About four years ago I first tried setting up a neighbourhood website, based on pmwiki. It sort of worked but not so much. The frameworks just weren't there to do a full Social Network site, which is what I wanted. And I wasn't in the mood to write my own from scratch in PHP, even using Drupal/Joomla/et al. So I figured I ought to try simplifying it as a blog. When that didn't work, I figured I needed to give in and try a fully hosted cloud solution. But I wanted to stay in New Zealand.... but no.

Attempt 1: Pmwiki. Attempt 2: Wordpress. Attempt 3: PeoplesTimes.com. Attempt 4: Ning.com

And finally it looks like we might have a workable platform. Yay! The downsides are Google ads and being hosted in the States. The upsides are really easy setup, automatic self-serve registration, single sign-on across multiple Ning sites, users can post content (the most important bit).

If you live in Addington - or anywhere in Christchurch and interested in social work or community development - try the site out. It's possible we could set up a network of related Ning sites if this works.

Ultimately I still want to find a local, free software, OpenSocial compliant, self-maintaining, 100% organic solution, but getting something that works even as a demo is one small step forward.

2005:
January 2

2008:
April 10
April 10
April 26

Can't say I've ever seen anything interesting in the sky here.

Failure, the pinnacle of success.