Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Ideas\discussion on a community-oriented site

  • 19-07-2013 7:42pm
    #1
    SouperComputer
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,949 ✭✭✭


    I'll start off by saying have have done a fair bit of reading/research on this but I think it's always good to pick boardsies minds to help come to a conclusion.

    Basically I have a desire to build a website for a sport that I participate in the US. Many sites already exist are but each are missing what I regard as crucial aspects. The biggest issue is that I don't feel they truly are community oriented rather they are kind of old school post a few adds and hope for the best.
    The plan would be to cover the sport across the entire US, predominantly with user-contributed content. I'm not talking a free-for-all, but more of a middle of the road approach. Since its such a large base to cover, I need to figure out methods to enable users\viewer to get to the content that's relevant to them

    Couple of functions of the website...

    News depot
    Site will act as a searchable and filterable point for news related to the sport.
    Filters include by region, state, maybe zip. This content would be provided by the various organizations, venues and competitors.

    Business Directory & Private classifieds
    Fairly self-explanatory, again crucial that this can be by area\zip

    Profiles and profile pages for competitors

    Ability to integrate and embed videos, interact, vote etc etc

    Event calendar that competitors can view: Orgs and venues can enter their dates for the events and hopefully help avoid conflicts.

    Overall it strikes me as a mammoth wordpress site with some aspects of FaceBook in terms of the community/interaction portion.

    At this point I guess I don't have any particular questions i'm just looking for your thoughts/observations feedback.
    I think my biggest concern is how I can make sure I build this in a way thats manageable when I have 50 states and 100's of clubs, venues and 1000's of competitors. Help with prioritization of design and build of this would be good too. Naturally monetization comes into the brain as well, at the least I would like to be paid for my time.

    For ideas I'm looking at something like vitalmx.com
    I'd like to take the basic concept of that site, but, break it down into geographical regions for the users and also setup the features I listed above. I also need to add a getting started area and things like that.

    Flame away.


Comments

  • #2
    jmcc
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,431 ✭✭✭jmcc


    You've got approximately three different websites in that spec. One is the equivalent of a search engine. One is a web directory and one is a social media/forum style site. I don't think that trying to run it all via Wordpress would be a good idea.

    Splitting things on a geographical basis is difficult, even with zipcodes and clear geographical boundaries. This is because a business could theoretically span geographical boundaries and cover multiple areas (chains and multiples etc).

    You've also got to have some kind of system to cull the dead or defunct entries.

    One of the most important things to get right is the acquisition of information. How do you get this information and how can it be updated? Will users supply it? If so then each will need an account and that's extra work for you if they don't provide it in a usable format.

    Regards...jmcc


  • #3
    Trojan
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,413 ✭✭✭✭Trojan


    Start with Minimum Viable Product. What is the least you can offer that people will still want to visit and use?

    🎙️ The Recognized Authority Podcast



  • #4
    SouperComputer
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,949 ✭✭✭SouperComputer


    Thanks for the feedback.. Over the weekend and up til now been doing a lot more reading and playing around and it would seem wordpress is probably not going to cut it. Although it's still pretty impressive what it can do.

    I'm looking at Joomla now and the various plugins.

    Trojan, I agree, there's a lot (too much) going on here. I need to whittle this down some. I'm doing a survey to see what folks feel they would like and will build from there.


  • #5
    SouperComputer
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,949 ✭✭✭SouperComputer


    OK consensus says that biggest demand is for user\community-curated videos. Thats to say people will share embedded links to videos on youtube etc, categorize & tag them for others to review.

    So, I'm starting there: User curated content.
    Example: http://video.clinicaladvisor.com/
    Now I need to figure out what tools to use to best build it as well as have good analytics supporting it.


Advertisement