if you were building a site for your news site for your home town. were would you sorce the news ,i know you can get news from local paper and twitter ect but if you not got a picture to go with it ,it will not look so good,and if you take the picture from the newspaper or website you could get a bashing.. trying to say if you was going to make a local geo website how would you do it! thank you!
if it's local news go take the picture yourself, even a small video, watermark them and other local news sites will pick up your video and pictures and you'll also get some free advertising and exposure.
Bear in mind that (in the uk anyway) most really local papers don't take their own photographs - they use images sent in by readers - so no major copyright issues - maybe check this first. I'd create the following sections as a minimum for your site - these should make people want to push content to you. News What's on this week/month Business Directory <town name> 50 years ago (with news / images maybe updated yearly) Classifieds (mini craigs list) Jobs Also get all your buddies to advertise on the directory (for free) and put some classifieds / jobs on there - then print up loads of leaflets and put them on all the notice boards in the town to generate a buzz. Also - make sure the theme you use is premium - it should look better than anything else out there. Hope that helps...
thanks for your replys i did not think i would get any very pleased thank you been a great help. i will do as you say but i do see lots of geo sites out there local villages and towns all with news and pictures,but in your posts you show there are other items as well i should think about so i will crack on. but to make a good news story you need a picture to go with it i think this is the biggest proplem for me to get the site looking good
Why don't you let guest writers submit news stories and images to go along with it. Since it is a small town there probably is a great of amount of news. BUT there is one thing. Businesses like publicity. They will write an editorial style article about something that they are promoting, give you the pictures and the rights to everything. It might just be an article about a huge sale at the local 5 and dime. But in a small town that is news.
i think thats the way i will go...very new to all this...only doing this as there a big super market going to hit our village so trying to do some thing for small biz in the area will make it all free .thank you i am in the library now lol looking for anything to get me started.thanks again