I realise that some of the members have a problem with google tracking but if the user base is to grow our "product / cms " needs promoting. Attached picture is from google search for “cms for website”. I know this is unlikely as an “exact” search term but it is what we should be ranking for.
Our logo is not featured and we are not in the (unless i missed it ) the top 50.
It does not matter how good ClassicPress is if no one can find it then all the effort over the last two years is wasted.
My view is take the offer from google for ad space, and check which pages people land on measure the response rate etc. and get more users. Attract developers by providing the potential for plugin and theme makers to make a profit.
Unless you know where visitors come from, i.e. where your potential users already visit or the search term they used any promotion or advertising is shooting in the air and hoping to get a fish.
Personal prejudices regarding google should not take precedence over the success of the project.
My rant over.
I will be honest, I have always felt this way. It wasn’t like we were giving Google the keys to the project because of the adwords grant, instead we were leveraging them to help convert people and get the name out.
I think the biggest sticking factor was the requirement to add Google Analytics to the main website, my feeling is most, if not all, CP members who actually use CP don’t really visit the website but rather use the forums which would continue not having any tracking on it.
At the end of the day Google is the search engine of the internet, if we are to get word out we are going to have to leverage them. And I would way rather leverage with them with it costing us nothing, than having to find an advertising budget.
CMS market is not a niche. It is a saturated swamp. WP Dominates it. CP is nothing, and if it is anything, it is the “CMS of the ones who didn’t like progress”.
So clearly, if we want to promote our position in the CMS market, it is a totally different thing to use all available tools. It is also not the same as “spying on my visitors” just because I can or feel cool by looking at some meaningless numbers.
So certainly, if we have the means and the targets to market and someone who is willing to spend the time needed to make all the required management of said marketing, I can’t but agree that we should at least try this.
I am against tracking when it is not necessary and does not justify the means. Which is the case in 99% of all cases.
Promoting your product (even if it is a FOSS) is not one of those cases.
The previous discussion about tracking was about tracking people on our doc site or else. User Activity, versus driving users towards your product
That is a totally different thing.
Can we get a consensus on this.
I’ll can set up the campaigns and ads and monitoring.
Google’s monitoring requirements are less than I would usually do for a client.
I think this needs no further discussion other than if financial and server access is required, I’d suggest directly pinging the directors, they are the only ones who can give you any of those things.
Perhaps it would be good for community to know when it starts, so we can keep an eye open from then on for more users/influx.
