Do you ever wish your community had a website to help you find local businesses and services? If so, I advise that you be careful what you wish for. Here’s my step-by-step process of how to create a local community website.

• Step 1: You must be a radio, television, newspaper or other media company.
• Step 2: Your goal: Not helping your community, but promoting your media company.
• Step 3: Design a site that packs in as many ads as possible with little room for real content.
• Step 4: Make sure your site is as un-user friendly as possible. (The archaic AOL idea of keywords will help here.)
• Step 5: Advertise your newly created community website in as many places as possible to drive traffic.
• Step 6: Never innovate on your original design. (It’s best if your site looks like it originally appeared on GeoCities back in 1999.)

Real World Examples:

• Vermillion Country First
• Illinois Homepage

Howdy,

Well I decided to drop Joomla from this site and go with the new WordPress 3. It makes more sense I think, this is a place for personal blogging and having Joomla on here would just encourage me to create endless little extensions and I’d never get anything accomplished.