Building a social networking site from scratch or using a social networking script?

Hello all,

please i have a problem and need your vital information to help me decide on what next to do.

I want to start a social networking site but is having problem deciding which way to go on whether to build the site from scratch or use a social networking script.

Please friends, based on your experiences and ideas, I would like to know the positives and negatives of either building the site from scratch or using a social networking script.

i would also like to know which SN script is best and why(that is if you think using a SN script is better)( i would also like to know more on phpfox and SE 3 or SE 4 scripts. can they hold a huge number of users and at the same time, like in millions?)

Please consider the following 3 points below in addition to your personal reasons while making your contributions for me.

1. The site is for a niche that would carry million of followership and will be also having very huge number of users(in millions) on the site at every particular time.

2. the site will also be continually developed from time to time to improve on it, scalability.

3. the cost implications involved.

Please i would welcome your very kind, informed and quick contributions on this issue as i want to embark on the project almost immediately.

Thanks in anticipation.

 

hello all,

please i need your contributions on my above question.

thank you

 

I would have built it from scratch (if you´re a coder) that way you have more control over the quality of the code..

If you aren´t a coder yourself I suggest you use a popular socialnetwork engine (don´t know any) one, or hire a Real coder (not a cheap alternative).

 

I think it's better to develop site from well-known script. Many people has tried it so you don't have to worry about its quality.

I think vBulletin is best. Many forums use it. Most of biggest forums use it.

This forum is an example for having very huge number of users.

vBulletin has plug-in architecture for easily to extend.

vBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite: $285

 

If you want the complete controls i suggest doing it from scratch by yourself. This will help you in scalability factor when you are ready for phase 2 as you know the complete code of it. So go with Custom website that is based completely on your logic and where you do not need to compromise for even a tiny bit of thing.

 

Vbulletin is a forum.. not sure how it fits into the social networking game. SocialEngine is pretty good so far. Ideally you start with a script and then customize is as you scale along. It would be less of a hassle and over time you actually become comfortable in identifying the various files with different functions.

 

vBulletin CMS, as recommended here, isn't a bad choice. although it's mainly a forum software, the CMS package does have a lot of features, and some people have already been fairly successful creating social sites with it. programming a social CMS from scratch, on the other hand, is LOTS of work. we do know since we've done it it does give you a lot of flexibility though - for example you can implement complex user rankings, achievements, custom functions etc which vBulletin doesn't have by default.

 

I'm interested in full social networking and not just the forum, so the vBulletin does not fit in here.
Any more suggestions will be appreciated.
Whether its building from scratch or using a SN script, pls let me know the advantages and disadvantages in the scripts i have mentioned above or if there's abetter script, i would love to know it.

 

I run a Social Engine site. I can tell you for sure that it can not handle millions of users. I use a 12 core Dual Xeon to host 40 co-current users.

 

You don't know enough to do what you want. Hire someone who does.

 

Since you know more than the person in need and the idea of the project, why don't you enligthen us?
pls any more info would be appreciated.
is there a better script? social engine seem like the best around from my findings but would stil like to more about it.
any idea of good & clean developer who can do the job from scratch?
awaiting your contributions.
thanks.

 

In respect of your points 1 - 3 I should say:

Quote:
[TABLE="width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TD="class: alt2, bgcolor: #EBEBEB"]1. The site is for a niche that would carry million of followership and will be also having very huge number of users(in millions) on the site at every particular time.[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

ambitious, at least.
millions of followership?
users in millions?

Both ? should trigger some thought.

Quote:
[TABLE="width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TD="class: alt2, bgcolor: #EBEBEB"]2. the site will also be continually developed from time to time to improve on it, scalability.[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

disconnect there. the site has nothing to do with it. the db storage and normalisation is the only thing relative to the issue of scaleability.

Quote:
[TABLE="width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TD="class: alt2, bgcolor: #EBEBEB"]3. the cost implications involved.[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

depends on your coding skills and overall knowledge as said by Fumigator

 

If you plan on millions of users, your going to need someone who is a coder and/or server manager no questions asked. However, this does seem quite ambitious for someone on a budget and with seemingly no game plan. What you're proposing sounds like you need a legitimate business model. You would also almost definitely need the site created from scratch. It's the only way to get the true uniqueness you would need to reach all those people.

 

Do you want it to be unique or the same as thousands of other social networking sites? If you want it unique, you're going to be coding anyway, either from scratch or altering existing code.

Please friends, based on your experiences and ideas, I would like to know the positives and negatives of either building the site from scratch or using a social networking script.

Depends on your server mostly.
If you really are going to have millions of users are you really gonna run them off a $300 script?

More expensive to start from scratch naturally. But what doesn't make sense is you talk about millions of users on your site and then worry about whether it costs more to use a $300 existing script or a $30,000 unique script. If you really are that confident of having millions of users, you'll have a full time coder working for you anyway building features. Or you think people will hang around with nothing new happening to the site which you'll develop 'time to time'??

 

if you're on tight budget, try jcow script

 

Well

There are too many Social networking sites available now.

Better you use a script to make life easier.
Try Using jcrow or dolphin 

 

Use a script if you are unable to code it yourself but I would rather code it myself to ensure I know everything on it and it'll be more flexible that way.

 

Perhaps this script will help you social networking script

Good luck 

 

thanks to you all.

i'll welcome contact from anyone who has a way forward on this issue.
would prefer to build from scracth or atleast alternate/modify codes as i'll need uniqueness and efficiency but would want to start small.

thank you.

 

There are a few good social network scripts around.
Actually 3 well known and solid.

phpFox - http://www.phpfox.com (the best of the 3)

Social Engine - http://www.socialengine.net

Jomsocial - http://www.jomsocial.com (this one is a Joomla component)