Looking to start a social networking site - can any of you help design?

daz said:
How about starting your own internet auction site? Or search engine?
hsughno.gif
Click to expand...
Oh come now, there's no need for sarcasm. Can't you see the guy's already taking a battering*? :p

Subsequent posters have built this up from "a networking site" to "Facebook 2: The ReLikening", which simply may not be the case. There's always room for niche products and services. :)








* really really really really really really sorry. Also: not sorry.
 
If you're just looking to create a small place for a group or club or club, then your best bet is probably to build on an existing platform.

http://www.elgg.org/

Elgg is a free social networking script, it's functionality seems quite similar to that of facebook before it added apps. :)
 
elgg still requires a good knowledge of PHP in order to customise it. And to be perfectly honest I found it to be a complete bag of crap.

I much prefer Boonex Dolphin.

Even coding newbies (like me) can have it set up and customised within minutes.
 
Wordpress with Buddypress? It's not great at moment but it's free!
just to echo what the others have said, hosting will be a huge expense for this project if it takes off. You will need some serious financial backing to put the wheels in motion properly.
 
Not sure if this is any help, but my dad has his company website made by http://www.in-tuition.net/

They may or may not be able to help you (they don't see to mention site building on their site anymore), but it might be worth dropping them a line.

Just so you can see what they can do, this is my dads site: bandituk.co.uk
 
The main concern here isn't just design but security. How do we keep peoples' personal details secure? We are thinking of getting a larger company involved to help and fund but have no idea of how to go about doing so. How would we go about contacting some of the larger internet firms for their involvement? They must get loads of these requests.
 
Pancakes said:
The main concern here isn't just design but security. How do we keep peoples' personal details secure? We are thinking of getting a larger company involved to help and fund but have no idea of how to go about doing so. How would we go about contacting some of the larger internet firms for their involvement? They must get loads of these requests.
Click to expand...

What you're looking to do is write a "proposal for funding".

In this you should be looking to outline you business plan in terms what you business actual is, how you'd spend the money, how you'd make money and how you'd pay back potential investors.

A quick Google shows there's lots of information out there that will tell you more accurately what you want in there as well as information on finding companies that supply funding for your type of business and how to approach them.
 
Iv made my own social networking site in the past and I'm working on a new one right now. Its not really that difficult if your web developer/ Programmer! Sign up and login is all pretty standard in any development framework. User profiles are little more than a database table containing the profile fields and a web page to display it in dynamically for each user. You certainly don't need a huge team of developers to make a start up social networking site. A designer and a developer could do it pretty fast if they had an exact spec to work from. Obviously if it was a success and took off then a team would be required to further develop and scale the website to accommodate hundreds of thousands of users but you would deal with that as and when you had to.

A good option for you could be to use a content management system Like Joomla. It has at least three social networking extensions available for it the best one is commercial and can be seen here http://www.jomsocial.com/. The best free one is called communty builder and can be found here http://www.joomlapolis.com/. I built a website way back in 2007 using a vastly outdated version of both joomla and community builder yet it illustrates perfectly what possible. This was one of the first websites I ever created: http://www.joomlaplazza.com Granted I used joomla but it was before I had the coding skills to created it from scratch. I still use Joomla whenever I need a site up and running quickly however Iv moved to php frameworks like Codeigniter now which is what I currently developing my own site with.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom