshow
-
Your Dashboard:
Place DA member badge in bottom left corner
If the person is not a member, we could put a "Join the DA" and "Sign up for DA newsletter" links in place of the badge. -
Drupal.org profile page:
Place this text below the already visible member badge:
"Find other Drupal Association members near you:
Individual members
Organization members" -
Getting Involved Guide
within Ways to get involved:
Add "Join the Drupal Association" and an explanation of why and how to join.
within Donations:
Add: "Donate to the DA to support Drupal.org infrastructure and community initiatives". -
Community
below Search Users, add
"Find other Drupal Association members near you:
Individual members
Organization members"
in section Where is the Drupal Community?:
Add text: "In the Drupal Association, working on DrupalCons, Drupal.org improvements, infrastructure maintenance, and more. Join us!" -
Groups.drupal.org
Add DA member badge below the user picture on user pages -
In Log in/Register for Drupal.org
Add text in the Welcome Email about the DA and invite people to Join the DA and sign up for the DA newsletter.
Which of these ideas sound like a way to go? Maybe you have other suggestions? Let us know!
Comments
Quick thoughts
Quick thoughts:
Dashboard - if it was a block (on by default) that I can turn off, I have no problem with it. I use the dashboard to quickly find info, and this would turn into an eyesore quickly if I didn't have the ability to get rid of it.
Profile - I don't know how much time people spend looking at their profile page, but we can modify the current text.
Getting Involved - Do you propose adding that text on every page in the Getting Involved guide? I'm definitely against that. It doesn't fit with the continuity of the Guide, and would feel more like pestering. We can add text to http://drupal.org/getting-involved sidebar - basically modify the Donations section.
Member Directory - If we're not doing anything super-fancy, I think all we need to do is add a block.
Groups - That would work - should we also do Localize? (I don't use Localize.d.o, so I'm not sure how it's set up.)
User Register Email - Makes sense to me!
So my only major concern is the Getting Involved Guide. If mentioning the DA fits organically into a page, I have no problem with talking about it. Simply adding links just to add them is not the right way to go. Make it fit with the context of the page.
I think we should add the DA
I think we should add the DA badge not just on g.d.o but on all sites. We need a scalable way to do that, though, and I think a hovercard on the user's profile to show all their badges is the best way.
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
I think we should go ahead
I think we should go ahead with most simple ones - 3 and 6. 3 - of course not on every page, but fitting organically, as silverwing noted.
1 and 4 could also be done.
5 - Agree on adding badge on g.d.o and all other sites, but this probably will have to wait till we will work out how to share user pictures and other user profile fields from d.o to all sub-sites.
2 - I don't think it will add much value considering already present badge and other text there.
Also, maybe we could add DA
Also, maybe we could add DA newsletter to "My newsletters" tab at the user profile on d.o?
Currently there are 3 subscriptions available there:
- Drupal newsletter
- Security announcements
- Maintainer news
slideshow access
Don't have access to the slideshow.
Fixed
Thanks for pointing that out, Gábor. Access is open to all on the doc now.
Redesign the badge
Make it look so awesome that people wants to create even stickers out of it and put it even in their fridges
We have to improve Drupal branding
John Gavula did some great work on it http://gavuladesign.com/branding-blog/unofficial-drupal-association-logo...
All the cool kids
If the graphic is tremendously appealing and it appears (unobtrusively) where Drupal people are, we can make belonging to the Drupal Association one of the things that all the cool kids do.
Rick Nashleanas
www.monarchdigital.com
Your Dashboard Yes, so long
Yes, so long as it's configurable for removal like everything else on the page.
Yes. +1
Yes, but only in the section "Where is the Drupal Community?"
6.
+1 for "Add text in the Welcome Email about the DA and invite people to Join the DA and sign up for the DA newsletter."
Based on pages with highest traffic
From Google Analytics, there are some pages worth considering in this effort because they have the highest traffic. I want to emphasize that I'm not for putting mention of the DA in a place that makes no sense.
With that said, here's the top 10 list of pages viewed in the past year (June 2011-June 2012)
Page:
1. (other)
2. /
3. /download
4. /project/modules
5. /project/drupal
6. /project/themes
7. /start
8. /documentation
9. /project/views
10. /home
Would a mention of the DA fit in any of these pages?
What about an email after Drupal.org account is confirmed?
The way we have Drupal.org accounts set up, you receive a confirmation email from info@... so you can confirm your email address. I'm not seeing any good place within that email to mention the DA, but I would propose for discussion the idea of an email to new Drupal.org account holders. It would be generated after the account email is confirmed and it would be a helpful guide:
You have an account, Now what?
-Download Drupal
-Check out Documentation
-Get some modules
-Ways to Get Involved
-Join the Drupal Association
-and where to go if you need guidance (Issue Queue).
I'm sure this could be expanded, but I definitely think it would be helpful for new-to-Drupal folks.
Great idea. Please post into
Great idea. Please post into http://groups.drupal.org/marketing-drupal to try to get some folks working on rewriting that welcome mail.
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Cross-posted now on Marketing-Drupal group
Thanks greggles for the suggestion. I cross-posted this idea here http://groups.drupal.org/node/238008 and if people like it, I'll start a wiki so we can get the copy ready to go.
Cross-posting the Wiki here from Marketing-Drupal group
I posted a draft of a Welcome Email at the wiki here http://groups.drupal.org/node/243238
Any ideas/edits you have are very much appreciated.
As silverwing has mentioned, there is already an issue in the queue about this at http://drupal.org/node/1318940 so it will be great to take a ready-to-go email that has community support and implement it for our new account holders via this issue.