Go for it. You just said how much work it is. It wasn't Drupal, it was some other software you recommended.
Content, first. Consistent and regular content. Use the forum software until there's critical mass. I am not interested in wasting time setting up the software and paying for hosting if interest in contributing to it dies off in a few weeks as these things have historically done.
That would probably be what happens. For it to be fruitful, you'd probably have to "hire" people. Money talks when it comes to online journalism. When it's just fandom, I think there's a "Geez, I just wanna watch my team" aspect.. And moreover, I think some people like spending a few minutes on a long post than having to edit and edit a longer piece and go through the editing process and peer reviews (if needed). Not saying it's right, just formulating ideas as to why it usually doesn't work. And it usually doesn't work.
I would do all sorts of things to support what people want to do. I just don't want to repeat past failures. Like before we switched to the current forum software, several users swore we needed live chat and they'd use it all the time. The chat was popular for a couple of weeks and then zero activity. We tried chat before that with the same results. The stupidest thing I can imagine is setting up joomla or whatever only to have the site's home page be a months old article, and nothing new written for ages. The content has to be regular, as I said. Not only stories every day, but breaking news as immediately as possible. We set up the writing team, and nobody's writing. To me, that's an indication that there is a real lack of interest, drive, and dedication. It's incredibly hard to build traffic for any site. It has to be great content.
And consistent. With the breaking news, it's much easier for anyone to just start a thread... but to have the "sources" and all that is much more difficult, and to also be "on call" as well... with the board, it's a "when you want to do it"... when you go into the writing part of it, it's a "As they need it" mindset... and it takes a lot to shift that mindset.
We have sources and access through our partnership with the blazers. They're not going to let us have free run of everything, or much of anything, until we prove it's warranted. More is possible, but the ball is in our court. What did Golliver do to get his position, all along? We have nobody showing that kind of dedication. If you want to get paid, you need page views and ad sales. Golliver built all that.
Anyone can create daily content. That's not the hard part. The challenge is creating consistent quality content. When I was writing for Hoopsworld, we had to write something every single morning. We each had a team and we wrote about that team every morning. Ian Ford had the Blazers, so I was stuck with the Warriors (ironic.) It's hard to come up with something new during the summer while nothing is happening. I did it. I wrote something every morning. Most of the time it was pointless and horrible because there wasn't anything to write about. The goal shouldn't be to come up with something new every single day. The goal is to write quality stuff and have people wanting more. Yes, there have been attempts at starting a writing team. Not many people wrote. Why? Because those articles were lost in the hundreds of posts on this forum every day. If you want people to act like a writer, you need to give them a platform to write from. Nobody is going to take an article seriously if it's formatted as a forum post. There's a reason why Dan Marang left for BlazersEdge. They bill EVERYTHING like it's original content, which is a joke in and of itself, but at least it looks good. I'm not a web developer. I can get the web host, I can load the software, but I can't make it look pretty. I'm a writer. Not a designer. I don't have the time, energy, or kn0w-how when it comes to making a polished looking website. That's the only thing holding me back.
https://wordpress.com Prove it there. It has all the best writing tools, and it probably won't get hacked as many Wordpress sites are. I'll even write our own custom blogging platform if there's enough promise. BE was originally a custom blogging platform. Or BlogABull was. Before they were acquired by Yahoo! or Vox Media...
I am a Web Developer and so is Haak. I would be fine with hosting the Wordpress blog software on my own dedicated web hosting server for FREE provided someone (Denny?) purchased the 10 dollar yearly domain name. Something like RipCityTwoBlog.com as an example?
Not that it's quite the same, but is it possible to add a thread prefix for "column" or "article" for those people who actually want to create "content" rather than threads? Is that what "exclusive" was intended to be--a way to identify original content that is more than just a standard forum thread?
Regarding this--if a separate-but-connected wordpress site were to be set up, would there be an area on the main page that would show the most recent additions, say over in the right-hand section of the page where the ripcitytwo twitter feed is currently displayed?
Denny can chime in here on if the would go for that but that is certainly possible with the right coding.
As to the writing team...I started Paddling upstream and it got zero traffic...only a couple people on the writing team even seemed to read it..it's not out of lack of effort in some cases but lack of response in mine...after 3 it was sort of....what's the point..I can do this with a thread and not have a schedule. We have some really good content organizers here in the threads...some of the best writers rarely post. recently we had Dan Marang writing and he seemed to drop it after 7 episodes. The forum dictates what gets attention and what dies a quick death...that's not because folks haven't tried.
As far as Dan is concerned, it felt (and I have no feeling one way or another on how Dan felt) that people thought he was just doing this as "another" avenue and didn't have a vested interest in the community. That his posts were just for "business" so to speak. That being said, maybe some would feel that way if they themselves were not included in the S2 community prior. It would be something we would need to be proactive and transparent about, and make it as inclusive as possible.