I am trying to start a site similar to a social network. I would like my users to be able to create a profile as well as leave reviews. I have a domain name. However I am a an amateur, I am a baby to this world. Where do I begin? I would prefer a free service until I am able to purchase more assistance for the site. Also since I am new to this is there a service that will be suitable for my lack of experience and knowledge that will allow for this process to be easier? Like on a copy, paste edit level? lol.
Easiest solution would be using an CMS, such : Elgg - elgg.org/ Dolphin - boonex.com/dolphin SocialEngine - cmscritic.com/social-engine etc. But selecting a path to build may depend of your project : How unique design you desire ? - Not unique at all » cms would fit What's your budget ? - Low » cms would ift How exclusive/unique features ? - Not exclusive, just general/basic features » cms would fit How many features ? - Not too many » cms would fit Do you plan to develop your website further ? - Not at all/Nothing considerable » cms would fit Brief explanation of "How To" : Download The CMS » You will find the download link at the CMS page Host it on you web server Create a new database Run your installation page thru the browser » Try to run index.php, /install or install.php (something similar) Insert all required information. You can easily find tutorial in youtube.
How important is this site to you? With what is available (free and reasonably priced) and your lack of skills you are headed down the road to disappointment, where you will find thousands of abandoned sites that never met expectations. If it is a casual thing or you are just trying to be trendy; it does not matter, you will get tired of maintaining it after a while and move on to other things. However if the site is an important priority for you then you need to STOP what you are doing long enough to learn the basic skills need to build, implement, manage and maintain a web site. It looks easy; and it is if you just want to theow something up to be cool and trendy. However the price of easy is you end up with junk that no one cares about; you spend all kinds of time trying to make it better and mostly you get frustrated because you are locked into the CMS, themes, plugins, and other junk you used to put it together instead of invest enough time to understand how any of it actually works. If you look through this site and others like it you will see thousands of instances of people just like you walking off a cliff wearing a blindfold because they though it would be easy to have the next great thing based on their vision. They failed and if that is what you think you are going to do; you will also fail unless you invest some time to learn enough basics to understand that the more you learn; the more you understand thet there is more you need to know.
Thank You for your reply. I am just reading it. Guess what I have been doing all day (big smile) I have been in class. I took an html and CSS class. I am now in a PHP class. It is amazing and surprisingly fun. So I have been in class non stop since about 1 p.m. A couple of times the thought ran through my mind: I'm having fun learning but I pray all of this is needed for my site. It was a amazing to take a break and read your post. It made all of these hours seem so empowering that I was doing exactly what someone knows it takes to create a successful site. I'm on the right track! Yay! lol Who knew me, Julia, understanding and writing html and PHP language. SMH I'm wowing myself lol. Anything worth having and wanting is worth working hard for. Learning all of these new things makes me even more excited to get to where I can customize my site. I will be so proud when it launches. I just want to Thank You for taking the time out to write your post. It meant so much to me more than you will ever know. It was and is very motivating. Like a coach. If I hadn't been in class all day I would have felt very small and foolish for thinking this was gonna be easy as pie. You kicked my butt! I love you for that!! You could've easily gave me an easy way out but you wanted to set me straight. You are amazing. I am looking forward to inviting you to my site in the future. Thank You Thank You Thank You
Thank Hey Vladimir, Thank you for your reply. But you replied to a similar question before. I read it where you recommended code academy to another member who wanted to design a site. I have to be honest this morning I just wanted to launch a site for a great idea. I wanted it to be easy because this was all foreign to me. It was FRUSTRATING to say the least. However I now know there is no copy,paste edit to a successful site. After being in class today I know these skills will assist in the creation of a successful site. You helped me tremendously. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience on this site. If you said I'd be writing codes tonight I would've laughed in your face. It has been Amazing to say the least to learn a new skill that I was never expecting in a million years to acquire. Thank You Vladamir its back to PHP class for me.
I recommend amateurs such as your god self to try the following open source CMS:- BuddyPress BuddyPress is an open source social networking software package owned by Automattic. “Social networking, in a box. Everything you need to start your own self-hosted and WordPress-powered social network”. Dolphin Dolphin is a CMS that lets you create social networks, dating sites and web communities. It comes loaded with video chat, recorder, video player, forums, groups, events, video messaging, emails, file sharing as well as desktop and mobile apps. Elgg This powerful open source social networking engine is one of the most popular development platforms. Its built to run on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) platform. It offers blogging, microblogging, file sharing, networking, groups, and numerous other features. Jcow Jcow is a flexible social networking CMS coded in PHP. Jcow makes it easy&interesting to create Social Networks and online communities. Beatz Beatz is a free opensource online social networking community script that allows you to start your own favourite artist band website just like Pure Volume. The script is coded in Php, Mysql and licensed under Creative Commons GPL license. PeoplePods PeoplePods claims to be “a developer friendly social software toolkit”. The CMS is flexible and is well-backed by active development. Pligg CMS Pligg is an open source CMS (Content Management System) that you can download and use for free. Pligg CMS provides social publishing software that encourages visitors to register on your website so that they can submit content and connect with other users. Oxwall Oxwall is unbelievably flexible and easy to use PHP/MySQL community software platform. Oxwall is used for a wide range of projects starting from family sites and custom social networks to collaboration tools and enterprise community solutions. MonoX Inspired by the latest Web technologies and built on top of the Web parts infrastructure, MonoX allows you to design and develop next generation ASP.NET Web applications and social networks. Etano Etano lets you create a social network, dating website and other collaborative sites. It doesn’t really offer many unique features, but it can surely suffice for a small social networking project. Hotaru CMS Hotaru CMS is an open source, PHP platform for building your own websites. With flexible plugins and themes, you can make any site you like. The most common use for Hotaru is social bookmarking. LiveStreet CMS LiveStreet CMS lets you create social networks and team blogs. It offers many extensions and multilingual translations.
@corporatemanager that list is overwhelming. It might help if you'd added in your own opinion under those that you've been an admin for.
If you are looking to create a social network without the hassle of maintaining the actual software, Ning.com might be a good option. You can have up to 1,000 members for $25.
Wordress (.org version) is totally free and offers lots of free plugins to create a very basic social network where users can create profiles, add information, participate in discussions, add pictures, upload files... Really easy to set up and to maintain. Using external services like Ning, as kikolani mentioned, is also a good idea (but the community will be on Ning) Programming the whole thing from scratch would be quite a tall order even for an experienced programmer.
What i would suggest is to partner with 2 more people. One with technical knowledge aka web developer and one with promotion knowledge aka online marketeer. Create your business plan, even if you won't present it to an investor, set down your goals, expectations, everything needed for this project to succeed. After that, begin your search for those two partners by presenting your idea and make them believe in this. If you manage to do this, everything will be more clear for you, and your project will have from 0.1% chances to succeed to more like 5% chances to succeed. Don't let the numbers get you down though, you never know where you can strike gold. You just need to organize everything first and then start developing it.