Basic social networking

da_mic_1530 · 27 Nov 2008 at 12:44

I'm going to be looking at a project early next year and want to get a feel / early start for directions I can go in.

Part of the area my team are looking at is that of social networking aspects

Now I'm sure a few of you may remember me, I'm slowly building up a basic knowledge of PHP

Anyway I can get a user to register and all that gubbins

Any pointers as to where to look / articles to read

I'm not after a opensource app that can do it all for me, I want to write the PHP code myself. I want it very basic. I.e you log in and your page is displayed , can view your own photos and an area which displays your friends

With my well "lack" of indepth knowledge, would it be better to heavily modify an opensource alternative

Django x2 · 27 Nov 2008 at 13:02

da_mic_1530 said:
I'm going to be looking at a project early next year and want to get a feel / early start for directions I can go in.

Part of the area my team are looking at is that of social networking aspects

Now I'm sure a few of you may remember me, I'm slowly building up a basic knowledge of PHP

Anyway I can get a user to register and all that gubbins

Any pointers as to where to look / articles to read

I'm not after a opensource app that can do it all for me, I want to write the PHP code myself. I want it very basic. I.e you log in and your page is displayed , can view your own photos and an area which displays your friends

With my well "lack" of indepth knowledge, would it be better to heavily modify an opensource alternative

IMO no, you wont know where to start and personally I think in order to edit any kind of code you need to understand it in case you fudge it up.

Download XAMP and crack on with some tutorials.

da_mic_1530 · 27 Nov 2008 at 13:03

Lucero said:
IMO no, you wont know where to start and personally I think in order to edit any kind of code you need to understand it in case you fudge it up.

Download XAMP and crack on with some tutorials.

jus having a look at "Dolphin" think I'm just going to edit the PHP code and wrap my site around their PHP, looks reasonable to understand

Augmented · 27 Nov 2008 at 14:18

Have you looked at something like Partuza for ideas? Partuza's a basic social networking frame, intended for developing Opensocial applications.

If you're after a good direction for developing something related to social networks, then creating an Opensocial application would be an excellent choice to make.

If you're not familiar with Opensocial, it's a common API for social networks that allows developers to create applications that interface with their users in some way and allow access to user data. Once you've built your app, it can be pretty much added to every Opensocial-supporting network without any changes. Primarily Javascript and HTML, but there's lots and lots of scope to make a big backend system that the app uses. Create a clientside app in HTML/CSS/JS to present the data and use the Opensocial API to interface with a PHP app on your servers.

It's what sites like Myspace, hi5, Orkut and Linkedin use and gaining popularity very quickly. It would be an excellent time to get into it, as good OS developers are rather thin on the ground and a market's opening up.

da_mic_1530 · 27 Nov 2008 at 17:13

Augmented said:
really helpul post.

Wow cheers mate, looks promising, I'll look into it on Monday and get back here if I have any problems, does 000webhost.com support what I need it to?

Augmented · 27 Nov 2008 at 17:34

da_mic_1530 said:
Wow cheers mate, looks promising, I'll look into it on Monday and get back here if I have any problems, does 000webhost.com support what I need it to?

It'll be able to support a PHP application backend, and serve the HTML/CSS/JS but you'll need somewhere for the application to be actually installed i.e. on a social network. You can fake one for development using Apache Shindig and Partuza, but you won't be able to install those on that hosting.

da_mic_1530 · 27 Nov 2008 at 17:53

I'm confused, as far as my understanding goes, I just install the script, providing I have the correct Apache servers etc

Goes of to read the readme again

Just to confirm, I'm talking about using and customising partuza , getting it up and running, then going back and developing my own

dangerstat · 27 Nov 2008 at 18:04

Augmented said:
It'll be able to support a PHP application backend, and serve the HTML/CSS/JS but you'll need somewhere for the application to be actually installed i.e. on a social network. You can fake one for development using Apache Shindig and Partuza, but you won't be able to install those on that hosting.

Yeah I had a look at this because I've been thinking about putting together a social networking site together. But I dont really get how Partuza and open social that you mention would help. For me at least I don't want to develop an app *for* My Space / Facebook or whatever but a fully fledged social networking website. Guess for that there's no open source approach?

da_mic_1530 · 27 Nov 2008 at 18:08

arr I see so partuza isn't actually a social network, its creating plugins for the partuza platform, if thats the case I'll stick with more common PHP / MYSQL opensource options to modify, like "Dolphin"

That said I'm highly interested in what you have linked me to, and will be reading up over the next few weeks, the project is to be finished next year in april, so I have time to learn something along the way

Augmented · 27 Nov 2008 at 18:15

Ah yeah, Partuza needs Shindig to run and is designed for developing Opensocial applications. Shindig provides the 'container' for applications - it does all the hard work of connecting a social network's users with the Opensocial API. Partuza is simply an example social network front-end that has been written to work with Shindig.

I was just suggesting that it might be a more interesting idea to create an Opensocial app, rather than a complete social network. I don't have any recommendations for out-of-the-box social networking sites.

da_mic_1530 · 27 Nov 2008 at 18:19

Augmented said:
Ah yeah, Partuza needs Shindig to run and is designed for developing Opensocial applications. Shindig provides the 'container' for applications - it does all the hard work of connecting a social network's users with the Opensocial API. Partuza is simply an example social network front-end that has been written to work with Shindig.

I was just suggesting that it might be a more interesting idea to create an Opensocial app, rather than a complete social network. I don't have any recommendations for out-of-the-box social networking sites.

so moving the discussion on, Could I say

Create A Partuza like clone using my own code

Thus leaving me with a collection of files combined with SQL data that I can upload to my webserver and run/link to my current website

If so this leads me to my next question

Will creating an opensource app be within my skill level , (which is low but developing) and is this a well documented area

Augmented · 27 Nov 2008 at 18:25

da_mic_1530 said:
so moving the discussion on, Could I say

Create A Partuza like clone using my own code

Thus leaving me with a collection of files combined with SQL data that I can upload to my webserver and run/link to my current website

Yes, but it would be better to write it from scratch. I'd recommend looking at something like Dolphin to get coding ideas if you want to do this.

Will creating an opensource app be within my skill level , (which is low but developing) and is this a well documented area

It won't be easy, and it's certainly a big project but would be a good way to get to grips with the language. If you've no PHP experience, then I'd say you're going to find it very tough - it involves lots of different things - DB manipulation, handling user input, file uploads, image manipulation etc. They're all individually well documented, but I wouldn't imagine there are lots of 'create a social network' tutorials knocking about.

da_mic_1530 · 27 Nov 2008 at 19:41

Oh I'm fine with PHP to a degree, is it just a case of pasting PHP into this new code construct?

dangerstat · 27 Nov 2008 at 19:41

Augmented, do you work on this type of stuff professionally?

What do you think are the biggest thing missing from current social networking sites? What do you expect to see in the medium term future?
P.S. Is that playground love in your sig??

Augmented · 28 Nov 2008 at 00:28

da_mic_1530 said:
Oh I'm fine with PHP to a degree, is it just a case of pasting PHP into this new code construct?

I'm not sure what you mean. You're going to have to write some code for whatever you do

.

If you're planning to create your own social network site, then you'll have to write the code that ties it all together. I'm sure you'll be able to get code for the constituent parts, but it'll need lots of modifying to fit your needs and make the social network usable/useful.

dangerstat said:
Augmented, do you work on this type of stuff professionally?

I'm primarily a UI developer, but I recently finished working on a big Opensocial app for Linkedin and I think there's lots of potential for it.

What do you think are the biggest thing missing from current social networking sites? What do you expect to see in the medium term future?
P.S. Is that playground love in your sig??

Hmmm. I'm not a big user of social networks -except for forums- so I don't think I can add anything useful

. Personally I think social networks have got a very limited lifespan unless they're centred around a product that requires a user to revisit the site or offers benefits e.g. job offers on Linkedin. Friend updates and photo-sharing alone aren't compelling enough ideas to retain and grow users. I think we're going to see more stuff about (self-)servicing the end-user rather than the provider. By which I mean more Google Homepages, personal dashboards, news aggregator type of thing. I think the 'website' is going to become a lot less important, and 'data' being the big thing i.e. webservices, apis and whatnot.
And yeah, the artwork for the Virgin Suicides soundtrack will pop up every so often

.