Starting a new scene/reviews site?

[unr]

Here`s the pre-story:
I am fairly new to this "scene" thing and had only been to original TehSkeen only once or twice, and for very brief periods of time. Brief enough not to remember anything about it.
Yesterday I was mindlessly clicking through heaps of links and got thrown into the "new" TehSkeen. Top post was announcing revival.
Not having anything better to do I quickly skimmed through it and apparently this Brakken guy was asking his generous visitors for donations to cover hosting and vB license fees. Being as generous as I am, I though "Why the fuck not?" and mailed him offering to host his site on european dedicated server for free. Not only that, but while whipping up an e-mail I remembered that I am a PHP coder and, incidentally, just this summer I was working on my own CMS. After thinking about it for a while, I decided that said CMS would be perfect for any scene site. I have also mentioned that in my mail and listed some core features.
Brakken turned my offer down, but that still left me wondering if I could utilize CMS in some other way than it is being utilized now (personal project that I won`t mention).

Here are some features that are currently implemented and community tested:

* Blog
Supports Categories, multiple authors, editing, queue posting (aka automatic posting on set time), RSS, attachments with automatic image watermarking, smilies, bbcode, comments.
* Downloads
Supports categories and sub-categories, ability to list downloads in grid view (like most torrent sites do) or as blog posts (like most php-fusion/dle driven warez sites do), sorting, comments.
* Complete suite for outsourcing downloads
Ability to post HTTP/FTP links (e.g. to services like rapidshare) and full torrent support.
* Torrent support
I kid you not, torrents are supported no worse than in other open-source PHP tracker (tbdev/btit) as I have spent a lot of time tweaking torrent features. CMS utilizes modified XBT tracker (google for it if interested) as backend. Frontend nicely lists all the peers, completed downloads, transfered data for individual users, supports auto-warning/auto-banning for low ratio users, etc.
* User downloads
Any registered user is able to add a download (torrents are supported too!), however if user was not given an exclusive permission to add downloads, every submission will have to be confirmed by administrator before it will appear in the site.
* User system
Registration, login (with captcha), password reminder, user profiles with personal information, such as name/location/avatar.
* Forums
I have integrated a pretty simple forum into the CMS. Supports categories, forums, threads, replies (duh). Is able to tell if there are any new posts since the last visit.
* Search
Search for blog posts, downloads or users. Supports queries like wo?d, w*d, +word, -word.
* Fast!
This one might not be as noticeable as other features, but it`s very important nevertheless. CMS supports caching and is optimized for traffic.
* Scalable and customizable
I even created my own framework for this baby! Full module and plugin support, templating system and 300 line config file with living hell of options.


Now before I start to sound like a commercial, I should probably mention that since at first I was writing this CMS for an individual project, I did not code multilanguage support. By default CMS is lithuanian-only, however I am willing to spend time implementing multilanguage if needed.

Also I would like to mention that I have a dedicated server for my other projects, so hosting is not an issue. Server is located in Netherlands, so torrents or linking to other hosting services is not a problem.

I am thinking of starting an independent scene site using my own CMS

As you can already tell, CMS would be perfect for posting news, reviews, previews, providing homebrew and even rom/iso downloads (I am against pirating games, just throwing it out there).

Problem is, since I am a coder and have a number of other projects to take care of, I would hardly ever be able to post news/articles/downloads.
Seeing how some tempers enjoy writing, I thought I would ask around if anybody would be interested in helping me out and providing content for the site?

Not only that, but I would like general thoughts about the idea. Is there really a need for such site? What features would be really nice to see?

 

[dsbomb]

You've got to find what area you want to be covering (it helps if you're interested in it also). Don't try to be everything to everybody, just as GBATemp is mostly about Nintendo systems.

With the plethora of sites already out there, I'm sure it would take some time to build up a user base that will stick with you for some time.

And I can understand Brakken's stand on not switching systems, ISPs, etc. It's far too huge a headache to convert all the old data his site had to a new one. The days he'd put into converting, fixing up, tweaking, etc so it worked just like the old one would cost far more than the $400 to have it up-and-running with the old stuff.

 

[Hiratai]

I had a site, and it failed miserably, since I tried to do everything that other sites tried to implement. So my site, was pretty much the ass of every site within that aspect. So try and do something that no other site does, at all.

 

[Opium]

Yeah my advice is to start a site that either does something other sites don't do, or you do it in a different and unique way.

The CMS system you're making sounds pretty cool. Keep going with that and make some other great features to add it to. If it's professional enough you could sell it to a company. Companies are always on the lookout for CMS systems, especially if they offer features no other CMS does.

 

[unr]

Technically there`s not much to do that has not been done in some way or another.
The way I see it, it is only possible to differentiate from other sites by providing unique content that has demand in the targeted audience.

The reason I did not mention any specific niche (apart from being a "scene" site) is becouse I would like to hear opinions on the matter, instead of defining borders right from the beginning.
Nintendo? Microsoft? Homebrew? Releases? Atari? Let`s hear it.

 

[Hiratai]

Technically there`s not much to do that has not been done in some way or another.
The way I see it, it is only possible to differentiate from other sites by providing unique content that has demand in the targeted audience.

The reason I did not mention any specific niche (apart from being a "scene" site) is becouse I would like to hear opinions on the matter, instead of defining borders right from the beginning.
Nintendo? Microsoft? Homebrew? Releases? Atari? Let`s hear it.

All?

Or just handhelds. Seriously...no one cares about Microsoft that much anymore.

 

[ZAFDeltaForce]

Technically there`s not much to do that has not been done in some way or another.
The way I see it, it is only possible to differentiate from other sites by providing unique content that has demand in the targeted audience.

The reason I did not mention any specific niche (apart from being a "scene" site) is becouse I would like to hear opinions on the matter, instead of defining borders right from the beginning.
Nintendo? Microsoft? Homebrew? Releases? Atari? Let`s hear it.

All?

Or just handhelds. Seriously...no one cares about Microsoft that much anymore.

I agree. Limit your scope to handhelds. Its a lot easier to organize what ever that is going on in your site if you limit your scope.

 

[unr]

EDIT: nvm