Advice wanted for a new virtual community project in Italy

hello everyone! I'm new here, so I hope this is in the right section.
EDIT: seems like I wrote a OP that was a bit vague and difficult to grasp. This is the juice:

- I am developing a website to fulfill a lack of virtual local community
- I am planning to then give the source code to anyone so that if you want you can install your own too, in a open source spirit
- I would like to have your opinions, ideas and advices about what features it should have,
- I am NOT selling, promoting, advertising anything

The even more juicy juice is:
what features would you like to see in your ideal local permaculture community website?

This is the list of the features and structure I thought of and started implementing so far:

* a forum, as full optional as possible. Sections will be easy to add and administer so there is no need to get into detail about that here, but I'd like to set a little resource exchange too, for seeds, material, animals and whatever.
I'd like this to be the very heart of the project.

*an event page, where every user can write happenings be that courses, workshops, meeting and so on. Those will be show in a calendar;

*a profile page for every user. This will include description, photo, project the user has created, a gallery. The user can also check the box "I am a designer" and say what certificates he has. Those will be manually checked before being approved. It will also have a contact form, if the user wants, that will send emails to him without revailing his address.

*a "designers" page, so that if you need a designer you can see the list there. This is to boost a bit the incentive to study permaculture and become a designer, and to create more work opportunities for them.

*a project page. Every user can open a project page, and pinpoint the project position on the map, creating a map of all permaculture sites in the country. There is the option to check the box "I accept volunteers" and then fill more fields about it (like what I offer in exchange, kind of work, period, description, contact and so on). It will also have the possibility to leave feedbacks and rating from volunteers.


*a volunteer page, where all the project with the "I accept volunteers" box checked, which can be filtered by area.
To be clear, doesn't need to be a big project, also your balcony will do. Maybe you won't have travellers coming, but someone in your city with a free afternoon may come and help and have a tea. That's the idea.

*a chat. But I'm not sure about that, I don't really like chats onestly. Maybe I'll include it just in case someone else needs it, but disable it in my case. Also, drupal chat is so and so, it would be maybe better to use an ejabberd with shared auth. But this would get technical.

Thank you very much!

Welcome to the forum, Manu!

What country will this be for?  What language will it be in?  Or will it be multilingual?

Hello Burra,
thanks for the welcome!
I'm from Italy an Italian would be the language of my website, except for the possibility to translate the projects page to help volunteers from abroad.
The project in its distro form (in the drupal repo to be used by anyone) will be in English with the modules for the translation preinstalled.

I think we need to get you in touch with Lorenzo - I'll see if I can contact him for you.

Ah, thanks for your help!
Is he the admin of another website with similar functions? I haven't find one for Italy, or in general with this kind of set

He is on the staff here on permies.com, but based in Italy and very keen to see his country adopt permacuture.  I've contacted him, though I know he's very busy at the moment.

I don't know what drupal is.
I don't understand what you really want. If you do a webite and a forum why would someone has to install it? Isn't it usually hosted by a third party?
If you don't sell anything then I would setup a site in weebly because it's dead easy.
It is more difficult though to promote your site. Isn't something similar not already on the net?

Hello Angelika,
I feel like my post was maybe a bit confusing, I edited it to make everything more clear, please take a look

Angelika Maier wrote:I don't understand what you really want.

In this topic I'm asking what features would you like to see in your ideal local permaculture community website, that is.

If you do a webite and a forum why would someone has to install it? Isn't it usually hosted by a third party?

The website I will eventually have will be just a normal one, you wouldn't have to install anything to view it or use it.


What I'm saying is that the source code will be permies, so say that you want to open your own community with more or less the same features as mine, then you can just take my code and adapt it a bit to your needs, done, no time wasting and little knowledge needed. This is what I meant with "you can install your own".

If you don't sell anything then I would setup a site in weebly because it's dead easy.

Sorry I didn't understand this part. I know what weebly is, but I don't get the connection between not selling stuff and weebly. And no, I'm not selling anything.

It is more difficult though to promote your site. Isn't something similar not already on the net?

unfortunately I could not find an Italian community, and this features all in one place I have only seen them on permacultureglobal, but with different implementation and way of managing.
As I am working towards a local idea, I am making different design choices.
If you know anything like what I'm trying to make please let me know, you'll save me some time and troubles!

I said that because weebly is great but does not have a great customer support. I would not build something on it were your lifelihood depends on it. But for a free website it is great! I would not I would NOT go with a subdomain af weebly and get my own domain. Just start it!
The free version of weebly is all you need. I still don't get it with the open source but maybe I'm stupid, what you can do is invite people who can edit and write in your website.
Weebly does have this feature. You do not have to do coding just drag + drop that's it.

Hi,
thanks for your opinion, but I don't feel comfortable with closed source things, and I don't think weebly is as powerful as a framework in terms of flexibility and possibilities.  
I am sure that it is easy to use, but right now I think it's not the instrument I am looking for.
It also has some deep ethical meaning to me to use open source technology, but that may be the talk for another topic and lot of cleaver people I know may disagree, doesn't matter now.

The main question keeps being: do you have any idea about what would you like to see, in such a community website? You have many active posts, I guess you know a thing or two about it!

I would just start and keep asking the people who actually use the website what they want. A forum is important, because not everyone is comfortable writing in an English forum. And something what's on were locals can put their happenings/events. Maybe a section were people can show off their gardens. A temperature/ climate chart  and a sow what when table. A local business section I would not make it overly comlicated it wil lock people out rather than inviting in. In Italy I would participate, but only if you do it on a basis everyone can understand like weebly wordpress and the like. Few people have the time and the knowledge to go deeply into all this technical stuff. Nothing what you suggested cannot be done with standard tools. What I understand is that you want something similar than here but for your region and in Italian.