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By slobizman on
I own a domain name [some city name].info. It's a growing, mid-sized city with lots of community involvement and lots of tourism. There is really no good city information web site yet. Some attempts, but badly conceived and developed. I'd like to create one that works for both residents and tourists. Basically, an everything about [this town] site, with ratings on establishments, discussion forum, photo gallery, possibly some user blogs, etc. A massive site really.
I don't know much about Drupal, the closest thing to a CMS I've come to is Expression Engine and Word Press. But I've been told this is THE cms to use for big sites like I'm talking about. First, of all do you all agree Drupal is a good choice for this? Something else better?
But my big question is: can you all point me to some city sites like I'm talking about, built with Drupal, to give me an idea of what it can do? Any other ideas on what the site could contain are welcome as well.
Thanks in advance for your help!!!
Comments
Yes
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Because Drupal is a well-documented development platform as well as an application, it places no boundaries on the direction a "city information and community" site might take. The core feature set supports news, conversation (blogs, forums, comments), and reference content (static pages, hypermedia "books"). You will definitely want to add the images module and possibly other related modules such as img_assist and one of the photo gallery modules. If you want to build databases, you should install CCK (Content Construction Kit) and the Views module. With the Buddylist module and some custom templating, you can support social networking and very nice profile pages.
Some sites you should look at:
NEWSPAPERS
http://www.blufftontoday.com/ Community conversation associated with newspaper
http://www.savannahnow.com/ Complete newspaper site, mostly Drupal powered
http://blogs.morningsun.net/ Blog site associated with newspaper site
http://www.buzz.mn/ Local communities, associated with newspaper site
http://www.tiraspoltimes.com/ English-language paper in Transnistria (breakoff from Moldavia)
FREESTANDING
http://www.h2otown.info/ Community site for Watertown, Mass.
http://www.fresnofamous.com/ Community site for Fresno, CA, just purchased by McClatchy Corp.
http://www.universalhub.com/ Aggregates news and blogs in Boston
Thank you for the
Thank you for the information and for taking the time to pull out the fine examples. Looks very powerful.
Here's something I really didn't get around to discussing. I'd like to take the route of most successful sites today, where the users build the content. There's just too much for one person or group to do in documenting a city. This site will include the social aspects of some of these sites you listed, but it will be very informational as well. The "let the user build it" makes me think Wiki, but boy, just about all wiki's I've seen are a complete turn off for anyone who is not at all technical. And they are usually just plain ugly, not inviting and not built for advertising.
Can Drupal provide a solution for what I'm talking about? Can it be inviting and appealing, yet wiki-like in it's functionality, so that average user feels comfortable adding information about restaurants, hotels, bars, hikes, neighborhoods, etc? Have you ever seen anything like this done? And can a wiki-like page have ratings and comments built into it?
CCK+Views
Making lists of different types of things is pretty easy with CCK and Views. CCK allows you to add content types, so you could define types like Restaurants, Hotels, Hikes, etc. Then users just click "Create Restaurant," for example, and they fill in all the fields you want. Every Restaurant that's entered can have comments underneath it. You can also use on of the Voting modules to allow other users to rate the Restaurants.
Views allows you to present data---for example, make lists of restaurants based on their ratings, etc.
The making of lists sounds
The making of lists sounds great. Do you have a link where I could read something more about it? And what is CCK and Views? Are these extensions of some sort?
You asked a good
You asked a good question!
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lion costumedragon Art
add new comments, or edit comments?
Do you want people editing each other's reviews and comments [wiki], or adding their own comments and new reviews [more like this, perhaps with greater guidance]. When http://wikipedia.org/ does an article about a subject, they want one article about the subject, edited repeatedly... for our green travel site, which will soon have a little overlap with what you're doing (reviews of green restaurants, hotels, etc), we're going with a content management system: each person creates their own restuarant review.
That is a question I've been
That is a question I've been struggling with. On one hand to really get content written, I need to open it up as a wiki. But, I'm afraid of the idiots out there that will corrupt the pages for fun. Can modifications to an entry be placed on hold until a moderator approves it? Or does that go against the whole wiki thing? Wikipedia most likely does not have this problem since the community is so huge that there are always people around to fix problems.
Maybe I just need a combination of both styles of wikis and lists. I could see the wiki style for things like the local government structure, hiking areas, beaches, etc. But for businesses like restaurants and the like, maybe lists are better.
Or, maybe the whole wiki thing should be gone. If I were to use lists for most everything, people could suggest list entries, staff could clean them up and make them live, and the we could let the comments/ratings begin. Staff could also over time create all the lists by importing lists of restaurants and such, or just hand entering them.
As far as information things like who is the mayor, the council, etc, we could jus hand write those informational pages. They don't sound like lists.
I guess eventually, as the community builds, I people will step up to take charge of certain areas.
Sorry I sound like I'm searching in the dark here; it's just very difficult when I don't know what the software is capable of doing. But it sounds to me like it can do anything.
QUESTION: Is there a way to be alerted of replies to this topic? I dont' see that.
So, is there a developer in
So, is there a developer in the Drupal community that you all can recommend that is good at this type of site-building? I won't be doing this myself. I'm techie enough to maintain something, and even modify it after it's built. But I'm not stupid enough to attempt to do something I'm not good at when I can hire an expert and have it done right.
I'm looking for someone who has both the left and the right side of the brain working, someone who can brainstorm with me about the site, understand my needs, understand the business end of the project, come up with ideas and then be the great technician to pull it off as well.
Looking for a real pro.
Thanks.
On the Drupal website
On the Drupal website example thumbnails, Copenhagen Exposed looks a lot like what I'm interested in doing. But I can't find the actaul site on the web. Does anyone have the URL so I can take a look at it?
Local Community Website example
We have developed a local community website here in Plainfield, IL using Drupal. You can view it here: http://www.plainfield.metropolisjoe.com/
It is a little different from what you are talking about, but it does serve up community information very well. We went away from the "wiki" idea early on because of concerns about what might get posted, and also advice from a few people who had done community sites in the past that relied on outside users to post info, and failed miserably. Seems these sites usually don't generate enough interest to get a lot of user input and support in that way. Especially from local governments. I'm sure there are examples out there of sites who suceeded in this, but we only heard about the ones that failed.
Our site was developed using Drupal and it's modules, with some customization to allow business advertising. Businesses who advertise with us are allowed to post their own info on their own pages. This required some customization.
It has been quite a learning process for us, and I would be happy to share some insight with you. If you have any questions, or want some advice, please let me know.
something similar
I am looking at doing something similar, but have very specific needs. I saw your web site, Metropolis Joe, and like the delicious tagging, and ads, and wanted to discuss a bit about that. I will send you an email to discuss it in detail.
Thanks for the post!