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!

Front page news: Planet Drupal