[gregfielding]

I want my site to be searched, organized, and used according to geolocation. What’s the right way to build this using Buddypress?

The subject matter of my community is location-specific, with lots of blogs and members worldwide, already in existence. Thus far, none of my members, groups, or blogs have been geo-tagged. I’ve been waiting for more progress to be made on the development from before I added this. I think the time has come to take the plunge, I’m just not sure where to start.

Ideally, a user would come to my site and enter their location to see all recent blog posts, groups, forum discussions, and member activity within a given radius. This is what would show in their activity stream after logging in.

Also ideally, they could add additional locations to their activity filter.

This would be the basis of a mobile application for my community as well.

In order for this to work, every member and group would need to be geo-tagged. Blog posts would also need to be tagged, perhaps both with the author’s information and with extra tags because the blog post could be written about a different area.

So far, I have seen three buddypress solutions for geotagging: gpress, glocate.me (coming soon), and Boris’s upcoming mapology. All seem to have merit, but none would do exactly what I want out of the box – at least I don’t think they would.

Can anyone recommend what might be the best way to get started with this?
Thanks!