Hey guys and gals, I have this idea for a social networking site and need the software for it. However, because of the sites nature, I require certain features that do no come with most pre-written software so I am considering having one custom written. Does anyone have any idea what kind of costs I am looking at for having a custom written social networking site? Cost to write it, cost to maintain it etc. Just some ballpark figures. Would it be a better move to have a pre-written script like phpfox or phpizabi customized to meet my needs? The potential of this idea I have is huge and I do not think it has been done before.
Depending how custom you want it it might be thousands of dollars. Check out my site: socialsplash.com Originally it was running on rayzz's script from rayzz.net - it was on their version 1 of the script their new updated version i think is worse than the original one. Anyways i got the script for little over $400. I liked it better than phpFox because it had some features that i thought were much better. I have customized it the script for about 6 months now. I designed it myself, graphics, css style, etc. Custom php programming work i have spend probably close to $2000 now. I have done many new custom jobs. What kind of social network are you trying to do? What custom stuff do you need. Let me know so maybe i can give you a better idea how much you might be have to spend!
hey thanks for the response. I like your site, do you have a demo or test account I can check it out on or should I just register? Some of the bigger features I want custom built in to it is the ability to create multiple profiles from one account. That is, I log in under one username and password and can have 5 or 6 profiles that I manage from there. I also want a way to clearly track relatives throughout the site, sort of like family trees for groups of people that are related.
I coded my own social network script for my site webmasterpals.com I would suggest you to take up open source software and do some modifications. Trust me it is well worth a try! You can also buy commercially available scripts. You can find a good collection of both open source and commercial social network scripts here
Dont have a demo but you can just register.. I used scriptlance.com to post all of my projects. Once you get your network setup just post a project there with your budget and you'll get bunch of people bidding. I think you'll be able to get that mod for about $100-$200
have you checked out the scripts at entertainmentscripts.com? I have one of their scripts but never got around to using it. It looked pretty good though. If you like it, I may be able to sell it to you cheap (not sure on the license transfer rights). Chris