Until Monday: Hyperlocal content with Movable Type

Q: So why hyperlocal? What’s different with the web from the old days where we just had a local newspaper?

hlm: I think a couple of things are going on. People’s ability to customize media from an expanding universe of options is helping creat a market for content that’s much more granular than what many metro dailies can afford to deliver. The web has weakened newspaper’s monopoly in the ad delivery business by offering greater efficiency and demonstrable effectiveness. And most metro papers can’t afford to migrate their audiences online because their online value is significantly less than their offline value.

Q: So it sounds like you see an opportunity in having more efficient distribution. How does blogging play into that?

hlm: Distribution, content creation, and the ability to more easily compete with established local players online… blogging is perfect for that. I mean a blog is chronologically arranged, in columns, divided by categories and changes (in many cases) everyday. That’s the broad definition of a newspaper, right? A blog is so much more than that, but the basic structure lends itself very well to developing an online competitor for newspapers.

Q: That makes sense. Which brings us to Until Monday, the site you’ve just launched. How did this project start?

hlm: It’s the result of the wish list we compiled while building and then managing Buffalo Rising for a year. Every time we said to ourselves or each other, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” we made a note and put it in a feature matrix. We always knew we wanted to customize a platform that combined community building and content distribution in a way that served cities. That’s how it came about. And we saw destination cities as a great market to deploy them in.

Q: How many people worked on the project? What were the different roles on the team?

hlm: I did the concepting, experience and graphic design and project management. Schneider Digital did the development. And on the ground in Brooklyn we have Sara Hohn, the managing editor and principqal contributor and a part time contributing Photo Editor Max Tielman. And we have someone helping to aggregate and then develop all the event content. For development, Matt Puchlerz, Mike Collis, and Nick Barone from Schneider did the development. Lee Kimble did the illustration, and Zack Schneider does all the video.

Q: Seems like a well-rounded team. I see events, articles, profiles, and comments as the main areas of the site — what kinds of content fall under those sections?

hlm: Those are the broad content groups and those tabs are all for search. It’s kind of a cool Ajax widget that lets users search user profiles, any comments made on the site, all of the posts and search for events by day all without losing context (having to jump to a search results page) the event sections is particularly cool. It’s like a slot machine for things to do.

Q: Yeah, when we were looking at it, Mena mentioned that the user interface just feels good to click around in. Was that an explicit part of the site’s goals?

hlm: Yeah. I mean I really like making stuff that lots of people want to play with — stuff that people like having as a part of their everyday lives. Hopefully, just playing with it will make them smile. but it’s the content that will keep them coming back. (That’s awesome that Mena liked it by the way. That’s really awesome.)

Q: The whole team here really tries to check out as many sites as possible, to see the creative things people are doing with Movable Type. Maybe you can describe a little bit about how Movable Type is used to update the site?

hlm: Sure. Everything is driven by Movable Type except for user profiles. Movable Type is our CMS. We use it for entry of regular posts, but for event content too. (We just add fields onto the entry screens for times and date). We wrote a bunch of custom plugins including an image uploader that assigns a photo to a post or an event and then uses PHP to render and/or crop it to the multiple sizes it will take in the interface. We use Movable Type to store all comments and then display them not just on story archive pages but an archive of every comment a registered user has made, for that user to see, as well as everyone else viewing their profile page.

Q: Very interesting — so that extensibility through plugins is a key part of your creative process.

hlm: Yeah. We never really considered rolling our own CMS or using any one elses because Movable Type is just so good at what we needed it to do. The authoring interface and all the work that went in to it is key to our editorial process and to think that we could recreate it ourselves was just folly. So “How to extend MT?” has always been our approach. How to build tools around it, using Movable Type as a core.

Q: We find that a lot from our side, people think about a build-your-own CMS, and then realize they want to focus on content and process, not technology. So they use Movable Type as an engine. Changing topics: I’m a New York City advocate, so it seems obvious to me, but why did you start with Brooklyn?

hlm: Because it’s “what’s next”. We were drawn to it for a bunch of reasons: strong neighborhood identity, its emergence as a cultural center, its diversity, and the blogging community there has a really strong sense of place — an incredible pride. We really liked that. And the fact that Sara was available was huge for us.

Q: That’s one of the things I was struck by — there’s a great Brooklyn blogging community, was that a big factor? Even just from your blogroll, Apartment Therapy, Brooklyn Vegan, Brownstoner, Curbed, Daily Slope, Free Williamsburg and Gothamist are all on Movable Type, and Dope On The Slope and Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn are on TypePad. That’s really cool to see.

hlm: Totally. It means that there are lots of people reading as well. and there are lots of people like you who want to know what’s going on back home. I think density has a hell of a lot to do with it. If brooklyn were it’s own city, it would be the 4th most populated city, and that’s pretty cool. It’s a Six Apart borough. :)

Q: Hah. Next, Staten Island! Can you tell us the next city for Hyperlocal? The Until Monday homepage clearly indicates there are more coming. hlm: Sorry, i can’t. not yet… but there will be 2 more by the end of the year.

Q: Well, I had to ask. Anything else we should be on the lookout for? Any final words for our community?

hlm: Buffalo Rising is due for a major redesign and upgrade to the new platform that serves Until Monday. Rising and Until Monday are just 2 of 5 community properties we plan to roll out over the next 12 months. And the more we work with Movable Type, the deeper appreciation we have for it. For professional blogging and development around blogging, its the most flexible, thought-out and designed product we’ve seen. We’re hooked.

Q: Glad to hear it! And we’ll be checking back in on Until Monday as you expand to more cities. Thanks for your time.

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Thank you to George, the Hyperlocal team, the folks at Schneider Digital, and a big shout-out to Brooklyn for helping to make Until Monday a great site. If you’re ready to make your own splash in your hometown, get Movable Type and then get started!