Starting Your Own Community Driven Website?

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!"

Comments

Lessons of slashdot

[El]

Well, obviously allowing anonymous posting is not a good idea, as it significantly lowers your signal to noise ratio. In fact, there should be some sort of cost associated with creating each online persona, to discourage people from creating throwaway accounts just for the purpose of harrasing others. Although why anybody considers it worth their time to troll is beyond me...

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

[metalpet]

> Well, obviously allowing anonymous posting is not a good idea, as it significantly lowers your signal to noise ratio

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.

I have a suggestion or two

[DaveJay]

First, find your community, then start a site for that community.

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.

Quit wallowing in the details -- think strategic

[gregwbrooks]

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.