Slogan Proposal Wiki!

I can see two motivations for changing this:

1) Search engines. If you search for "open source cms" (without the quotes) Drupal doesn't do nearly as well as it should. Hopefully the "Powered by drupal" block in D6 will fix that. It's something that no individual Drupal service provider will ever be able to achieve nearly as well as Drupal.org. I don't care too much about this.

2) Users. These are like, the people we care about. We want more of them (really, we do, some people may say otherwise but the community in general benefits from gaining new members and we put a lot of effort towards that). Community Plumbing does not get them excited about Drupal. They see it and are confused. We are a usable project. With each release we make major usability enhancements. Why not make a usability enhancement on something that is one of our most visible facets?

According to http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://drupal.org Community Plumbing was added between may and <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20020720232212/http://drupal.org/'>june of 2002 (5.5 years ago). Perhaps a community member from back then could enlighten us to the decision process on this (/me imagines some doing it on a whim).

There are certain time-honored traditions which serve our project well (the drop is always moving, code/contributions are gold, join forces with others) but that doesn't mean that they should all be set in stone.

I like Khalid's perspective: let's come up with something that is inspiring and unique but that better expresses what Drupal was, is, and can be.

--
Knaddisons Denver Life | mmm Chipotle Log | The Big Spanish Tour

Although the concepts and proposed slogans would really sound great, I doubt it will sound appealing to most newbies to CMS's.
Imho, I think it the "performance" of Drupal should be a bit implied in the slogans above.

powerful, flexible, and modular --things a developer would want to hear.

I don't know your target market but I bet they'll all give an ear for these slogans. But with a slogan or not, there are still many good reasons to love and grow with Drupal.

marc.robinsone caballero

This interesting discussion looks like its set to continue for a while. What happens after all the brain storming? How does the decision finally get made?

I like Community Plumbing. It describes Drupal well even now.
I wrote this up a while ago so I wouldn't have to again.
http://www.blkmtn.org/community-plumbing.

Drupal.org is not a profit center. _{Yet another} 'Open Source CMS' sounds like a generic description rather then an unique and identifiable slogan which we already have.

By going it's own path years ago, by doing it's best to stick to standards and learning from mistakes, by building out it's infrastructure, Drupal has continued to advance as the skill, knowledge and expertise of it's community has grown. This has contributed to a growing number of companies and individuals using Drupal without having to change the nature of the community.

In my opinion, those companies should have tag lines that sell Drupal as a service. The Drupal community has somehow managed to grow with it's current slogan, what is this rush to change that which is identifiable to the community? Using negative attacks, as above, to 'prove' or market your your point does not actually make your point better. I'd see going with a 'marketing' slogan as a serious negative thing for this community and it would disturb me greatly becuase then we would start 'seeming' like a business. While it is true, many of you run businesses, many of us do not.

I'll add a few to the list. Much of what I think about "community plumbing" is already posted at http://drupal.org/node/160765.

• Drupal | Communicate, Participate, Syndicate
• Drupal | The web, made to order
• Drupal | Your web, made to order
• Drupal | The node is the network

Personally I feel the slogan should be directly related to what Drupal is. Slogans about Drops make me think of water filters, and slogans about plumbing, well, that's always been a bit icky to me.

My preference would be towards slogans with descriptive keywords that directly relate to what Drupal is. The slogan won't mean anything to anyone except people who don't know what Drupal is at all. Then it will be perhaps the first thing they consider for more information.

Think about what the hit result for Drupal will look like in Google. That's the first impression for a lot of folks.

Should Drupal come up on searches for plumbers? Or ocean currents? What about content management? Website software? Open Source?

Laura
pingVision, LLC

In my case, the top results are:

[1]

"An engine suitable to setup or build a content driven or community driven website. Modular design allows flexibility in design."

--Drupal.org
[2]

"Drupal (pronounced /ˈdruːpəl/) is a free and open source modular content management system (CMS) written in the programming language PHP."

--Wikipedia
[3]

"Drupal is software that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a great variety of content on a website."

--OpenSourceCMS

Common keywords: "community", "build", "manage", and "content".

In terms of reference volume (Google trends)

The term "cms" --> consistent search volume since 2004
* common searches are from Russia, Denmark, Switzerland, India, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Finland and Australia.

The term "content management system" --> search volume is declining gradually
* common searches are from Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, Austria, Denmark and Germany.

Observations

• Obviously, the term CMS (abbreviated) is highly searched from European countries.
• Content management system (in full words) is highly searched from Asian countries
  I don't know what the statistics mean but I think it could help in using or eliminating the use of the term "cms".

I have always hated 'community plumbing', so a big +1 from me on a new slogan. I think the most important points are:

1) Drupal is not a CMS, it is a framework with which you can build a CMS (and lots of other things), which is much better.

2) The 'building block' concept is critical, that's what makes Drupal so powerful and useful. We can't use the work 'Legos' in our slogan because that's a trademark, but we need something that implies that.

3) Many of the components empower admins and users to do things themselves.

Drupal | Web building blocks
Drupal | The Web, your way
Drupal | More than a CMS

Also, we probably need both a tag line (which should be very short and memorable) and a slogan (which can be longer and more descriptive). I may not have that terminology right, so marketing people can correct me on that.

I just thought of another, a little play on the CCK name:

Drupal | Web Construction Kit

"Drops make an ocean" sounds like a great slogan to me as someone who knows about drupal and its flexibility. kbahey is right when he says that it can mean many things and when I read the slogan I thought of all the little and bigger pieces the work different people contribute that sum up in a great product. So I really like the slogan.

On the other hand it is really vague. It is the opposite of the "Connecting people, process and information" slogan and while I think "Drops make an ocean" would work great for people interested in the community people in a position to choose which product to offer to clients or people that see drupal in a pure financial practical view might not take the time to figure out what it means.

To throw something in myself:
Drupal | The Web Management System
Drupal | Web Management System
Drupal | Web Management Framework

I haven't even decided yet for myself where I would want the slogan to aim. However I'm asking myself: Should the slogan describe what drupal is or what the spirit of drupal (community) is?

Sebastian

Some thoughts:

Drupal | Control your Content Flow
Drupal | Content Management Framework
Drupal | Empowering Web Construction

I'd like a more descriptive slogan whilst preserving the mystic around the name and creating more appeal to a broader audience. Alas, not an easy task..

While it's a bit controversial, I agree wholeheartedly that Drupal is in line for a branding makeover. Druplicon and the 'Community Plumbing' slogan have served the project well, but like a module whose code needs refactoring, we shouldn't be afraid to change things when the time is right.

Vision. Dries' now infamous talk in Sunnyvale said "We've eliminated webmasters. Now we need to eliminate web developers." Though lots of people making money as Drupal web developers quietly expressed concerns about this, he's right in a key way: Anything that exists in Drupal should be as easy to set up as Netvibes or iGoogle when it comes to adding content blocks, theming, etc.. Developers should be able to focus on building things that don't yet exist. If we take Drupal module assembly to that level of construction simplicity, it's dramatically different than anything else available. What do you call such a thing?

Drupal's flexibility makes it tremendously difficult to describe in a single sentence. Drupal works on two levels: the first is an administrator/non-programmer configurable set of tools for building content-driven web sites and web apps without writing code. he second is an architecture that allows developers to add new capabilities to that set of tools quickly and effectively. Both of those aspects are important, and both of them sell to different audiences.

One of my biggest concerns is the fact that building out #1 can very easily destroy #2 unless Drupal's development philosophy and 'best practices' for developers are firmed up. One of the long-time advantages of Drupal for devs was that it was relatively easy to click a new module into place to do a few simple things. The more configurable everything is at the front end, the more we begin to build things with a mind towards non-programmers assembling complex sites from scratch, the more internal scaffolding and configuration UI/logic needs to be put into place. Handling the edge cases that developers implemeted with a few dozen lines of PHP can easily spawn dozens of complex and baffling screens with tweaky override options and baffling workflow for non-programmers.

IMO, the future for Drupal lies in structured metadata defining workflows, configurations. Designing those structures to be divorced from any UI, and to be configurable via code when necessary, will keep the 'developer tier' manageable. Building use-case specific configuration UIs on top of those systems, with different tools exposing only the capabilities needed by a particular target audience, will be the way to sanity IMO.

Without an approach like that, I'm concerned that the drive to 'eliminate the developer' will end up doubling or tripling the footprint of the average Drupal site, but a programmer's detailed knowledge will still be necessary to use the 'friendly configuration tools' effectively.

Puzzle pieces and building blocks are two conceptual metaphors that work well with Drupal's architecture and strengths.

Drupal: Assembling The Web
Drupal: Build The Web
Drupal: Putting The Pieces Together

Not sure how much sense those make, but they're about evoking an emotional response that's true to Drupal's strengths and merits.

I added some variations: "From drops to oceans" and "Drops make oceans". More descriptive and loftier than "Drops make an ocean", yet accurate, and catchy.

Drupal performance tuning, development, customization and consulting: 2bits.com
Personal blog: Baheyeldin.com

I'm not sure if the aesthetics should our primary concern. I've Googled 'open source cms' (without quotes) just like greggles at the start of the thread and every single CMS that is before Drupal (and all the big ones are) has either the words 'content' or 'cms' and 'open source' in the title (Mambo serve is the exception). Postnuke and Alfresco also have those words and they have a lower ranking - but that says more about Drupal's popularity. The ranking may be a coincidence but an uninitiated person looking at the list won't see the key thing in the title. Something like 'The internet operating system' might distinguish it in the long list but most searchers won't get that far. So IMO getting Drupal to score closer to the top 10 should be a priority. (But of course the links to opensourcecms.com and the Pakt award page will lead people to Drupal more reliably than a straight search so maybe I'm misplacing the emphasis.)

Dominik Lukes
http://www.bohemica.com
http://tuit.glottalstart.com

Drupal | Web building blocks by the community

Drupal | Extends your web

With the goal of making "Drupal the dominant technology used to build sites on the web." in mind, here are a few thoughts:

A slogan is just the welcome sign.
A good slogan will pique curiosity and bring a user in the door, but it won't keep them in the room. I think it will help to see the slogan as just the first step of a larger welcome effort to bring users into the community. A powerful slogan may bring someone to the front-page, but it's the longer, more descriptive byline that follows it, the even more descriptive paragraph after that, the list of things Drupal will enable the person to do, and the showcase list of prominent sites built successfully with Drupal, that will convince the visitor who's taken a tentative first step into the site it's worth their effort to investigate Drupal further and find out for themselves whether it's the best choice for them as well.

Which is to say, i don't think we need to worry about capturing drupal's power and value in three or four words. As others have said in this thread, it's probably impossible. Rather, all we have to do in the slogan is communicate it generally, then expand on it in the byline(s), and then expand on it in greater and more specific detail on the front page.

A Slogan and a longer byline to go with it
That said, I wonder if it may help to brainstorm not just a short imaginative slogan but a longer and more descriptive and specific sentence to follow and expand on it as well. What do you guys think?

Here's how Drupal's fellow web-tools do it:

Django
The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines.
Django makes it easier to build better Web apps more quickly and with less code.

Rails
Web development that doesn't hurt
Ruby on Rails is an opensource web framework that's optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring convention over configuration.

Wordpress
Blog Tool and Weblog Platform
A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.

All three of the above follow the same pattern: Product name, slogan, descriptive sentence.
Of the 3, I think Django's is the most effective. It communicates the most information the most concisely. In those 3 short lines, I know the name of the product, who it's for, what it will allow me to do, and the ease with which it will allow me to do it.

Would it help to try the same here as well?

Here's a quick stab at one borrowing from ideas presented by others above:

Drupal
The Website construction kit for everyone.
Drupal enables you to build any kind of website, from blog, to community hub, to e-commerce site, quickly and pain-free.

Drupal | Grab & Use
A free robust and secure content management system that is easy to use.

That is not that much original, but here it goes:

Drupal | The web is what you want it to be
Drupal | The web is what you make
Drupal | The web you do
Drupal | The web you make
Drupal | You make the web
Drupal | Make the web

Personally, I like Alexei's "Grab & Use"

José San Martin
Chuva Inc. | http://chuva-inc.com

I spend a lot of time out of every week giving some level of talk on "What is Drupal". I spend AT LEAST 2 hours a week giving this exact speech (some weeks it's more like 5 or 6 hours). Point being, I've put a lot of thought into this, and frankly, "community plumbing" doesn't quite cover it. With that said, I'll toss out what is essentially my "elevator pitch" for Drupal.

"Drupal is not JUST a CMS. What Drupal really is is a Rapid Development Framework, that happens to do Content Management out of the box."

As I said, I spend probably a couple hours a week speaking specifically on this topic. It's my JOB to make Drupal accessible to the "layman". And with that said, I have a couple (even whimsical) suggestions.

Drupal | Today Content Management, Tomorrow... The WORLD!
Drupal | More than Content Management
Drupal | Flexibility in a Box
Drupal | Because the Web should be Easy
Drupal | D.igital R.evolution U.tility PAL
Drupal | D.igital R.evolution U.tility P.ersonal A.pplication L.ayer

I've got more, but I'm going to leave it at this for the moment.

Eclipse

Drupal | Flexible framework for powerful ideas

I also quite like Khalid's "Drops make oceans", if paired with an appropriate byline I could definitely see it working.

I'm not sure how important the slogan will be. But I hope we don't select a slogan that turns off people, either by its obscurity or by its illusion to inappropriate behavior. "Drops make oceans" works, but you need to be inside the community to have it really make sense. And "Do it with Drupal" conjures up interesting images, but might not be received well in some cultures.

I would opt for something simple like "The platform for today's web" or "The web platform you can count on".

Bob Fabian

When I explain to people what Drupal is, I usually use the analogy of building blocks or Legos. ("You start with a basic page/menu platform, then you snap in forums, you snap in eCommerce, you snap in wiki-like book pages...")

I really like "Web construction kit" best, but it doesn't convey one important unique feature. Drupal is itself a web application. It is a web application for constructing websites. This is what makes it different from a framework (like Rails or Django) for which the building block analogy also applies. The idea of using a web application to create a website isn't unique to Drupal of course (the blogging engines popularized this) but it does take it many steps further because Drupal aims to allow non-programmers to create any type of website. (I'm not sure it achieves this aim yet, but that is the goal.)

I'm not sure how to turn that into a slogan or if it is too complicated to convey --
Drupal - A web application for website construction

Naw -- doesn't work. Web construction kit is catchier. But it's important to talk about the web application aspect when you're "marketing" Drupal.

Maria

I've been tracking this thread for a while, trying to "soak in it" before weighing in. As I've thought about it more, I've realized that what has made me uncomfortable with the slogan debate is that we're discussing the wrong thing. What Drupal really needs is not just a new slogan, but crisply defined brand identity and messaging architecture. It doesn't exist today, and that's why this thread is so long, with no sign of converging/resolving.

There are lots of things in a brand identity and messaging architecture, and we should discuss them all at some point. But as it relates to this thread, the most clarifying thing we could do is to come up with a positioning statement for Drupal. If you find yourself wondering "what's positioning?" at this point, go read "The Secret of Moulin Rouge and the Art of Product Positioning" over on the Pragmatic Marketing site. Within the article, you'll find the definition of a positioning statement, which is:

Positioning Statement Template
1) For [target customers]
2) Who want/need [specific problem / compelling reason to buy/adopt]
3) Our product is a [name the product category in which you play]
4) That provides [key benefits that solve the problem described above]
5) Unlike [alternatives and competitors]
6) We offer [key differentiation]

It looks simple but it is a real bear to complete. I've seen intelligent and normally civilized product teams reduced to screaming and yelling and throwing chairs while trying to agree on how to complete this template. Why? Because you have to make very uncomfortable sacrifices. A positioning statement is a single paragraph, not a book. And that means you can't put everything in there.

So I'm starting a new wiki to work on the Drupal Positioning Statement. Come on over and weigh in.

What about "Community Plumbing Actually"?

The slogan does not have to be the same thing as the <title> element.

If drupal.org wants more traffic (CMS-related keywords do bring traffic), the title element could be something like this:

<title>Drupal CMS | Open Source Content Management System</title>

The only people who see the title element are people who are finding the Drupal.org home page in the search results -- few of which are looking for "community plumbing" or would have any idea what "community plumbing" means without a larger context. Using "Drupal CMS | Open Source Content Management System" immediately lets them know what the site is about. They can learn about the slogan once they visit the home page of the site.

The slogan could appear on the home page and in the meta description (e.g., Community Plumbing). The meta description tag generally becomes the text snippet in the search results.

I think the <title> element should be used for keywords, not for a slogan. It's better for SEO and better for usability.

Drupal | Caution! May cause extremely attractive and powerful websites. Use with care!

:D

After doing a little research, I've found that most people (over 9,000+ per month) search for the term "content management system." Additionally, besides the organic search results, this is also the (cms-related) term that has more advertisers bidding on it, and more potential customers clicking on it than any other. From a marketing/seo perspective, home page, title-tag should include the term "content management system."

It matters not that there are so many other more accurate ways to describe the virtues of Drupal, or that to call it a mere content management system may be an insult to its power and flexibility. What matters is what the thousands of potential new users are looking for.

I think it's not only possible, but advisable to sell Drupal to the non-technical advisers out there who don't care about the back-end plumbing.

The title/description combination are what compels a searcher to click on the link and find out more. Remember that in the search results, it's the <title> tag that displays as a clickable link, and the <description> tag that displays as supporting text immediately below.

Something structured like this:

<title>Drupal Content Managment System, High Performance Web Software</title>

<description>Conquor the Web with Drupal! Fast and Powerful, Drupal's modular design gives you the flexibility to build the web your way. From the simple to the complex, come see how Drupal delivers.</description>

Slogan (Appears in visible page header): "Conquer the Web with Drupal." (or something similarly appealing).

Right now the Drupal home page does not currently have a description tag, so Google is using the DMOZ.org description. This means that a
<meta name="robots" content="noodp,noydir" />
is necessary in order to exercise more control over what is displayed in the search results.

None of these things would change the focus, the mission, or the other elements that endear Drupal to its community. It would merely enlarge the community. Which, as I understand it, is the ultimate goal.

Ron Jones

I like "Drupal - Web 2.0 for People 2.0"

I'm newbe in Drupal and now are learning some about this cms to migrate my sites to best CMS.

Directorio de Tomelloso | Inmobiliarias Tomelloso

Listening to "Dries State of Drupal" speech (Drupalcon Boston 2008 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3401332494586334627 )

• Drupal - Bring your internet to the next level
• Drupal - We're working on the next level internet
• Drupal - Working on the semantic web
• Drupal - Next level web solutions

Maybe for D7?

A lot of good suggestions above, but for my money i think a simple hard-hitting slogan is the go:

Drupal | Unlock the true power of the Internet

Bidding Directory

Drupal: More than just a Content Management System.

Slogans about Drops make me think of plumbing, which is a bit disgusting to me.

Slogan: Drupal rocks...

Properties Spain

Jeff Robins has an excellent point about pidgeonholing Drupal through poor choice of vocabulary. Drupal has a really broad base for implementation of which community site building is now only a narrow slice. I think the slogan should reflect the richness of this project's applications and the diversity of development that Drupal can support.

I think something like "a flexible frame work for site building" is appropriate. Unless you are the Knight Foundation, whose people give out millions of dollars to Drupal's project teams in order to make tools so simple that everyone's grandmother could pop open a blog and granny doesn't know what "flexible framework" or "site building" means. So if the individuals who should be using a tool like Drupal can't identify with the marketing then you are bouncing potential users even before they start.

I would pick a slogan that says Drupal does a lot of work for you already, Drupal is a building tool, and you can make anything with Drupal.

Something like, but not exactly:

"A foundation, a tool kit, and so much more"
"A free and open web construction kit"

My 2 cents.

It appears that most community regulars have posted their thoughts and the only followups we get at this point are from spammers. So...I'm closing comments on this thread.

And, after all, if someone wants to propose a new slogan this is a wiki so it can be done that way.