Pardon the naming confusion! ComingSoon is already here. Or to put it another way, this project is not coming soon; it’s already here. It simple is: ComingSoon.

ComingSoon is a Drupal 7 distribution to quickly create a pre-launch site announcing your project and start collecting email addresses for your early adopters as you develop your game plan, validate customer needs and build your version 1.0.

If you’ve ever heard of LaunchRock.com (the ultimate meta-startup!), then you understand the basic concept: create a launch page to tell people about what you are thinking or planning to do. You announce your revolution and collect signups from early adopters.

Now, instead of a third-party solution, you can use Drupal to create your launch site. This means you keep your data independent and, in turn if you site is in Drupal, you can convert that initial site into your real site when you really open the functional doors.

Announcing ComingSoon Distribution for Drupal 7

ComingSoon as a project took various turns during its eventual creation. It started as a mere concept in the summer of 2011 in this GDO discussion which aimed mostly at getting a theme together to bundle up other modules. Eventually most of the main work was put into the Sign Up Share Track affiliate module, during the days leading up Startup Weekend Paris in 2012, as discussed in this blog post on Drupal as a Prototyping Tool. By that point most of the working code was in place for the sign up and tracking part.

Rarely do people care just about the nuts and bolts. They want the full package, the fully working machine. Unfortunately, this kind of extra work rarely gets shared due to the extra time and energy it takes to get to the finish line. In any case, over the last couple days, I decided to push this work through, so we worked on ensuring all of the main functionality, creating various features for background image and about page and finally crafting the drush.make and installation profile.

Viola: ComingSoon is now my first shared and working Drupal Distribution for Drupal 7. Horray!

What’s It Do? How Does It Work?

ComingSoon provides the same page features as LaunchRock.com, namely:

• create launch page for collecting sign ups
• create dynamic share page for first members to share with friends and collect points
• notify users when people sign up via your link
• collect user contact info for export or sending emails

In terms of customizations and styles, ComingSoon distro makes it possible to:

• edit and change a background image, logo and various other styles
• change your launch message to members

Finally, ComingSoon is a Drupal 7 site so you can basically add and expand like any normal CMS site.

Demo Site / Support ComingSoon

While development and issues for this project will occur at ComingSoon Issue queue, we’ve also launched a Coming Soon site for testing and collecting info from early adopters. Sign up and check out how the flow works here:

http://comingsoon.int3c.com/

Conclusion: Got an Idea You Want to Test the Waters with? Create a Pre-Launch Page with ComingSoon today!

Building your product might be hard. Figuring out what customers really need might be a challenge. Pivoting to best business plan might be the most difficult obstacle.

But creating your coming soon page shouldn’t be. Try ComingSoon Distribution at Drupal.org today.

What do you think? What do you like? Hate? Don’t Care? What else does this kind of distribution need?

Tags: pre-launchcomingsoonannouncementstartupdrupal 7distributionDrupal PlanetPlanet Drupal

Mark Koester
@markwkoester
Mark has worked on Drupal since the early days of D6. He is passionate about open source as well as entrepreneurship. When he isn't building, he enjoys traveling and speaking one of his many foreign languages.
Chengdu, China

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