Cheers Tom,

Disclaimer: The video was totally unplanned and unscripted, the software is in a state of flux by if anyone is interested in what we’re doing then please do drop me a line. [Don't be put off by my staring like a psycho.]

I suppose the main points are:

* Web development has got to the stage where someone with little technical knowledge can create a multi-faceted site.

* Know what you really want to do before starting to do it - that’s really really important in any project, large or small.

* Choose a business model. Do you want to be able to earn an income from the site? In a 2nd or 3rd tier Chinese city this will be hard, almost futile, and will run into many problems related to regulation, receipt issuance, etc. It is possible to do these things on the side, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

* Know the tools available. We started with Drupal because it was really the only (free) thing at the time capable, but needed quite a lot of tweaking, especially modules that were half-finished. Now there are good alternatives, probably Ning is the most well known, but make sure they can do what you really want in the way you want (i.e. have some specifications, as mentioned above). Doing it again I'd still go with Drupal, the additional modules are now much more mature and while it is pretty administer friendly it offers lots of opportunity to go beneath-the-hood if desired.

* Ask someone for help. Drupal is a good community full of free software volunteers happy to give advice. They’re not going to build a site for you for free though they will make it easier. I’m happy to give some advice and technical tweaks for something similar in nature to DalianDalian.com.

* Stay on the move and be self-critical. What do the members and other contributors say? What don’t you like? This is very much our problem (we like to break the site to see if a touch-up is possible, it is a work in progress).

In the end, making a website, creating media, is fascinating, at least we think so. If you’re in a 2nd/3rd tier city in China or anywhere in the world that you think under-serves a niche, a little tinkering with technology can get it served; it's far less 'making a website' far more thinking deeply about what is useful and ways to be useful.

Wish this had been set up when i was in Dalian... good work

Sigh...this would have been much better as a blog post instead of an unnecessary video.

And the software is the easy part, getting advertisers to support you, getting licenses, getting the information all together (and accurate) in one place is important. And as soon as you finish, Chinese companies will swoop in and steal every last bit of information off your site, and publish it under their own names.

His site would be cooler if it weren't an error message.

@Daniel Howard

Good point. Error message is not so much of a community.

@Alex

Houston - we have a problem.

get a new logo.

the "I ♥ xx" motif is both tired and trademarked.

This site is back up now. Finding reliable servers has been one of the stickiest issues for the site, especially as it has grown.

(Btw, I'm the Chris mentioned in the video)

As Alex says above, the site is a constant work in process, and sometimes we break it.

I'll add that the site is very different now than it was when we started. We originally planned on having a central group of writers, but the circle of contributors has grown steadily as more people have wanted to write about the city. We set it up so anyone could start a blog or import their existing blog (just by feeding their RSS feed into the site). We opened up editing, and now everything on the front page is there because readers voted it up.

At this point, anyone can join the site and add content. Tag your del.icio.us links, Flickr photos and YouTube videos "daliandalian" and they'll end up on the site, or register and start your own blog. Have fun.

- Chris Amico

www.daliandalian.com