What web platforms are out their and what is the best one?
Giles Gibson
various web platforms that they have chosen. Ning, Webjam, Wordpress
etc etc. Some sites are great bulletin boards, others focus more on
information etc. We are looking at alternatives to see if we would
gain anything by moving on to a new platform. Other peoples experience
(good and bad) would really help in this process.
Peter @ stmgrts.org.uk
newer sites. Seems like there is a lot more stuff around now.
We started years ago and ended up with Movable Type, a blog tool for
most of the site and have created our own directory, events pages and
forum, but I wish we didn't have to do this. We used some off the
shelf forum software initially, but spammers targeted it and made it a
pain to moderate.
Peter
Philip John
thelichfieldblog.co.uk) and I built a platform for other hyperlocals
and niche journalism projects based on it called Journal Local (http://
journallocal.co.uk).
I know other sites that use Drupal and I have experience using that
but it's much less functional out of the box than WordPress (but
shouldn't really be compared with each other).
I despise Blogger and encourage anyone using it to switch to WordPress
(which is relatively easy) but I've never used Movable Type which many
seem to like.
Phil
Steven Clift
Examples:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/oxford-hm
http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/bristol-bris
Think open source Google Groups with a nicer web interface.
Key in our experience is to reach people where the are online, so we
deliver the neighbourhood interactive space via:
1. E-mail
2. E-mail digest
3. Web
4. Web Feed
5. Facebook Page (excerpts)
6. Twitter (subject lines)
We've just started rolling out the Facebook and Twitter options.
In general, you will have a far higher participation rate if users by
default receive content via e-mail (with of course the easy ability to
turn it off) and key to inclusion is the ability to publish via
e-mail. This allows us to recruit people on paper forms and have them
be part of the online space without hoping they will remember to type
in the URL from some crumpled up flier.
I hope this is helpful.
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org
P.S. I'll do a proper intro soon.
Lots more: http://pages.e-democracy.org/Starting_a_neighbors_forum
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Beckenham
up until a month ago was free. What I liked about the platform was
that it allowed me a non-techy to play around with lots of the layout,
content features, embed easily enough widgets from outside and have it
all hosted so all I need to do is make it look ok and work.
My only major concern with building websites on all of the various
software platforms is that ultimately if that provider goes down or
bust (!) then the whole site is lost. Site's become richer as they
fill up with content and that content helps rise in the search engine
rankings so it's quite a big issue for those thinking where or what
they should build. But then again I'm guessing most local owners don't
have deep pockets and we mostly started these up for the love not the
money so we all use various platforms already provided instead of
having a site made from scratch.
I now can't make the 25th. Totally gutted! However, please feel free
to keep in touch. I certainly wanted to meet other local owners and
learn and share knowledge, there's always something new to know I
believe.
Cheers
Jon
william perrin
if you are starting a site fresh, use one of the major hosted services
- typepad.com or wordpress.com
they are consumer focussed and easy to use. both have their
limitations and constraints, but alllow you to focus on the stuff you
are writing and publishing above all else. which is all you should do
really in the first year or so until you find a voice and audience.
if you are really uncomfortable with the technology the limited
blogger platform is best but will drive you mad quickly
all three handle spam reasonably well, wordpress.com is better in many
ways but doens't handle iframes, limiting the embedding you can do of
things like maps etc
Ning is good if you want a Ning-style site and can afford to pay the
monthly fees. hosted grou.ps has much of the ning funcitonality
without the fee but the hardware seems to be under strain as it grows
fast and it is a bit glitchy.
would never advise anyone starting out to host their own - you spend
too much time faffing with it, even if you are tech-adept.
If you must host your own then Drupal is very heavy duty (i think some
of the guardian is published with it) and has a ticky to use backend
(or rather not as easy as wordpress.org) i junked a drupal site once
as it was too difficult. wordpress.org is very good - easy to use but
the monthly security updates are becoming a pain for some. haven't
come across anyone using movable type for a while.
Steven Clift
the e-mail friendly environment that we find works so well, is using
the "Subscribe to Comments" plug-in in combination with Feedburner's
option for people to sign-up via e-mail. With WordPress.com, there is
a similar Subscribe to Blog option but it isn't available as a plug-in
for ".org" users.
This approach still relies on a central person(s) to start new
discussions with lead blog posts (which can be barrier to
many-to-many), but it can work well - An example:
http://locallygrownnorthfield.org
I'd be interested in UK examples where lots of people set up blog
accounts and starting posts was well distributed - this is the only
example in the U.S. that I know of where it seems to work really well:
http://www.perfectduluthday.com - I am sure there are more, but I
find that local lessons are often not well shared.
Because many community sites are coming at this from a more journalism
centered perspective (typically requiring an editor at the centre), my
community building/civic engagement push for many-to-many systems
might not be so familiar. Ning is sort of in the middle between
forums/e-lists on one side and blog frameworks on the other. If Ning
allowed posting via e-mail and full-text delivery I'd encourage folks
to take a much closer look, but with all the dead Ning sites that
still "look good" I have a hard time recommending its use.
Despite swimming upstream in my e-mail matters push, the fact that the
technology of this e-list works so well to build community among more
social media savvy folks, reinforces my view. I find it ironic that
most major open source web content management systems still use e-mail
lists for group communication despite the fact that their own tools
support group exchange. While do the the most technical expect people
to behave differently? (Even Facebook has steadily capitulated to
e-mail engagement with wall comments).
On a related note, I posted about this on the Locals Online group yesterday:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/53uukbn0wI4w7iC9Dmw6SN
Wish I could be there with you all this weekend.
Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org
Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Follow me - http://twitter.com/democracy
New Tel: +1.612.234.7072