I’ve been reading the forums with great interest as I’m getting GD for my new project.

I’m a bit stuck at the moment with whether I need 2 wordpress installs or whether I could do everything I want to do on one installation.

Basically, I want to create a fairly substantial blog around a niche topic (which is actually quite large), and have a directory and events listings aspect for people providing goods and services to people interested in my topics.

On the homepage, I would want to put latest blog posts, featured businesses (from the directory) and events for that day or week. Plus other links/navigation to blog posts, directory listings etc. Content and listings will be categorised in 2 dimensions (not sub cats – but “axes” if you will) – topic of blog post e.g. stress, and modality to deal with it e.g. yoga. Perhaps using tags would work – I’m really not sure.

Also, there will ultimately by 2 communities or sets of users – advertisers and people interested in the topics. Plus there will be advertisers who are also bloggers – so they will need to be able to have logins to publish content. Even better is if their blog posts are associated with their listings page – although I appreciate that might be a lot to ask.

I was also thinking of using Buddypress to build community. Does that link in with the people in my directory? I’m also confused about themes.

Before I get into too many other complex details, I was wondering if anyone would be willing to help me spec out my requirements?

Apologies if this post is in the wrong place – I’m new here!

Help? 🙂

Well, I don’t know what integration work I might need, because I’m at the stage of doing requirements and specing the site. It’s a bit chicken and egg – how do I know what requirements are reasonable, when I don’t know what GD can do – in the way I want it to do it. I’m also a bit lost vis a vis Buddypress and what theme I need.

For example, I installed GD on my site with an iThemes builder theme, and it didn’t work. But the reason I like Builder theme, is because you can create different layouts for different parts of the site. Could I do that with, say, Genesis or the theme done especially for GD?

I can say what I think I need. But I don’t know how to determine if what I need is possible or practical, or if I should go to another solution altogether.

I would love to talk to you Guust, if you think you can help me in this scenario – thank you. Can you send me a personal message or do we need another way to communicate?

Also, it would be helpful to have trial of the full package so that I can understand the capabilities. I’m quite happy to pay, but i don’t want to sign up for a year or whatever for something which I have not yet established works for me.

🙂