Charlotte.US – Geodomain Development
Developing a geodomain offers many options and requires many decisions. These choices typically revolve around website content, website structure, and the site’s identity as perceived by visitors. My overriding goal with this project was to settle on a development model and “unique personality” which could be duplicated across many cities.
In building Charlotte.US from the ground up, I reviewed both the positive and negative aspects of a number of other geo sites. I also considered the platform on which to build Charlotte.US such as “static html” files vs. Wordpress.
Content can be modified much more easily than can site structure. Structure is something which you will be married to and which cannot be easily converted. For this project, Wordpress was selected due to its many automated features, plug-ins, publishing options, and excellent universal compatibility.
Actually, I had been looking for a geo portal template for some time that would allow me to add and subtract content components. Eventually, I found a news oriented portal, built on Wordpress, that I could heavily edit. The current version, now viewable at Charlotte.US, has been dramatically modified from the original template.
The site is in what I consider a workable early form right now. There are a variety of auto-updating feeds & content such that revisiting the site numerous times per day will provide the user with new material. This concept I hope to take to an even higher level over time. I have had good success obtaining permissions where required, and I plan to develop partnerships with local businesses as time permits. Local advertising revenue will be pursued though no hurry on this at the moment.
Future upgrades will aim to customize the content sections especially in the real estate, apartments, entertainment, and online services area. Currently, these are linked to local service providers via Superpages content. The Ticketmaster section is fairly well done as is.
Interested readers may also like to follow Detroit.US which is being modeled after the Charlotte site. 
