WP or Joomla/Drupal for city portal

[DewChugr]

I want to build a city portal/guide. I want it to be useful for locals, tourists and people coming to school there or moving there. I want to have a business and restaurant directory I want to charge to show their web address and a link to a google map. On the business and restaurant pages I want to sell ads for those sections. Pages with info on librarys, schools, etc.

I want this to be THE place to go to find out about the town or to find out whats going on around town. More than just a business directory. I want to post by phone with pictures. I can already do that with WP.

I want users to be able to rate or at least comment on restaurants and businesses and articles posted.

I will hace data in csv format from my scraper so if there is a way to import that all the better.

You get the general idea.

Can this be done with Wordpress or am I better off using Joomla or Drupal. I'd rather not have to code the whole thing. There appear to be many more templates and extensions for WP.

 

[vinny lingo]

I found a couple good plug-ins for Joomla. But I like Wordpress better. What plugins do you plan to use with WP?

Here's the plugin I like the best for Joomla review/portal sites:
Review Script for Joomla and Mambo - jReviews

There's another called SOBI which others have been happy with.

 

[DewChugr]

I don't know about plugins yet. I have used a couple to post by sms, but don't know other than that.

Thanks for the link.

 

[radio]

wordpress is my pick.

 

[stevehnsn]

WordPress is great, but it sounds like you are looking for something that can support various kinds of user profiles. I think you will be limiting the scalability of the website by using WordPress. You will end up having to mod existing plug-ins or write them yourself, for functionality that doesn't currently exist.

In this case I think Drupal might be your best option. There are probably already enough modules to give you most of the functionality you are looking for. I'm not sure of the features ning has to offer, but recently ning communities are popping up all over the place, and I know a ning site can support several kinds of user profiles (ie. person, business, admin, etc...).

 

[DewChugr]

Thanks for your comment.

 

[plepco]

You could definitely use WordPress with the right plugins. I am creating a hotel review site along the same lines - it will have "things to do" in the city, restaurants, concerts, etc. along with hotel recommendations. All done in WordPress. I actually WAS going to use Drupal at first - but I just don't know how to do as much in Drupal. Real simple.

WordPress is highly adaptable - you just need to be creative.

 

[stevehnsn]

You could definitely use WordPress with the right plugins. I am creating a hotel review site along the same lines - it will have "things to do" in the city, restaurants, concerts, etc. along with hotel recommendations. All done in WordPress. I actually WAS going to use Drupal at first - but I just don't know how to do as much in Drupal. Real simple.

WordPress is highly adaptable - you just need to be creative.

Hey that's pretty interesting. What if you wanted to develop a social community around it though? Do the plugins exist to allow a user community to interact with the various "things to do", as well as providing admin logins for business owners to update the profiles for their business?

 

[bb_wolfe]

I want to build a city portal/guide. I want it to be useful for locals, tourists and people coming to school there or moving there. I want to have a business and restaurant directory I want to charge to show their web address and a link to a google map. On the business and restaurant pages I want to sell ads for those sections. Pages with info on librarys, schools, etc.

I want this to be THE place to go to find out about the town or to find out whats going on around town. More than just a business directory. I want to post by phone with pictures. I can already do that with WP.

I want users to be able to rate or at least comment on restaurants and businesses and articles posted.

I will hace data in csv format from my scraper so if there is a way to import that all the better.

You get the general idea.

Can this be done with Wordpress or am I better off using Joomla or Drupal. I'd rather not have to code the whole thing. There appear to be many more templates and extensions for WP.

My plugin can really help you with the import. It'll also let you rate posts by category! Link in sig.

Sioux Falls Bargains and Business Directory will eventually be an example local portal like you want, but for now, it's a test site. It also was created in less than 20 mins, start to finish (or as finished as I was when I went to bed last night...)

Ignore the ass template, we're working on better ideas...