Ask HN: How to setup scaled-down Craigslist for my struggling rural area? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to setup scaled-down Craigslist for my struggling rural area?

23 pointsJayNeely35 comments

My hometown is a small city in north Georgia; less than 15,000 people or so. There isn't even a section of Craigslist for the surrounding area. I'm in town from Boston for a month or so, and while I'm here, it was recommended to me ( http://ask.metafilter.com/141621/How-to-help-rural-hometown-friends-survive-in-this-economy ) I setup a local version of Craigslist.

Do any HNers know of a white-label platform suited for this kind of purpose? I'd like to keep it simple; especially for getting a community started, there won't be enough volume of posts to fill up all the sub-sections Craigslist has, and thus make it worth checking them out. Community events, jobs, and a marketplace of some sort would probably be the basic sections needed.

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I tried this for my hometown of 100,000 3 years ago. I spent about 50 hours on it (it was called brocktonpost.com). It had amazing features. No one used it.

My recommendation: Wait for Craigslist to come in.

> less than 15,000 people or so

If 1% of people used this, that's 150 people. You might want to start with a simpler email group instead. If you can get 150 using an email list, then make a website to accompany it.

The hard part isn't the software. In fact, it's 1000x easier to get the software going than to get people to use it.

If you were to do it again, what would you do different? What worked best for getting some users?

I definitely understand the software is the easier part -- that's why I'm getting started with it and looking for the simplest option available. I understand the basics of building community sites:

* seed content, and seed interaction with a small core of dedicated users.

* setup natural flows from existing online communities serving portions of the same audience. Facebook communities, Hiawassee's Topix forum, etc.

* Reward action, and encourage sense of belonging in a community.

I would just start an email list.

I would go door to door if I have to and tell people "I want to create a classifieds for our community, can I add your email address?" (Then ask them for their neighbor's emails too)

To post, people can send you an email and then you can compile it.

Do this for 1 week and see if you can get 100-500 people this way.

Then create a simple 1 page site that just reposts the emails. Then create a simple form that allows people to post directly. Then add categories.

I wouldn't skip any steps.

Yes,

Especially since craigslist will come in eventually and so your fix will be temporary if it's only aiming to be like craigslist.

Hey, you could even write Craig and ask him to include you. I know places in rural California well-served by craigslist.

I have to disagree.

1) To clarify on the purpose a bit, it's aim wouldn't be to be just like Craigslist. Craigslist is good, but has plenty of room for imrpovement. And the unique characteristics of a local community make a more customized solution (church sections, farming & agriculture sections, different job categories as a few possible examples) a better option. While this may start by being a simple classifieds Craigslist-like, it could evolve into something very different.

2) One of the main points of what I'm looking for is the ability to setup a simplified Craigslist-like site. Craigslist has too many subsections to make it easy to show activity in a newly active area.

3) It's always easier to promote, and gain buy-in, for a more specific (in this case, local) solution.

None the less, thanks for the comment, and idea of writing Craig directly to ask for an area section to be created.

Craigslist started as an email list.

exactly

Also, I see a need for some type of local email/sms/update service. You could throw classifieds or something like it in there. My university has an alert system when alerts happen. I would love to get that for my local town.

While you're waiting, might as well ask if Craigslist could create a geo for you. It doesn't seem to be too difficult for them to add cities these days. You'll probably need to make a good case though.

Does your hometown have a local newspaper with a classified section? That might be a good place to see where the needs are and what sections will be most useful for your community specifically.

Get something up and running fast... a modified blog as simonk suggested might be a good way to get it up quickly. Craigslist started as a mailing list of sorts among friends.

Good call on checking out the local newspaper classifieds. It's pretty tiny, single page and mostly services, for sale, or real estate.

Also check out (physical!) bulletin boards to see what people are buying & selling -- outside the food store, or for really remote areas, the nearest gas station/general store.

There are actually many ways to start a community, many of the best ones have been described here.

Anyways, since I am here and I work at CL: can you send me (email on my profile) information about your city and what would you specifically need on a new geo? (specific categories/forums).

I can't promise anything (I don't have the last vote on the decision of whether to launch a new geo or not) but it looks like it may make sense to launch a new geo for your area at least at county level.

The e-mail field in your profile doesn't cause your e-mail to display publicly; it's unfortunate HN doesn't make it more clear. You have to add it in the bio section to cause it to be publicly viewable.

The area I'm in is Hiawassee, GA. Craigslist has a Northwest GA section, but could really use a Northeast GA section to cover Union, Lumpkin, White, Habersham, Rabun, and Towns County. Each has several small-ish mountain towns, but no central metro area, even in neighboring states.

ops, you are right about the email , sorry about that.

We usually open new areas when people request them. I will see what I can do.

I don't agree that CL will come in eventually. What is their attraction point to do so? Listing in your nearest CL designated area is problematic unless 1)Listers always include their town or, 2)People in non-listed towns fail to use CL because they are not listed. I think there is an opportunity to fill in between the "nodes" that CL uses, build it to scale easily, add everything you wish CL would do, but doesn't, and launch it.

There is a few Wordpress plugins that turn it into a simple classified site that work well.

http://classifiedstheme.com/ http://wpclassipress.com/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-classified/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/another-wordpress-classi...

Excellent options, especially that last one it looks like. I'll look into these. Thanks!

White label? No. Singularly-focused on Classifieds? Nope. But Patch.com may be a great way to pull together towns that are ailing and need to rely on each other. Am I biased? Yes - these are guys I know and respect, but it's at the very least a good model to shoot for and they may solve a lot of the harder problems as they grow.

Since there seems to be no profit motive in setting this up, just possible overhead, like site maintenance and getting the word out, if it were me, before going to the effort to build and publicize a new site I would call someone over at Craig’s list and ask them to include your area in their list. Just a recommendation.

Perhaps myhometown.stackexchange.com could be a good start? The format is relatively simple (just Q&A). All the hosting is taken care-of... so one could set up a stackexchange in an afternoon (just seed the questions and do some basic design).

Some rural towns have a radio hour that's basically craigslist. If there's a local radio station, I'd guess you'd have more luck with this format than with a website. (Hat tip to "This American Life".)

Combine that with the local paper and online/sms.

Easiest thing would be to set up phpBB or similar forum software, then recruit a few neighbors to moderate.

There is no point in applying more technology -- all the value will come from the users (if you can get them).

I agree. Our town has a website with forum section for all of the residents powered by phpBB.. While it isn't the perfect platform, it's a great way for residents to exchange a variety of information. I find myself on here every day for a variety of reasons and it's become a really valuable tool for many, many people in our town.

Here is a screenshot of the categories that were created for us: http://client.palmsdevelopment.com/frontporch.png

I would also look at Vanilla forums as an alternative to phpBB: http://vanillaforums.org/

Hope this helps!

This is what I was going to suggest.

1. choose a canned forum package,

2. install and configure it,

3. find some moderators; show them how to admin the site and make backups

I've never used phpBB so cannot recommend it.

Edit: maybe have a look at [mwForum](http://www.mwforum.org/).

Jay,

Sent you email. I may have something for you.

Google Groups would definitely be the simplest, although not 100% like craigslist.

Yeah, we have something simple. I'd be glad to let you get the code, or even set it up on one of our servers here. Provided you totally run it.

We use it in Jamaica for stuff there. http://www.brawtalist.com

Dependencies? * Ruby on Rails * Redis

That's a fantastic offer! I'd definitely like to explore it. Could you send me an e-mail, so we can talk further?

jay [.dot.] neely [@at@] socialstrategist [.dot.] com

The bots are that good these days now , huh?

Ning.com (YC alumnus) offers templates for this kind of thing - you can start with a CL lookalike and remove a bunch of sections to simplify. You could consult local businesses and ask them to participate (free), maybe print up some window stickers or do a press release for your local paper, if you have one.

I don't think it's too hard to set up your own domain and transfer it, there's a 'powered by ning' option or similar if you want to host offsite, as I recall.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think Ning would work. For one, it's all about getting people to join the community, which is too high a barrier for most people to post a classified ad real quick.

For another, Ning's design and community management backend is oriented to getting you to add more stuff. It's not at all intuitive (for the community manager) to create an interface and section architecture that'll be intuitive to visitors.

I'd like to hand this site off to someone who lives here, who isn't as web savvy as your average HN member, and not worry about the service they're using making it easy for them to decrease usability and usefulness of the site.

I don't think Ning was ever in YC.

D'oh. Marc Andreesen who founded Ning spoke at YC Winter 08. I keep mixing this up, sorry for the confusion.

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