I am looking around for the best software for a community I am building. The idea would be a user can have one login and get their own account with access to all the facilities they need. That would mean initially their own blog, access to discussion forums, then their own picture gallery, and possibly wiki(s).
The criterea include
- Low cost
- Easy to setup and maintain
- Flexibility
- Customisation
- Ingtegration
- Search Engine friendly
- Accessibility
I will be keeping a close eye on http://www.telligentsystems.com/ obviously as they have the asp.net community software market sown up :O) but for the moment asp.net/forums does not score highly mainly because of the last two factors. Perhaps I will need to do more development work than I had in mind?
Please let me know if there is an elegant solution to all this? Failing that I might have to go over to a PHP solution ..
First time I have ever read a blog by Seth Godin and wanted to spit. Seth doesn't believe in SEO. Fair enough, but I think it is irresponsible in his position as marketing guru to imply people should ignore a vital part of an online marketers toolkit. It's like saying "I don't know how to get a positive ROI from email marketing so email marketing is obviously a black art that people should avoid - if I can't do it it MUST be crap". Why the heck should sombody not put a small amount of effort and resource into something that potentially has huge gains - paying for traffic you could get for free? IMO marketing should use every trick in the book in a coordinated, integrated way, not "stick to the stuff I am familiar with".
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2004/07/the_problem_wit.html
Sorry to be the one to say this Seth but you are wrong. Yeah, noone will listen to me like they do a real guru but I had to say it. Just because you don't understand something does not mean it is useless, how arrogant is that? If you don't know an expert get referrals from people you trust, just like hiring a solicitor or an accountant.
Not being found in organic search results damages a companies credibility. Advising people to not even bother trying to be found damages Seths credibility. Sad day.
D'oh!