Has anyone purchased Social Engine - a php script for social networking ? A few days ago I started a thread saying that I am finding no real benefit of these very costly scripts over free ones like joomla groupjive, xoops yogurt, drupal OG, dolphin boonex etc etc. Social Engine recently responsed to a blog post of a friend of mine saying that they are still very young and will develope more with time. Even though 'young" they have the COSTLIEST payment structure where above the base price of $300 you have to purchase forum, blog, etc etc all separately and with a price tag. For example their 'blog' costs an extra $40, and compare it to Invision or IPB blog at $50 - you will be amazed how primitive it is compared to the IPB blog. The Social Engine team claims that this price structure suits their client most. So I am eager to know has any one puchased this script and its modules ?
I never purchased any Social networking website script,and also i always roam around saying ppl not to buy those costly scripts. I always use to make my own Social Networking website by the help of Joomla. Its mre stable and easy to work,since im a Joomla Developer.
If a script really works as advertised (I have no idea about the quality of Social Engine), it is more than worth its cost. Consider the time, energy, and costs associated with any of the other solutions. All of the "opensource" solutions carry a tremendous amount of risk and incur an enormous amount of time and costs in getting a site up and running - plus the costs of keeping it running, given the paucity of support and poor backward compatibility offered by these opensource products. The lone exception to this is Wordpress, which is a good solution, if your application can fit within the Wordpress framework. All of the other opensource products are problematic - mostly because the developers have no allegiance to the customer base (i.e. no profit motive to keep the customer base happy). If I could find a well supported, well thought out script, I would purchase it. However, these are very rare. VBulletin and PHPLD would be examples. Rich
Social Engine sounds like a bunch of great programmers who dont know crap about sales and marketing. To charge that much for each "piece" is just insane. You might as well go with Handshakes and get more out-of-the-box.
Social engines are not worth buying. Firstly, social networking websites like myspace and facebook are hugely sucsessful and its not even worth trying to compete with them. I dont understand why people would buy a similar script to these sites. Also, social sites like forums are also not really worth buying. Vbulletin is really good software and if you want a secure and profesional way of communicating with your users use this. However for most websites phpBB and SMF is more than good enough. There is a huge ammount of addons for these free scripts which bring it up to the standard of Vbulletin. I can really justify why people buy scripts of any sort. There are loads of free alternatives.
not to mention - it is insanely HARD to start a forum. I mean, I doubt any other internet venture could be more difficult.
@richrf - Hi ! thanks! As with free opensource scripts, the so called paid scripts ALSO NEED a tremendous amount of customization, bug fixes and load balancing. More often than not one has to pay heavily if a custom module is needed to a separate developer ( even they eg. social engine, asks to get a developer to get a simple feature which is inbuilt in drupal or xoops ) Thus paid scripts also need a tremendous amount of time and EXTRA cost if customization is to be done, as well as 2 facts - number of plugins available for those are SCANTY and most are not tested on heavy traffic sites like say joomla, wp etc are. @ Unreal - I guess people do not want to compete with facebook, my space etc just like when they set up a phpbb or vbb forum they do not want to compete with say forum.digital point. The basic layout from fourm-pm-newpost-reply post HAS NOW shifted or shifting to social network style, so that even if there are 50 visitors to my site I will like the nice things that they can profile comment each other and even form a group , be it with nine or ten members, just for the fun of it, if for nothing else ! For this reason, all exisiting forum scripts vbb, ibb, phpbb and cmses drupal, joomla, phpnuke have developed excellent social network modules. So I keep on wondering why or how the existing so called paid scripts are doing any business !
@ Joomla dude ... is that your photo Yes, the Joomla Groupvibe is an EXCELLENT social network module along with their CB or community builder module. I wish they make it soon available for the latest releas of Joomla. I recenly tested it in my localhost. Incidentally, many features of Joomla Groupvibe Groups ARE NOT even available in dzoic, phpfox etc and when asked about this via their contact forms or presales queries they make dumb replies like "may be developed in future" "pay a developer for your custom things" etc
We've been very happy with both Dolphin and Phpfox. I run two modification sites for these: DolphinElite.com Konsort.org
Hi citizen ... Dolphin, if its Dolphin boonex is great, no doubt, and just yesterday they have released yet another version, patches etc, and 90% or more of it is free and opensource. If you are using phpfox few questions please : How robust it is ? That is how many concurrent users and how large an userbase in general it cabn support without slowing down or being a resource hog - Have you experience with a large site? Groups, which are an essential part of social network, seem to be underdeveloped in phpfox. The Group owners/creators CANNOT delete another group members thread in the Forums within the Group, which is a very serious drawback. Compared to orkut or facebook style of profile comments phpfox has very primitive profile commenting - are your users happy with it?? Plus phpfox blog ( check out IPB or VBB blog at $50) seems very, very and very crude. Please let me know whether thse are satisfactory to you or your users or whether improved mods of these or IPB blog plugin are available.
Our users have been very happy with both. Most of our users spend all of their time on our arcade mod I'd definititely check that out, we have it for Dolphin and phpfox. Dolphin and phpfox are about the same, but Dolphin is free
Dolphin is free and BETTER too Compare out of the box Dolhin blogs and Dolphin forums to that of phpfox. Dolphin has also some nice features like whiteboard etc for those who need it With its new release of Dolphin 6x phpfox is really not worth purchasing. Another good news is that new ELGG is coming up ( see elgg.org )
I had to comment because its this kind of negative thinking that hinders success. Ok, so no one should compete with Facebook or Myspace because they are big so don't even try, nice advice. You buy a similar script so that you can put your spin on it. obviously no one will do the exact same thing as facebook and be successful. You have to start somewhere, but your advice is to not even start. People pay for some scripts because they are quality scripts. As far as forums go, PHPBB works just fine. I agree why pay for a forum script when you can get PHPBB for free. I currently have 7,000 members on a forum that I started up so don't get discouraged its not that difficult.
zorro7444's right. Don't forget that most people buying these type of script use them to start their own site and they're not planning on competing with major sites but just to have a site for people interested in the same thing as themselves. To the threadstarter rebekka(if she's still around) I would recommend you to check dzoic and phpfox, their prices are around $2-300 and are packed with features. vbulletin is also working on a new version, believe it's version 4 and it's planned to be a cms. good luck rebekka and to others
imagine you can pay $300 dollars for an all working social engine, with 3 months support. You have professional developers that sell plugins that work for your solution. All you need to do is host it and you're away. You can customise it as far as you want to, but the hard work in social networking sites is not in development but in getting people to visit and register. So saving loads of time in development means you can concentrate on traffic sooner. Look at my site for example. http://www.rateorslatemybuilder.com Still working on getting some users to register, so what do you suggest drupal or phpbb or anything else could offer to resolve this?
I am currently using SocialEngine to run my pet website (see link below). They just upgraded to a new version 4 which is very slick and worth checking out.
Social Engine and phpFox are a waste of money time and effort whether your buying it or heading down to your local nulled retailer website FACEBOOK has taken over. They created theirs from scratch, well he stole the idea and coded it from scratch and it took off from there now it is impossible for anyone to make anything big from any of those clone site etc.