You know that Drupal is popular in the mainstream when ...

After over 6 years using and contributing to Drupal, one can see that Drupal is becoming more and more popular ...

Here are several events that I encountered in the past few weeks to this end ...

3. The Whitehouse runs its web site on Drupal

We all know now that Whitehouse.gov using Drupal. They describe a bit how they use it in their meeting with the

Washington DC Drupal user community. Eventually, such a high profile deployment attracts FUD from Slate was refuted by Conor McNamara. We also got the and the open source is insecure FUD too.

A major US government entity embracing Drupal would have been a very big thing. This happened earlier in 2009 on recovery.gov (no longer a Drupal site). But THE whitehouse is something special, specially with the sitting president being different from last year's one ...

2. A non-computer savvy friend buys a Drupal DVD from eBay

A dear friend of mine who is not into the web, programming or any of that called me. He said he wants to learn Drupal, and knows that I do consulting on it. He said he bought a DVD that has an eBook that teaches Drupal.

I looked up the "product" and found one of those spammy marketing sites generated with a template package. The product is called Drupal Made Easy for Beginners. The site advertises the videos for $47, which is then discounted to $17.

But, my friend bought it form eBay for $2.99 plus $1.99 shipping!

I am suspecting that Ameer Salim copied some publicly available videos and packaged them, only to have someone else copy his copy and sell it on eBay.

Regardless, my friend finds the videos useful. When he mentioned that he already installed Drupal using Fantastico, I recommended against it, and invited him over and walked him through the video on the DVD on how to install this via cPanel on his hosting account.

1. The groom at a wedding talks Drupal

To top all this off, I was at a wedding last evening. I did not know the groom, but noticed on the invitation card that he shares my first name, and spelling Khalid (with an I). So, when the time came to greet him and the bride, I called him "Ka-leed", massacaring the name like most in North America would do. I handed him a business card to show him the spelling, he said it is not a joke that he shares with many people, we have a laugh and that was that ... or so I thought ...

Later as the evening progressed he came and sought me out, and said that he noticed the "Drupal" part on the business card, and that he is using it at his work. We had a talk about Drupal and that I have been doing it for 6 years, ...etc.

What else have you seen that indicates more uptake of Drupal in areas that are normally not considered the usual areas of its use?