Joomla add ins for social networking site

I'm building a site for a niche community. It is never going to have a lot of users (a couple of hundred at the most). I want to use Joomla because I have some experience with developing components and modules so can customise it a lot.

I want the following features
Basic social networking features like galleries, status, add friends etc
Blogg
Forum
Logging on once should give access to all the features on the site (all scripts should use joomla's login)

I also want my users to be able to do be able to add new articles, and comment on and rate articles (would be nice if avatar shows next to comments)

I have no budget for this, as it's never going to be a site that makes money, more of a personal project that I can maybe use as a template for future sites. Any suggestions on the best add ins to use for this?
Thanks.

 

use jom social.

 

You can try Community Builder too.

 

I would strongly recommend JomSocial. It looks much nicer, it's easier to use as everthing is in one place and you can always link it up to a forum (I use PhPbb3 with RokBridge) One login for everything.

Cheers,

J.

 

Community builder will cover most of social networking functions

 

Community Builder is free, but doesn't have as nice a UI as JomSocial which costs.

If you don't mind paying for the component - I'd recommend JomSocial.

 

thanks for the advice with JomSocial - James

 

yeh Jomsocial is good i have it on my site

 

But in JomSocial for all the plugins we need to pay. CB many are free

 

I would strongly suggest you to use SocialEngine for this purpose. it would suite your requirements.
I would not suggest Joomla since JomSocial isn't as customizable as SocialEngine is.
Let me know if you need additional help.

 

Check out K2 as well it is completly free and has some features that may be useful