Closed Bug 932703 Opened 11 years ago Closed 11 years ago

Launch Stack Overflow forums

Categories

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: General, defect)

x86
All
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: robert, Unassigned)

References

Details

Includes:

- Creating 5 links to go from Stack Overflow to Mozilla entities
- Branding (bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=929267)
Depends on: 929267
We should evaluate using the Google Analytics URL builder, for segmenting visitors:

1. Create URLs here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en-GB
2. (optional) shorten with http://mzl.la shorten-er
3. Use custom URLs for SO links
Blocks: 932711
Suggested links for the five we will have in our tag collection page at http://stackoverflow.com/r/mozilla:

- Mozilla Hacks (http://hacks.mozilla.org/)
- HTML5 & Friends (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/learn/html5)
- Marketplace/DevHub (https://marketplace.firefox.com/developers/)
- Firefox OS on MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS)
- Dev Tools on MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/tools)
I like it!
(In reply to Robert Nyman from comment #2)

> - HTML5 & Friends (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/learn/html5)
This page must die (in this form, outside the wiki). Use:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML
or
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/HTML5

> - Marketplace/DevHub (https://marketplace.firefox.com/developers/)
This is moving to the MDN (or so have I been told). We shouldn't link to such an URL anymore. The earlier we build SEO on the new page, the better.
I'm am passing these off to Stack Overflow today, but we will have the opportunity to change whenever we want.

I will take the new html5 one. On the devhub issue, we need something we can point to now that is not behind a login. Should we just point to the marketplace and not the /developer part?

--MC
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/HTML5

I think that's fair.

> > - Marketplace/DevHub (https://marketplace.firefox.com/developers/)
> This is moving to the MDN (or so have I been told). We shouldn't link to
> such an URL anymore. The earlier we build SEO on the new page, the better.

I agree with that, but before we have the possible new URL in place, we need to use the old one. These links will go live in a day or two on Stack Overflow.
> I will take the new html5 one. On the devhub issue, we need something we can
> point to now that is not behind a login. Should we just point to the
> marketplace and not the /developer part?

I think the developer part need to be in there, for now (unless we believe it to go away soon, but then I assume we will have a redirect in place to the new home on MDN?).
After having spoken to the MDN people, this is the revised list for the links:

- Mozilla Hacks (http://hacks.mozilla.org/)
- HTML5 on MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/HTML5) *changed* (previous link seems outdated/not maintained)
- App Center (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps) *changed* (moved from DevHub till its new home)
- Firefox OS on MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS) *changed* (to include locale, which I was recommended)
- Dev Tools on MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/tools) *changed* (to include locale, which I was recommended)
Thanks for adding those - I'm eager to experiment tracking further up our long funnel of traffic acquisition. Couple questions:

No campaign url parameters for the hacks link?

The url's are pointing to /en-US/ url's? teoli: Is that appropriate for StackOverflow link-backs? I always forget when to use locale-specific links or not.
Flags: needinfo?(lcrouch) → needinfo?(jypenator)
Easy, always uses locale-specific links.
Flags: needinfo?(jypenator)
Guys, do give me the final-final versions as soon as you can. I already submitted last week ... I'd prefer not to give them multiple corrections, although we can change later, of course.

Btw, I'm spelling out MDN in the links since I don't want to assume people know what it stands for. E.g., "HTML5 on the Mozilla Developer Network."
Luke, Jean-Yves: thank you!

Mark, I think the above, in comment #9, should be the ones to give them now. I haven't used campaign URL parameters for Mozilla Hacks yet, so I'd go with a clean URL for now. With spelling out the network name: think we should emphasize on the acronym and have "HTML5 on MDN (Mozilla Developer Network)" to get that into peoples' minds?

Also, if we launch the Developer Program in a little over a month's time, we'll need to change a link or two anyway.

On that topic, is the process to e-mail them the links? And any idea what the handling time would be to update them? We might want to experiment, try different links, do some links as a short campaign etc, so it would be good if we can be agile there.
Robert--or anyone else who knows--what would be the URL for just a link to MDN? We need that for the banner ads, and I assume we also want the GOogle Analytics stuff on that.

Thanks.

--MC
This should do the trick: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/?utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=StackOverflowForums

For future reference (for all of us), and to have it available in this context: Google Analytic's URL builder is at https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en-GB
It's also a pretty straight-forward URL appendage:

?utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=StackOverflowForums

That should work for any URL so GA can create a source/medium dimension to the traffic. So you could just throw that onto the hacks.mozilla.org url as well.
I think the parameters are good, and useful for possible campaigns. My worry, though, is that people will bookmark the link/have it in their history/address bar, so every time they go to Hacks it will look like they came from Stack Overflow - which wouldn't be true, and would give a skewed number.

Have you thought about this with the MDN start page/had similar experience?
Good point. If we're concerned about that, we can use JS to remove the analytics clutter from the campaign URL's *after* they've been reported to GA.

We'll have to change the URL's to use hash instead of query strings. e.g.:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/#utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=StackOverflowForums

Then we add a few lines of JS to our google analytics calls:

http://cfsimplicity.com/61/removing-analytics-clutter-from-campaign-urls
https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/pull/1596 in case we decide to use the hashes instead.
(In reply to Luke Crouch [:groovecoder] from comment #18)
> Good point. If we're concerned about that, we can use JS to remove the
> analytics clutter from the campaign URL's *after* they've been reported to
> GA.
> 
> We'll have to change the URL's to use hash instead of query strings. e.g.:
> 
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/
> #utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=StackOverflowForums
> 
> Then we add a few lines of JS to our google analytics calls:
> 
> http://cfsimplicity.com/61/removing-analytics-clutter-from-campaign-urls

Seems like a decent solution. Would you mind adding that to the Hacks code as well, and deploy it?
Then I can talk to Stack Overflow and update the URL.
Commits pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/kuma

https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/commit/ab2361a86173f66f90ab2824560cfd1164cb10b6
bug 932703 - clean hash utm variables after track

https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/commit/7dd8b877c084339f6d625a342b1cf04cf778642e
Merge pull request #1596 from groovecoder/ga-campaign-cleanup-932703

bug 932703 - clean hash utm variables after track
I just sent https://github.com/mozilla/mozhacks/pull/19 to enable the same campaign tracking on hacks.mozilla.org.

I suggested Havi use #utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DevProgram

I wonder it all of these new sources and mediums of traffic should fall under that single "DevProgram" campaign? So these links would be:

#utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=DevProgram

?
> I just sent https://github.com/mozilla/mozhacks/pull/19 to enable the same
> campaign tracking on hacks.mozilla.org.

Thanks! Please push that live when you can.
 
> I suggested Havi use
> #utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DevProgram

Sounds good.

> I wonder it all of these new sources and mediums of traffic should fall
> under that single "DevProgram" campaign? So these links would be:
> 
> #utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=DevProgram
> 
> ?

Yeah, that does make sense. The source and medium are the unique identifiers, and DevProgram the umbrella to collect them all.

I've contacted Stack Overflow with these new links:

- Mozilla Hacks (http://hacks.mozilla.org/?utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=DevProgram)
- HTML5 on the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/HTML5?utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=DevProgram)
- App Center (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps?utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=DevProgram)
- Firefox OS on the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS?utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=DevProgram)
- Dev Tools on the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/tools?utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=DevProgram)

I'll let you know when they are live, so we can make a quick tweak to the code cleaning the URL.
Thanks!
(In reply to Luke Crouch [:groovecoder] from comment #24)
> Please change the ? characters in those links to # characters so the js code
> will properly strip them after the user clicks.
> 
> e.g., test
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/
> HTML5?utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=DevProgram vs.
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/
> HTML5#utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=DevProgram

Thanks, good catch! Will do!
Links are now updated on Stack Overflow!

Luke, the hash cleaning seems to work well on all MDN links (try the top five links at http://stackoverflow.com/r/mozilla). Not on Hacks, however: https://hacks.mozilla.org/#utm_source=StackOverflow&utm_medium=forums&utm_campaign=DevProgram

Do you know when that will be pushed live?
Flags: needinfo?(lcrouch)
David - can you merge and push https://github.com/mozilla/mozhacks/pull/19 ?
Flags: needinfo?(lcrouch) → needinfo?(dwalsh)
My VPN has been a nightmare on my new computer -- Craig, can you push?
Flags: needinfo?(craigcook.bugz)
Alas, I have no push powers for Hacks. I've always had to file an IT bug.
Flags: needinfo?(craigcook.bugz)
If someone else will review & merge, I'll push it myself.
Flags: needinfo?(dwalsh)
Mark, we should be able to close this bug now, right?
Flags: needinfo?(mcoggins)
Good by me, thanks.
Flags: needinfo?(mcoggins)
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 11 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Moving to General component.
Component: Developer Program → General
Product: developer.mozilla.org → developer.mozilla.org Graveyard
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