Thread

I’m trying to get some ideas of what I might be able to do with EE to remake my site AltEnergyToday.com.  The site as is only posts feeds of content related to alternative energy. Obviously, there is no saving of stories by the site, interactivity by the visitors, and no reference of any sort for the industry. I get decent traffic and Adsense revenue.  So, I’d like build upon this to turn it into something more. I’ve looked at various forums, Digg clones, blogging systems, and CMS’s. I’m not comfortable with alot of those other open source systems. Call me crazy, but I prefer to pay for a rock solid commercial system where I get support. I’m just not sure what I could fully do with the site using EE, that makes it more interesting to visitors and not too much of a nightmare in running it.

Then, I thought of EE and all the things it offers out of the box—forum, wiki, blog, gallery. I don’t personally want to blog, and I know that I am not allowed to create multiple blogs under the license agreement.

So, I’m asking all of you creative EE’ers that really know what this system is capable of, if you’d share any ideas you might have for my site, if you would. 😊

Thanks!

Hi there,

I think you’re looking at this from the wrong approach. It’s never a good idea to approach site content from the viewpoint of what a platform or technology can do for you. You should find a platform (like EE) or technology purely as a means to to provide a solution for your content needs.

I’d start by researching other sites similar to yours. What do they offer their visitors in terms of content or interactivity? Can you offer something similar but better? Can you offer more? Is there a gap in terms of what content the other sites are offering and what the visitors want? There may be an opportunity for you to fill the gap.

You must get an idea of what your visitors want from your site. Maybe the first step in getting more functionality and interactivity on there is to put up a survey asking your visitors what they want.

If you still want to look at this from the technology approach, take a look at other sites built with EE and see what they’re offering their visitors. Someone may have some cool content or widgets on their site that suit their visitors really well. Can you adapt those ideas into something that would suit your visitors? Their ideas may spark an idea in your mind.

So, to sum it up - find out what your visitors want then build it. Hope this helps!

well building cms’s based on a websites content makes sense…but building a website based around the cms???? that makes absolutely no sense.