Q and A

Here are a few commonly asked questions about the project.

With many other content management systems out there such as Drupal, what is the need for another one?

Our CMS is essentially filled with details for college and small town newspapers. It is aimed at an audience who isn't necessarily very tech savvy, and it’s tools are far more specialized than any other free CMS we have seen. Under the hood, however, Populous is quite easily modified by those who are able and willing to get their hands dirty.

Are you concerned that this will be just another social network?

No, actually. We think the future of social networks lies in connecting people geographically or by common interest. This isn’t a new idea, but we’re trying to connect people around their need to have and share information in a local context. Newspapers are already central to their local communities, and we think a social network aimed at connecting people around the information provided by a newspaper could be very successful. We will allow people to interact with and share the news actively with their friends much like they would do at a local café.

Do you really think people are going to use this?

Yes. What we’re doing is scooping up much of the functionality of sites like Digg and Facebook and bringing them all to one place. Right now people use a bunch of social networks and social bookmarking tools to interact with all of the information on the web. Since people already use these tools everyday to interact with news content we think it is a logical extension to add the functionality to a news site.

Can I see what it’s going to look like?

By early fall we will launch a demo site where you can look at and test the CMS.

Why is your project called Populous?

Populous is Latin for “people” or “crowd.” This project is about harnessing the collective power and intelligence of a community to create a network of content that is relevant to everyone. Newspapers will be empowered to plan and create content on the go, and the newspaper readers will be empowered to produce their own content and interact with each other. It’s all about the people, both individually and collectively.

What's your timeline for the project?

In the fall we are launching the beta version of the CMS. By winter, look for a full-featured Digital Newsroom and by spring the entire Community News Network, with social network, calendar and personal blogs. Along the way we will be looking for partners to help us beta test everything before we make a final release in the summer of 2009.

Who is the project for?

The project is designed with collegiate and small town newspapers in mind but can be adopted by any community with content to put online and a community surrounding that content. The software is useful enough for the specific communities it has been designed for but many of these functionalities are quite universal.

How are you making it? Where can I see the code?

Populous is written primarily on top of Django, an open source Web framework written in Python. All of Populous' code will be freely available via a code repository, which we'll make available when we launch the beta in the coming months.