• What is the purpose of the site?
• What is the target audience?
• In the case of sites built to support fiction projects:
  • What real world component is the site supposed to emulate (a business, a media outlet)
  • How dynamic will the site’s content be?
  • Will the site’s content be required to follow or synch to a specific timeline?
• Will the site require user registration?
• Will parts of the site be restricted to specific users or user groups?
• Will the site have an ecommerce connection?
• Does the site have any specific requirements for look and feel?

Once these questions are answered, we apply them to a grid and drill-down process to determine the technology.

The first decision point is among the following high-level application types. This top level decision is based primarily on type and volume of content,

• Content Management System
• Blog Engine
• Forum Engine
• Social Networking Engine
• Third party website
• Other

The second decision point is the our defined emulation model (for fiction project websites only):

• Will this site emulate a business?
  • Will we have to provide pseudo-transaction capabilities?
  • Will we need to be interactive with visitors
  • Do we need to closely emulate a REAL business site in look or feel?
• Will this site emulate an organization (e.g. political party, lobbying organization, etc.)?
  • Will we need to have special types of subscriptions beyond RSS?
  • Do we need to take extra care regarding posting (since many loose cannons and nutcases play in the political blog realm)
  • Do we need to emulate a real organization for parody?
• Will this site emulate a place?
• Will the site emulate a person?

In the current state, these are the engines we’ve chosen:

Joomla! content managment:

• Our company website
• Our company technical division website
• Two fictitious newspapers
• One fictitious broadcast network
• One fictitious radio station
• One fictitious magazine
• One eMagazine
• One RSS collection site (parody government intelligence agency)
• Two branded author sites
• Two rock band sites
• A web presence workshop tutorial site
• Owners personal website
• Fictitious religious organization
• Fictitious city web site
• A fictitious large retailer
• A writer who is a dog

WordPress:

• This blog.
• Two branded author blogs
• Three music-related blogs
• One political blog
• One fictitious author blog (tutorial)
• Fictitious airline
• Branded author website
• Fictitious rock band
• Humor blog

b2Evolution:

• A blogging services website
• An internet fiction project core site

bbPress:

• prototype forum

BuddyPress

• Prototype social network for writers

Concrete5:

• Fictitious food company

Coppermine Gallery:

• Three site related galleries
• On fictitious art gallery

Drupal:

• Fictitious author tutorial site.

Moodle:

• Our online education site

PHPbb 3:

• Fictitious author tutorial site
• Tutorial interactive site

SMF (Simple Machines Forum):

• Our forum prototype (currently not in use)

Blogger:

• Fictitious bank PR blog
• Satirical history blog
• Junk mail rants blog
• Parody financial dictionary
• Fictitious fiction book site blog
• Fictitious author tutorial blog

We also have current multiple presences on:

• Facebook
• Live Journal
• MySpace
• Squidoo
• Twitter

Nearly a dozen more sites are currently in design stages.