2014 Drupal Community Survey

2014 Community Survey

About the Drupal Association

Mission: Drupal powers the best of the Web. The Drupal Association unites a global

open source community to build and promote Drupal.

The Drupal Association is an educational non-profit organization that tasks itself with

fostering and supporting the Drupal software project, the community and its growth.

Supported by both individual members and organizations, the Association uses its

resources, network and funds to constantly engage in new projects and initiatives to

help educate people about Drupal and support the growth of the Drupal project.

To learn more about the Drupal Association, the Drupal Project, and how to get

involved and contribute, visit https://association.drupal.org/.

2014 Community Survey

Methodology

The survey was conducted during the months of October, November and early

December 2014. The survey was completely web-based. We promoted it through

email, on the Drupal.org website, and on several social media channels.

648 people took the survey.

2014 Community Survey

Key Findings

● Drupal 8 appears to be a given on the vast majority of respondents’ plans.

About 80% say they plan to adopt Drupal 8. Another 8% have plans to evaluate

the release.

● Top Drupal challenges for respondents include recruiting and keeping talent, as

well as finding high quality documentation for modules

● People who use Drupal.org use it frequently, with the vast majority saying they

visit the site more than once per week.

● Developers who use Drupal.org say they are generally satisfied with the site.

● Awareness of Drupal Association programs is mixed. Some Association

activities are well-known in the community but others have low awareness. We

clearly need to work on increasing knowledge of programs such as Community

Grants and our Supporter programs.

● Member benefits are not an important factor in determining whether someone

becomes a Drupal Association member. “Giving back” and community

participation are the most influential factors.

● The vast majority of respondents say they would go to every DrupalCon if their

company paid for them to go.

2014 Community Survey

Demographics

Organization size varied widely with the largest portion of respondents being either freelancers or in organizations under 25 people.

The majority of respondents work for design/development shops.

2014 Community Survey

Demographics (cont.)

About half the respondents identified themselves as Developers.

Most identified themselves as having Intermediate or Advanced skills.

2014 Community Survey

Drupal 8 Adoption

We asked respondents’ plans for adopting Drupal 8. About 80% of respondents indicated they are eager to begin using Drupal 8 as soon as it is adopted, or they will likely adopt it at some point.

2014 Community Survey

Top Drupal challenges

We asked an open-ended question about respondents’ top Drupal challenges. The responses were varied so we grouped some of the most often mentioned challenges into the following themes.

● Recruiting/talent retention issues

● Writing modules

● Upgrades, version compatibility

● Preparing for Drupal 8

● Documentation

● Performance/DevOps

● Training clients on the UI

2014 Community Survey

Awareness of Drupal Association Programs

We wanted to better understand the awareness of Drupal Association programs among community members. The results provide insight into where we need to focus awareness-building efforts in 2015.

Not surprisingly, DrupalCon events have high awareness. The events are high profile in the community and have a longer history than other programs.

The “Supporter” programs have relatively low awareness, but this is not unexpected because the programs are targeted at specific audiences.

2014 Community Survey

Awareness of Drupal Association Programs (cont.)

Drupal Jobs is a key initiative we launched in 2014, to provide a dedicated Drupal career site to the community and generate revenue for Drupal.org improvements. Of the respondents, slightly more than half said they have visited the site.

This points to moderate awareness of the site that we can work to improve in 2015.

2014 Community Survey

Awareness of Drupal Association Programs (cont.)

At the moment, Drupal Jobs appears to skew toward more intermediate and advanced job seekers. This is likely due to the majority of job postings on the site requiring intermediate or advanced skills.

2014 Community Survey

Feedback on Drupal Association Activities and Programs

We asked an open-ended question “Do you have any feedback, advice or suggestions on programs or activities you would like to see from the Drupal Association?” The responses varied widely and we grouped some of the similar answers together to provide an idea of the feedback.

● Formal support and training

● Drupal promotion to businesses and developers (Asia mentioned frequently)

● Less of a focus on business and more on community

● More and faster Drupal.org improvements

● More support for regional events and sprints

● Support for improved processes to fix core and module bugs

● Support for writing module documentation

There were hundreds of answers provided, but the above themes represent some of the more common sentiments.

2014 Community Survey

Community Survey Results:

Drupal.org

2014 Community Survey

Drupal.org

A large percentage of respondents are heavy users of Drupal.org. About 80% of respondents say they visit the site more than once per week.

The more advanced the skill level, the more frequently respondents visit Drupal.org.

2014 Community Survey

Drupal.org (cont.)

Developers – by far the primary user base for Drupal.org – say they are generally satisfied with the site.

We followed the above question with an open-ended question about what could be improved on Drupal.org. There were a wide range of responses. The below list groups many similar suggestions for what can be improved.

● Search● Information architecture● Documentation● Performance● Patch-based workflow

2014 Community Survey

Community Survey Results:

Membership

Image courtesy of gut-man on Flickr.

2014 Community Survey

Membership

Less than half of the respondents say they are Drupal Association members.

Most of those who indicated that they are members say they have been for more than two years.

2014 Community Survey

Membership (cont.)

Consistent with other surveys we have conducted, members say their primary motivation is giving back to the project or being part of the community.

The more advanced a person’s skill level is, the more likely they are to be a Drupal Association member.

2014 Community Survey

Community Survey Results:

DrupalCon

2014 Community Survey

DrupalCon Attendance

Most respondents said they had not attended a DrupalCon in the past two years. Of those who had, the split was very even among the North America events and Europe events.

2014 Community Survey

DrupalCon Attendance (cont.)

The more advanced a person’s skills, the more likely they are to have attended a DrupalCon event in the past two years.

2014 Community Survey

DrupalCon Attendance (cont.)

Of those who attended a DrupalCon in the last two years, the primary factor for attending was whether their organization would pay for them to attend.

2014 Community Survey

What’s Up Next:

2015

Image courtesy of Mike Gifford on Flickr.

2014 Community Survey

2015 Programs and Initiatives

In 2015, we will be focused on making improvements to Drupal.org, DrupalCons, Drupal 8, and more. Some of our initiatives include:

● Drupal 8 Accelerate grants to hasten the Drupal 8 release

● Better account creation and login on Drupal.org, and improved search functionality

● Drupal.org advertising and partner program improvements

● A streamlined approach for DrupalCon sites and other Drupal events

● Implementing persona research for an improved user experience on Drupal.org and its subsites

● … and much more.

For more information on the work coming up in 2015, view the Drupal.org roadmap, or follow the Drupal Association’s blog or twitter handle.