Site Reference Forums

G'day webby. Welcome to the forum.

Here's what I'd be doing, based on my limited, recent experience.

1)  Set up a WordPress blog on your own domain.

2)  Allow comments on her posts. That will enble the critique. Set it so that all comments must be moderated or she'll be spammed.

3)  Allow people to register as members with the right to post. Their membership application will need to be moderated but after that she may wish to allow them to post without moderation. She can always cancel the membership of problem people.

4)  The moderate comments setting in 2 will apply here also.

So this means that:

1)  Your girlfriend will have a blog that both she and accredited members can post their work to without moderation.

2)  Your girlfriend and other members can comment on the posts without moderation.

3)  Other site visitors can comment on the posts subject to your girlfriends moderation.

4)  It would be possible to give a trusted member or two, moderator status so that the site can carry on if she's away on holidays.

A blog isn't the only way to do this but it would work well. The advantage is that blogs are set up to be easy for non web savvy people to manage.

I see some writer's blogs along these lines as I get around the blog social network.

Please do keep us informed. I'm keen to know how it works out.

Regards,
Laurie.

Just to throw a spanner i the works, or a bug in the code -

Sounds like you want a forum


ROFLMFAO (!)

webby,
Sounds like she might like something that has already been established for social networking for writers. Send her to Gathersdotcom. Ummm, if she wants to join, I'm not quite sure how to do this, but, since it's a point based network, I wouldn't mind if she joined through me -- I get points that way. (Points go towards gifts. Don't have enough points yet, to worry about what kind of gifts. LOL)

Oh, and for the record, it can be quite enjoyable. They just had a fiction novel contest, where writers send in their first three chapters, plus the whole book, then the contest itself had three tiers. First tier was chapter one, where each of the first chapters (over 2500 entries) were reviewed by network members, to choose the top 20 books. To convince us to read the chapters and write reviews, Border's offered a $500 gift certificate to the best review for each of those 20 books that made it to round two. (Not only did I win one of the $500 gift certificates, the book that I reviewed actually was the ultimate winner of the contest. I'm in hog heaven buying all the books I could possibly want, plus the author has promised my review goes on the back sleeve when its published.) The second tier only had $100 gift certificates and was chapter two, but I was vacationing during that time, so didn't have much time to join in. The top ten books went into the third tier of the contest, where Simon and Schuester picked the winner(s). They chose two books, instead of one, although the book previously mentioned was the official winner, while the other was a runner-up. Only difference is the official winner got some money along with the promise of publication from them.

That's been the best contest so far, but there have been other minor ones, too. Since one of the groups within the network is for Border's, this is one social networking site that could be noticed by publishers, as well as having fellow writer's critque (often harshly) other's works.

Now that's one social networking place that's right up my alley! Hope your wife will feel the same way.

Oh, and for everyone else reading this (Laurie ) they also like uploaded photos and have photograph contests occasionally -- have joined one of those, too.

The best practical way is doing link building TASKS..Study SEO....

Well, i have a site that suits exactly your purpose...
actually i built it for the same reason... I need moderators for my site as it is very hard for me to promote it and add content and develope it at the same time.
If you wish you can add posts and articles on my site... i have a community of my site and have a decent site...
check it and reply if it suits you.
It will be a help yo me...
I am also looking forward to build a forum for my site... If you can help me with that, I would be grateful.

A blog with forums, that would be fine. Your girlfriend has a good idea. Best of luck! Would love to check that site soon.