Open Social & Drupal
At the core of Open Social’s innovative online community software is the open source Drupal framework.
Open Social and the Power of Drupal
At the core of Open Social’s innovative online community software is the open source Drupal framework. Drupal not only provides Open Social with a powerful and versatile framework for building amazing Volunteer Engagement, Member Engagement and Community Management platforms, but also allows our clients to benefit from a large community of innovators, developers, and builders.
Working Open Source with Drupal allows us to
- Easily customize our platform for each client
- Offer countless new features and extensions
- Benefit from the skills and knowledge of thousands of professionals
- Integrate Open Social with clients’ CMS systems
- Offer public Open Social distribution
- Receive important feedback and input from the Drupal community
- Innovative quicker using existing open source tools
Open source technology helps your platform to constantly benefit from new innovations
It all started with Drupal
In 2015 Open Social built its first community platform Greenwire for Greenpeace using Drupal 6. This platform won the Dutch Interactive Awards in 2015, activating 90,000 volunteers all over the world.
This Drupal online community framework became the basis of Open Social’s software products and services.
Since then, Open Social has kept up with the latest releases of Drupal, as well as the latest modules, tools, and extensions from the Drupal community. This allows us to deliver an ever-expanding and evolving software solution for our clients and communities.
The power of Drupal technology
Drupal offers us unique capabilities to quickly develop and deploy new features and custom client-specific applications. It enables secure software development, scalability, quick deployment, and offers a number of unique features such as multi-lingual software development and content authoring.
Open Social public distribution
Open Social’s core software is available as a public open source distribution. This means that any member of the Drupal community can download the Open Social code-base and use it in their own projects, or deploy an Open Social instance on their own servers.
There are over 1,000 reported Drupal users who have implemented the Open Social open source distribution.
What is open-core?
Open-core is a business model for creating commercially produced open source software. This model primarily involves offering a “core” or feature-limited version of a software product as free open source software, while offering “commercial” versions or add-ons as proprietary software.
For Open Social this means offering a subscription-based software to clients who need more advanced features and extensions such as real-time collaboration, custom development or hands-on services such as maintenance, support and hosting.
Being part of the Drupal Community
The power of Drupal, and of Open Social by extension, is that it is open source and driven by an active global community. This means that Open Social can benefit from a contributor community of over 100,000 coders, developers, and organizations, as part of this open source Drupal ecosystem.
Open Social is able to use, implement, and further develop a number of innovative software modules released by community members on Drupal.org. It is thanks to the continued innovative work of the Drupal community that we are able to offer an extensive list of unique features, extensions, and integrations to our clients.
Open Social uses these open source modules discerningly, however. We package them together, improve them where necessary, integrate them fully with the existing Open Social code-base, and give them a unique Open Social layer.
Being a Drupal Member and Support Partner
Being part of the Drupal community means contributing actively and sharing knowledge. Open Social is an active Drupal member and a certified Drupal Support Partner.
The Drupal Supporting Partner Program allows organizations to support and contribute to the Drupal Association and Drupal project and become thought-leaders within the community.
As a Drupal member, Open Social has:
- Contributed to Drupal patches
- Contributed Drupal documentation
- Helped mentor new contributors
- Contributed to Drupal themes
- and much more!
Open Social also runs a Drupal Slack channel where we can interact with Drupal users who have deployed the Open Social public distribution.
Open Social at DrupalCon
DrupalCon is an annual international event where hundreds of the top digital minds and industry roleplayers using Drupal come together to share knowledge, network, and collaborate.
Open Social makes a point of regularly attending DrupalCon where we usually have a conference booth and present seminars, discussions, and other events throughout the duration of the conference. We have participated in over 11 international Drupal events, including:
- DrupalCon New Orleans 2016
- Drupal Europe 2018
- DrupalCon Seattle 2019
- DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019
- DrupalCon Minneapolis 2020
Open Social also organized and hosted the Open Social summit during the Contributors Day program at DrupalCon Amsterdam in 2019. Three expert speakers came and shared their stories and insights about using Open Social.
Drupal Awards
The Drupal Splash Awards recognizes the best Drupal-based projects and contributions from the Drupal community each year. Open Social has a
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- In 2017 Open Social was the overall winner of the Splash Awards showcasing its GlobalDevHub.org project for the United Nations.
- In 2019 Open Social’s Victims Support The Netherlands won the Splash Award in the category of Social/Community.
- In 2019 Open Social’s Connecting Business initiative was nominated for the Splash Award in the category of Non-Profit.
- In 2020 Open Social’s UNDP community SparkBlue won in the category Government/NPO and Website of the Year at DrupalJam re:Boot
Open Social keeps on innovating
Open Social is dedicated to improving our software. We have a talented team of experts who work together with the Drupal community to achieve new technological and business milestones through innovation, knowledge-sharing, and collaboration.Being part of the Drupal community make Open Social a unique product with a unique advantage to clients and users.
This is because we get to benefit from the skills, expertise, feedback, and ideas of a global community of diverse contributors.
