Local Website Advice?

I started a website through Microsoft Office Live last year for my local area. I started the site but then found out that you could not use adsense or other ads, so I just left it sit and did nothing with it. I just was able to get the domain transfered from Office Live and want to host the site myself.

Does anyone run a local site and do you have any sucess?


Any suggestions what to do for a local site? You can see what I did with it last year, but I stopped but now there are no restrictions, I want to do a new site this one will be gone as soon as the transfer is complete.

www.northcountrydirectory.com

Thanks in advance for any suggestions and help.

 

You could make a Wordpress blog and write about local news stories. Also have a paid directory like feature with local businesses. Paid blog posts about good deals at local businesses.

If you get visitors and good traffic with interesting or controversial blog posts, the money could follow if you market it to the community.

 

You can also consider using a content management system such as Mambo or Joomla which will allow you to add blogs, articles, gallery, newsfeeds and more. It can be a complex site or something really simple. The examples I mentioned are pretty easy to install and customize.

 

I started off running a local site. It worked well as a support site for my local web design and hosting services. Income directly from the site was not very good. City of less than 40k.

 

Nice point. Those are probably the best CMS options for you since there are already so many tweaks available. If for some reason Joomla or Mambo don't work, tons of other CMS are good. I've had a pretty good experience with cmsmadesimple as well.

 

Thanks for the advice so far, I am thinking about on a tempory basis using it for my bogger blog with the same name.
I have never used a CMS is it pretty easy to use? I have Joomla available for quick load on my Cpanel.