The comparison I did in depth was really WordPress vs. Neighborlogs. I just implemented WordPress for a consulting client of mine (not a hyperlocal site) and it’s what we’ve used for 4 years on our site and think it’s terrific for lots of scenarios…just not my situation. However, one of the areas I don’t think it does a great job is multi-user blogs. If you are a solo blogger, it’s not an issue. In contrast, most of our content comes from the community so optimizing for that is a place I felt neighborlogs shined.

To Michelle’s point, unless I have my own wordpress support person, the support I get from neighborlogs is superior simply because there’s an actual person (albeit a busy person) I can reach out to. He does a good job of triage from what I have experienced.

I’ve also seen solid CMS’ built on top of Django and Drupal but they both had tech wizards attached to them which I can’t afford which is why they weren’t preferred options for my circumstance.

By comparison to my choice, I felt WordPress fell short on criteria #1, 5, 11, 12, 13 (it can probably do some of these items but not in a no-brainer fashion – i.e., it requires some deeper platform knowledge than I possess). Even some of the other items aren’t trivial whereas they are with my choice.

I appreciate all the comments/suggestions.

I should also mention that if one is talking about a larger, sophisticated and resourced operation there are other options out there. They cost real money, however, and will assume some level of internal support to take full advantage of their capabilities.

I would, however, love to see a comparison across the board of the major offerings using your criteria. Too much work for you, I know, but something I would love to see.

Also, as someone who’s worked more on a national level and thought about projects for a national or international niche audience, I honestly don’t see how these criteria are particular to hyperlocal.

I think it’s a good start for making a list of criteria for any community oriented web news site since hyperlocal is, in many ways, simply one form of community.

(1) The ability to easily geo-tag content in the CMS. There are in existence today geo-tagging engines that automatically extract geo-references from content and assign a LAT/LON or multiple LAT/LONs.
(2) Outbound Geo-rss and KML feeds so that mashups can be built quickly and easily from the content created/added to the publishing tool.

Your list intimated these two features, but I felt it valuable to specifically spell them out because they exist today in some publishing systems.

Ian
http://communicationcontent.blogspot.com/

While we have similar criteria, I think one of the key characteristics you mention is the responsiveness of the development team. That alone will kill or grow a project.

Michelle Ferrier
http://www.locallygrownnews.com

Thanks for posting this blog and sharing some of your experience. My first comment is that I entirely agree with the following points you make. These are critical to the success of any hyperlocal blogger.

1. You Don’t Need To Hire A Tech Team To Do It
2. You Need To Be Able to Quickly and Easily Monetize Your Site
4. The platform must allow for community generated content

Although I have not used Neighborlogs I will give it a review, now that you have shared it.

On the other hand I am highly experienced with WordPress and feel that without a doubt it is currently one of the best platforms to use for starting and launching a hyperlocal blog.

I wrote a blog about wordpress being used for hyperlocal platforms here if anyone wants to compare and contrast.

http://hyperlocal101.com/best-software-for-hyperlocal-blogs

Thanks for your post.

Shields Bialasik
http://www.hyperlocal101.com