Starting Your Own Community Driven Website? 43
ST asks: "I've had a couple of excellent ideas for community-driven websites (a la Slashdot), some excellent enough that I would really like to put money into and start up, but my abilities can only do so much. Where does one go to look for people to collaborate with technical (hosting, DB management), artistic, and web design help? What have your web site startups been like, have you any advice to offer? Any horror or success stories you would care to share will be welcomed!"
Re:Don't go to these guys... (Score:2)
Lessons of slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the main purposes of an online community is to establish your credibility over time with consistently insightful comments. Thus an archive where you can lookup up the complete history of a subject or online persona is necessary.
I think the best way to proceed is to just start a community, attract whoever you can, and then let the community itself guide (and hopefully help implement) any enhancements.
Re:Lessons of slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
One could make an argument a site with <100 users doesn't have the same needs than a site with >100000 users has.
The first thing to do with a community site is: "Put something out there".
If you spend 12 months preparing this overly complex but oh so perfect site, you just lost 11 months of community-building time.
Start simple, with whatever is good enough to get by, and make things better as you go.
Re:Lessons of slashdot (Score:1)
If the site is a closed group of individuals, like a guild or clan site for a game, then anonymous posting is bad. But, if its a large site like slashdot, where its an open community, then blocking anonymous voices is a bad thing.
Instead, you can just restrict the ability of rogues threatening the site's integrity by using moderation techniques similar to slashdots. W
Re:Lessons of slashdot (Score:1)
Provided you or trusted community members have the ability to keep things in line and exercise that ability frequently, you likely won't need to dole out mass moderation powers for a long time. It's possible to stay on top of things if you only have a few dozen posts every day.
Re:Lessons of slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
The stuff you can't order or outsource... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The stuff you can't order or outsource... (Score:1)
I have a suggestion or two (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife and I were going through something personal, and visited a well-known community board to discuss the subject with other people with a similar problem. The people who used the board were terrific, but the organization running the board were absolutely awful; one of those communities that tries to fiercely restrict and censor the ongoing discussions based on arbitrary rules that are constantly in flux, while (we suspect) harvesting the email addresses of their subscribers for spam.
So, we started our own board, and a large number of people (nearly 100 in the first few days) joined our community. We've grown slowly ever since.
Why? Well, no unholy restrictions; we simply move poorly-placed posts to the appropriate locations and ask people to reconsider certain material that might emotionally disturb others (it's a sensitive subject that's being discussed).
Oh, and we're not trying to make any money, not even to cover our expenses (which are minimal). In short, we're part of the community we're trying to serve, and since we're not motivated by profit (direct or indirect) this community site has been a very easy and satisfying thing to create and maintain.
Second, use open source software with a good reputation and active development.
We use phpBB, and were up and running within a few hours of deciding to start the board. Once in a while we apply a security patch, and our web host does daily database backups, so it's been smooth sailing for quite a while.
Good luck.
MONEY and lots of it. Bandwidth and Servers (Score:2, Interesting)
Bandwidth is the real killer. With most products the more you sell the cheaper it becomes. Websites are the reverse. A small site can be run for free. A medium site will cost you. A big site will need some serious income to keep running.
Al
Re:MONEY and lots of it. Bandwidth and Servers (Score:2)
Quit wallowing in the details -- think strategic (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, maybe this isn't helpful at all, but it's meant to be.
First things first: You don't want to develop a site; you want to develop a business model that doesn't cost a fortune to set up and has some vague, distant hope of making you money. Lesson 1: A community site is a tool, not a means to an end, unless you're in the religion, politics or *nix-is-better-than-windows evangelical categories.
OK, so a site's a tool. Next thing to consider: Why do you want to pay all the people you mention? You brought up hosing (OK, you'll likely have to pay for that), but also artistic and web-design help, as well as DB management. There are scores of portal-style, slashdot-style and blog-style software packages out there -- go play with 'em a little. Most of 'em have a range of skins/themes you can download that might not be perfect, but they're a start. And do you REALLY want to build a custom app before you even figure out if your community is going to take off? Lesson 2: Quit overthinking -- if you're building a community site, then get something out there and put your energy into promoting it. If there's a market for it, the community will tell you how to make the site perfect because (repeat after me) you'll ask them every chance you get.The greatest horror a new site -- or any new business -- faces is usually cash flow. Do you have enough money to pay the hosting bills? How long, in your worst nightmare, will it take the site to start making money? (Hint: Take that number, double it, and go up by one order of magnitude.) What are the quick ways to make money from the user base, what are ways to get additional money from users who have been around a while and what are the ways you can get long-term, sustainable income from the site? If you don't have multiple ideas for each category, you are going to hit a cash-flow problem. Lesson 3: Your great ideas are just that -- great ideas. But the thing is, great ideas are a dime a dozen; great execution is what makes people money. Have an execution plan.
This probably sounds discouraging, but it's meant to be just the opposite -- if you can do a little up-front planning, can resist the (very common) urge to overfret the technical details and over-buy from vendors/consultants, and can know in advance how you plan to convert eyeballs to money, then you'll likely see some success. These things are basic; it's just shocking how few people follow the basics. Disclaimer: I get paid to offer advice like this [greg-brooks.com].
Details (Score:1)
The little advice I can offer merely backs up the two prior good posts. Find a community and a web programmer in that community willing to help you.
Out of personal interest, what type of a community is it? (I'm a web programmer.)
Not my way (Score:1)
Clarification (Score:1)
Try paper promotion (Score:1)
Best to do it yourself (Score:1)
Design is a little more difficult. Windows users can benefit from expensive web editors such as Frontpage and Dreamweaver. However, if you're willing to learn HTML, XML, etc. (which doesn't take long), you can use a standard text editer (anything but notepad). I use UltraEdit.
For page design, I like to use Xara WebStyle [xara.com]. For PHP sc
BEV.net (Score:2)
a great idea (Score:2, Interesting)
It is the nature of an idea that is important! A great idea is original, meaning it was there 1st or does not clo
What software... (Score:2)
What software would you recommend for an online community?
Anyone have experience installing Slashdot's Slash code [slashdot.org]?
Any chance the bugs in Slash will be fixed? For example, if there are enough comments in a thread, some of them become inaccessible when comments are nested.
Re:What software... (Score:1)
Yes. Don't.
Re:What software... (Score:2)
As for the bug you refer to, is it in slash's buglist on sf.net? If not, you should report it. That's mainly how stuff gets fixed.
As for installing Slash, if you've got perl and apache setup correctly, installing Slash is a piece of cake... just 'make install'. That's *vastly* overstating. My best advice is go grab the src from cvs and give it a try.
I verified the flaw in a Slashdot story. (Score:2)
Cliff, the Slashdot editor, told me about the flaw, and I verified it in a Slashdot story. That was maybe 5 months ago; I suppose it is still there. I didn't report it because it has been there for years; I suppose it has already been reported since there is sometimes discussion about it on slashdot.
The problem is that trying a package as complicated as Slash takes at least 20 hours. It's good to consider carefully before I make the investment.
Have you installed Slash? What were your experiences?
Re:I verified the flaw in a Slashdot story. (Score:2)
Yes, I've installed it many, many times. I've used it to run a number of websites, and submitted patches, bug reports, etc for it.
Overall, IMHO, it's a great backend for websites.
Open source is always better (Score:1)
We have just migrated West Ham Fans [westhamfans.org] into a content management system. PostNuke [postnuke.com] is the sofware behind the site.
Our "sister" company offers web hosting accounts that enable the automatic installation and configuration straight from the web browser. Therefore to get the website you see online took approximately 5 hours.
As for the content, PostNuke [postnuke.com] has a very nice user interface, allowing you to administer/add story/manage users/etc. with great ease.
After some initial struggle of getting traffic to your s
Skip *nuke and use Drupal (Score:1)
Or, better yet, use the great research already done at http://www.opensourcecms.com/ [opensourcecms.com]
Start small, think big (Score:3, Informative)
If you're really looking to save bucks and start small, put up an ad at the local community college or university in the computer or web design office and get a student. They're eager to add more sites to their portfolio and will probably work for either free or minimal bucks. Many students have grown up with computers and are pretty adept, but make sure you interview them thoroughly and check out some of their existing work. If you find a rising star, it's a win-win situation.
There are lots of sub-$10 a month hosting companies out there and you should choose one with a wide range of bandwidths and colocation options, in case you grow quickly (a nice problem to have). Don't start with a tiny ISP that can't handle your growing pains.
As others in this forum have mentioned, you should focus on the business plan (whether or not this is a for-profit operation) and make sure you have a way to spread the word and draw people to your site. I disagree with those who think there's no more room for new online communities; if you have a great idea, go for it and ignore the naysayers. Their ancestors also said the world was flat and men would never fly. Good luck!
My experience (Score:3, Interesting)
We spent several weeks researching hosts and experimenting with content management systems. This is what we ended up with:
Hosting - Shared hosting at Hostony.net [hostony.net]. For around US$8/month, we got 1000M of space and around 35G of bandwidth, as well as the services we needed - such as MySQL databases, SSH, FTP, etc.
Choosing hosting was difficult - as not everyone offered all the features we needed - common problems were limitations on SQL databases, small space quotas, as well as setup fees when only on short term bill (we wanted preferably monthly payments so we could pull out whenever we needed if necessary. In the end we settled on 3 monthly payments).
Unfortunately the hosting service was unreliable - with many server reboots, timeouts, and complete outages. After complaining we were moved to a better server, which has delivered better performance (but still not up to scratch).
Content Management - we chose Postnuke and PhpBB (via the PNphpBB2 module) for Postnuke. Postnuke tended to offer the facilities we needed - although did have problems with things such as forum avatars and login sessions.
Domain name - this was easy - US domain name
The result : http://www.ausmobile.com [ausmobile.com]
My advice? Don't spend up big, as the project may fail, and you will lose money.
ampfea.org (Score:1)
the only thing i can say is, when someone offers to help, let them.
You're gonna have to make some friends (Score:1)
You supply the content, they supply the expertise, you split the profits 50/50.
Getting a web design bureau to write a decent, SECURE system will cost you an arm and a leg. Don't just go with the cheapest estimate, most web design companies don't know jack poop about security o
Do it for fun not money! (Score:2)
Find passion (Score:2)
What I'm trying to say is that it's a lot easier to walk away from something that you've had
Best Community By Far is ROLOSTAR (Score:1)