Going on a publicity blitz, can you help?

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Ambush Commander
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Going on a publicity blitz, can you help?

Post by Ambush Commander »

With the 2.0 release for HTML Purifier creeping up very soon, I'd really like to go on a publicity blitz. The ambition is to make HTML Purifier a household name for PHP communities everywhere; while I don't think I'll be able to make that happen, that's what I'd like to shoot for.

So, I've started to assemble a laundry-list of things I need to do to maximize the impact. Stuff I can think of:

* Submit stories to Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, Del.icio.us (presumably, I'll need to have a dedicated "new release page" to make sure I don't hit dupe filters).
* Post to newsgroups: comp.lang.php, alt.php, php.general
* Post announcements on major PHP forums: DevNetwork :lol:, SitePoint
* Get the blogosphere abuzz on HTML Purifier (not sure how to do this)
...

I know I'm missing things. I'm missing social news sites, I'm missing newsgroups, I'm missing forums, heck, I'm missing bullet points. And publicity is not something one person can do alone: in particular blog coverage will need a variety of people to talk about it.

Does anyone else have any suggestions or advice for this campaign? Is anyone willing to pitch in their thoughts on their blog to help get the word out? Any help appreciated! Thanks!
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The Phoenix
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Re: Going on a publicity blitz, can you help?

Post by The Phoenix »

Ambush Commander wrote:Does anyone else have any suggestions or advice for this campaign? Is anyone willing to pitch in their thoughts on their blog to help get the word out? Any help appreciated! Thanks!
1. Use a forum software that offers rss feeds on your site (then it can hit the aggregators)
2. Add a pitch regarding its speed and memory use. The library does amazing things, does it fast, and does it in little memory. Many are attracted to those, and your site doesn't totally sell that.
3. Start a Sourceforge (or similar) project page. Its free PR5+ publicity that can attract users just browsing.
4. Pimp the Freshmeat page for it. Make sure every release is announced there, ask for votes, and man the comments section regularly. Its more PR5+ publicity for little effort.
5. Try to break into major projects. Offer to do the leg work to implement it into next-gen projects (like phpbb3, drupal, etc), so that you get more testers, more exposure, and more clout. As ugly as phpbb is, its a paradise for free testing and attacks.
6. Podcasts are popular, so are php magazines, and php conferences. If you have a conference near you, offer to give a presentation. It'll get you free admission, experience with public speaking, good face time with potential users (many of whom will provide top-notch testing), and first-implementers willing to try it out.

Those should be a solid start when coupled with your other ideas. :)
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

Wow phoenix. Good advice. This was all I was going to say, but probably not as coherently.
Try to break into major projects. Offer to do the leg work to implement it into next-gen projects (like phpbb3, drupal, etc), so that you get more testers, more exposure, and more clout. As ugly as phpbb is, its a paradise for free testing and attacks.
I will definitely make a note to blog about HTML Purifier. Nobody reads my blog, but it will make me feel special. We do at least have a PageRank of 4 though, so that may help you. :)
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Benjamin
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Post by Benjamin »

I think quite a few of us could put links to your website with keywords in the anchor tag, which should help boost your search engine rank quite a bit for the keywords specified.

Get 4 or more links like this..

Code: Select all

<a href="http://htmlpurifier.org/">Secure HTML Filter</a>
And that's probably about all it would take to rank in the top ten for that search term.
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

Done (look under bookmarks on the right).

Code: Select all

<a href="http://htmlpurifier.org/" rel="friend colleague" title="HTML Purifier is a standards-compliant HTML filter library written in PHP">HTMLPurifier - HTML Filtering with PHP</a>
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patrikG
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Post by patrikG »

Contact the PHP Security Consortium: http://phpsec.org/
Contact Chris Shiflett, he's a major voice on PHP Security: http://shiflett.org/
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Maugrim_The_Reaper
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Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

Whenever the release takes place I'll draw attention to it on my blog. I get on Planet-PHP and PHPDeveloper.org so it will get a wide PHP-oriented audience. You can also submit a summary of the release to PHPDeveloper.org. It distributes news, not just summarised blog posts.

I definitely dig adding a Sourceforge project for it. It's free publicity on Google. Just make sure you work the 255 project description for all its worth.
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Oren
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Post by Oren »

The Phoenix pretty much summed it up. I do have an old site with PR4 though, and right now I'm considering bringing it back to life. Whether it happens or not, I'm gonna add there links to Swift and HTML Purifier very soon. I also might put links to both on my friend's site (PR1 I think) if that's ok with him. I also promised you a quote so you can put it on your site, but right now there is no point of doing that... maybe later on (if you want to know why, PM me) :wink:

Edit: Oh and patrikG also made very good points.
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Ambush Commander
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Post by Ambush Commander »

Wow, these are some great suggestions. Thanks for the support.

The Phoenix:
Use a forum software that offers rss feeds on your site (then it can hit the aggregators)
Done; Phorum has RSS feeds for every topic, and I also have a news feed. Probably should submit them to Technorati or something.
Add a pitch regarding its speed and memory use. The library does amazing things, does it fast, and does it in little memory. Many are attracted to those, and your site doesn't totally sell that.
I'm not sure how I can do this in an honest manner. HTML Purifier is reasonably fast (and some added caching in this release makes it even faster), but there's nothing I can compare it to: all the other filter libraries don't go to the same depth and consequently are worthless benchmarks (Though I have never tried it for myself, I am 90% certain that HTML Purifier will be slower than any of the inferior products on the market).
Start a Sourceforge (or similar) project page. Its free PR5+ publicity that can attract users just browsing.
Done. Haven't really pimped it out yet, maybe the description's not good enough? http://sourceforge.net/project/htmlpurifier
Pimp the Freshmeat page for it. Make sure every release is announced there, ask for votes, and man the comments section regularly. Its more PR5+ publicity for little effort.
Freshmeat is great: I get a spike of referrals from them whenever I post a new version up. Unfortunately, no one ever votes for it or makes comments: I'll try asking next time. http://freshmeat.net/projects/htmlpurifier/

(Side note: for a while Freshmeat came up higher on the Google search for HTML Purifier then my website. That's funny)
Try to break into major projects. Offer to do the leg work to implement it into next-gen projects (like phpbb3, drupal, etc), so that you get more testers, more exposure, and more clout. As ugly as phpbb is, its a paradise for free testing and attacks.
We have plugins for ModX and Drupal, and a Wordpress plugin coming down the pipes. I'll try reviving this effort and getting out plugins for more open-source projects.
Podcasts are popular, so are php magazines, and php conferences. If you have a conference near you, offer to give a presentation. It'll get you free admission, experience with public speaking, good face time with potential users (many of whom will provide top-notch testing), and first-implementers willing to try it out.
I was going to have an interview with Pro:PHP podcast a month ago... let's see if they're still interested. I don't think I'm going to be going to a conference any time soon though... that would be nice though.

The Ninja Space Goat:
I will definitely make a note to blog about HTML Purifier. Nobody reads my blog, but it will make me feel special. We do at least have a PageRank of 4 though, so that may help you.
Thank you! Ever little bit helps.

astions:
And that's probably about all it would take to rank in the top ten for that search term.
It already is. ;-) But it's only sixth, I think, so more links will help get it up.

PatrikG:
Contact the PHP Security Consortium: http://phpsec.org/
Contact Chris Shiflett, he's a major voice on PHP Security: http://shiflett.org/
Will do so. Chris Shiflett has mentioned HTML Purifier on his blog before, and I got a load of hits from his website, so I'll ask him whether or not he'd like to write a full piece on HTML Purifier.

Maugrim:
Whenever the release takes place I'll draw attention to it on my blog. I get on Planet-PHP and PHPDeveloper.org so it will get a wide PHP-oriented audience. You can also submit a summary of the release to PHPDeveloper.org. It distributes news, not just summarised blog posts.
Thank you! Planet-PHP is a great aggregator, and I'm sure that'll get a wide audience.

Oren:
The Phoenix pretty much summed it up. I do have an old site with PR4 though, and right now I'm considering bringing it back to life. Whether it happens or not, I'm gonna add there links to Swift and HTML Purifier very soon. I also might put links to both on my friend's site (PR1 I think) if that's ok with him. I also promised you a quote so you can put it on your site, but right now there is no point of doing that... maybe later on (if you want to know why, PM me)
Thank you! (I seem to be repeating myself) I'll PM you about the quote: any user testimony is appreciated.

Once again, thank you everybody who offered to link to HTML Purifier on your websites/blogs. Any further suggestions?
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

Also done, in the links section.
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Maugrim_The_Reaper
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Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

Dzone may be another option. I know that with the idiot invasion of Digg I use Dzone more even if it's Ajax'd to the eyeballs ;).
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

idiot invasion of Digg
there was a time when digg wasn't swarming with idiots?? 8O
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Ambush Commander
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Post by Ambush Commander »

It's always a balance between dictatorship and mob-rule.

Ahem... back on topic.

I was doing some research today on other forums I could post announcements to, and decided that I'm going to keep things between DevNetwork, Sitepoint, and Sla.ckers.org, where I have established identities. If I start cross-posting willy-nilly, it'll be annoying and people will delete my threads.

Wrapping things up for a release later tonight. Keep your eyes peeled.
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

Looking forward to it :)
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Ambush Commander
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Post by Ambush Commander »

Alright, it's finally out. HTML Purifier 2.0.0 DevNetwork thread.
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