Cityblogs - WPMU & developing blogging communities based on physical / spatial relationships
So following on from my ideas about relocation and the internet big bang, I’m trying out a little bit of a project.
WordPress MultiUser has, IMO, about the greatest organisational / social potential of any application since email. Yes, there are lots of different multi-user blog options and yes, many of these are pretty powerful… but the thing about WPMU is that it leverages the developing digital identity / CMS aspects of WordPress (with no real interference) and in doing so sets us up for the development of blogging beyond simply a publication format.
That is, blogs as digital identity / genuine social networking applications / personal content management systems and a heck of a lot more.
And, if you follow the big bang theory to it’s natural conclusion… quite possibly physically located.
Which is why, as a little trial, I’ve snapped up melbourneblogs.org, sydneyblogs.org, brisbaneblogs.org, londonblogs.org and newyorkblogs.org.
The versions of WPMU that I have running on these are pretty old and, to be totally honest, I’d actively discourage anyone from setting out creating blogs on them just yet but that should change in the next couple of months, especially with the great work that’s happening on the project at the moment.
The plan is fairly simple too. Essentially I’d like to use FeedWordPress as an automated weblogs.com for each city, figure out how to define suburbs accurately (and develop their own FWP areas) and take it from there.
I’d also envisage a ‘facilitator’ for each city and something of a craigslist element at the macro level.
As for revenue models… I guess that AdSense could (possibly) go someway towards hosting costs but I’m not a great fan of advertising… I guess there’s always the possibility for larger storage / hosting on a fee basis but as far as I know that’s not on the WPMU roadmap just yet. Probably my favourite revenue model would be for cities to pay me to develop this for them…
So whaddya reckon… do you think there’s a future for this? How could it be more effectively designed?
Find expert WordPress and WordPress MultiUser (WPMU) development and consulting at Incsub.
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July 18th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
An interesting idea James - I had a similar idea for doing something like that with WPMU in the U.K., so I registered the names localblog.co.uk and localblogs.co.uk (they currently point to a “What’s On?” site I’m working on for my home town), with a view to then having a folder/sub-domain for each area.
Of course, it hasn’t gone from just being an idea to actually getting anywhere yet, so I’d be interested to see how you get on. The FeedWordPress plugin seems like it could be quite useful (I guess it could also be quite “spammy”!). I’m sure this could easily take off in the bigger cities, not sure how good the take-up would be in smaller places.
When you say you’d like cities to pay you for setting this up, who do you envisage paying, local government?
Rob.
July 19th, 2005 at 7:04 am
James when do you think WPMU will be suitable for a large scale roll out, such as within a corporate?
As I have said before I like the idea very much, esspecially when coupled with other social tools and services.
July 19th, 2005 at 10:03 am
Thanks for the comments guys.
Not surprised you’ve been thinking along the same lines Rob, especially considering the possibilities of localised advertising taking off (as with Google maps). First mover in that area would be pretty cool… hard to sustain possibly in the initial stages but potentially hugely worthwhile down the line.
Interesting question you ask about smaller places too… having just come back from a conference where the *enormous* benefits of community radio were very much highlighted… I think that in fact this could really take off. Not so much as a ‘mass use’ but on terms of allowing / facilitating voices to be heard from those communities.
So yes, ideally I think that the major benefit here could lie in a social sense and in that case the most appropriate funding would be public. However, initially it might not be such a bad idea to look at other options…
Good question Michael, that’s probably something to ask Matt & Donncha about in the first instance but my guess would be in the next few months. The main thing to remember about using OS like this is that it’s never going to be ’straight out of the box’ and that that’s a good thing… so as long as you’ve got someone who knows what they’re doing in terms of php / mysql and smarty (to a degree) then you’ll be OK.
Oh, and a blog consultant of course ;)
July 19th, 2005 at 12:00 pm
Hi All,
A group of us have develop a blogsphere for those who run.
It started at the grassroots level in November 2004 and continues to grow:
http://www.coolrunning.com.au/runningguide/arg.php?pagename=Main.RunningBlogGuide
At the moment we have bloggers from all different states of Australia and i have been thinking of ways to geographically locate the blogs. However, after a few discussions on a Cool Running Bloggers Thread people seemed to like how we were one group not separated by boundaries.
Perhaps a Sydney blog is too broad. What is it about the capital city is the focus?
Cheers
Martin
July 25th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
[…] citing things about working on WPMU is the ideas other people have for it. James Farmer is building communities based on physical location, b […]
July 31st, 2005 at 12:44 pm
I too have been dabbling in WPMU with a view toward hosting (for free) a limited number of blogs. I am waiting for the rollout of the admin panel.
I am also very interested in designing some themes for WPMU which I would then offer up to the WPMU community. James, if you are interested in one or two themes, I could probably whip something up. I’m working on two right now that are specifically for WPMU and will roll them out once the admin plugin is in place.
Joni Mueller
Blog: http://babygotblog.com
Design: http://webjones.org
August 2nd, 2005 at 3:53 pm
Hi Jony,
Looks like the new WPMU uses regular WP themes, thanks for the offer though! Have a go at http://edublogs.org if you like.
Cheers, James
September 7th, 2005 at 7:10 am
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September 8th, 2005 at 3:06 am
I have started a blog loosely tied to our neighborhood association. Loosely tied in that it supplements the ‘official’ association web page (http://www.dundee-memorialpark.org ) , but some association board members are also authors on the blog. Things have started off slowly over the summer. I wanted to add a sizable chunk of content before large numbers of visitors come to look around. The association meetings start up again this month, so I expect a flood of visitors to come.
I intended the blog to be a place to share thoughts, resources, and discuss local issues. A couple of local issues – parking pressure & a proposed parking garage, change in neighborhood businesses, efforts to downzone high density residential properties, and pending historic district status – will make the blog relevant. Also, the association web site is stagnant. A blog provides a simple & dynamic method for sharing content.
I decided to use a free blog service, blogsome.com, to begin. Blogsome uses WordPressMu, BTW. I have been thinking of biting the bullet to pay for hosting. Implementing WPmu would be a great way to open up the site to more voices and allow contributors to control the look & feel of their posts.
September 8th, 2005 at 9:53 am
Hi Michael,
Sounds like a fantastic project but I’d encourage you to consider providing blogs for individuyals and then aggregating the results using something like FeedWordPress… as oppopsed to a group blog.
You’re right in that WPMU would work well there and, to be honest, getting a simple hosting account isn’t going to break the bank.
Cheers, James
September 9th, 2005 at 4:24 pm
re worpdress mu and the state of development I wonder if you’d be better off running the standard wordpress but creating multiple copies as required to new bloggers?
The install looks pretty easy so its not as big a hassle as trying to maintain another version of wpress. What do you think?
doug
September 10th, 2005 at 2:04 pm
Grab yourself a blog at http://edublogs.org Doug and tell me what is easier ;)
December 16th, 2005 at 1:56 am
Hi James,
I referenced your post in an article I wrote back at my blog. Please take a look at it and let me know how the concept introduced here is working for you. I am also going through some of your other material on community blogging … good stuff!
Drop me a note back at my blog http://iblog2.info if you have any feedback.
Thanks for the great content on this site.
Be well,
Jose
January 2nd, 2006 at 6:34 am
That’s exactly what I’m trying to do in Poland. Good luck.
February 14th, 2006 at 2:38 am
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