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Ideas requested - Neighborhood forums

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JamminR:
I live in a new neighborhood (<4 years) of almost 100 homes.
For the past 2 years I've lived here, email has been used to communicate.
A community directory gets sent out every year or so. Some nice neighbor just started with it as a neighborhood BBQ, and tries to keep it updated when someone moves in or out.
The problem with the directory, and the emails is that, email isn't a guarantee to reach all that might want to be included.
I know several times my wife told me about emails she's gotten that I didn't (and vice versa)
Due to some vandalism, there was even a pretty good email fight/debate going on. Some people asked to be removed.
To be quite honest, we both usually get more than we want.
(Seriously... would you email a whole neighborhood just to ask if someone had a DVD title you could borrow? - that just seems to me bad ettiquette)

Anyway, for the neighborhood, I made a web site. I'm making a forum. This forum will be for my neighborhood only (and a few invited guests/relatives/friends decided on a case by case basis). Whole families, including kids _when_ authorized by parents.
I need ideas for what you think a 100+ family community, all who might know each other, might like.
General chat
Trading Post (For selling/borrowing/wanted/etc - that DVD!!)
Kids Corner
News - Neighborhood - (few moderators who also do the community directory, etc)
News - Site/Forum - my realm!
Local Entertainment (non-franchise restaurants, upcoming events, <50 mile things to do)

Though my next step is to ask much of the neighborhood (in email *SIGH*), I'd like to have at least a few more before going 'public' with them.

Megiddo:
Sounds pretty good to me. If I were you, I'd probably link everyone's profile up to their real name and lot, as I'd be worried what could happen with anonymity in that situation.

I'm also worried about the inevitable series of people that has hard feelings over something trivial. How are you going to deal with that in such a small group?

JamminR:
Accounts - I'm manually registering every one, name will be real name, location will equal address. I may remove location from showing and actually add "Address" custom field.
I'm going to look into custom mods re: Invite only and change error message for "registration is closed" to "invite only" (no mod required for the error change I don't think, I've not looked that deep into the files yet)

Hard Feelings -
Well, that's just it.
They already exist. Several long stories. Short story, people are different, and the sales realtor who sold 90% of the homes here told people what they wanted to hear regarding various 'after the developer leaves, X will happen' situations. The differences clashed when everyone realized just how shady he was when the last home was sold.

Part of this forum effort is to allow people who don't care enough to read what others have to say "not" to.
They don't have to open thier email box with trepidation. They can avoid the forum if someone has upset them, or, they can add someone to thier ignore list for a while.
Even if it's a major hate fest, at least it will keep it out of people's mailboxes.
Including mine. :)

lavacano201014:
What are you using for the forum stuff? SMF? phpBB?

JamminR:
SMF.
I've seen/used the admin panels for friends using phpBB and they're just... *cringe*

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