how many of you have there own social network site. I'm planning to make one of my own. I need 1 thing to be clear, please help me out with this. I need to buy hosting, and I don't know how much bandwidht and space I should take. you guys have social network sites, could you please tell me how much bandwidht your site needs, and space. and if you could tell me, how much members are those. you don't have to give the adress of the website, but give me numbers. hope it's not too much asked.
The easiest and most useful I have found is Ning.com. You only need to pay for domain, renting Ad space and removing their badges. There are some restrictions, but you have to put up with that stuff. It is free to get started and you have to remember that some companies can pay between 500k/few million to have a complete networking site created.
no i'm going to make one of my own, so not ning.com I only need to know how much bandwidht and space you guys use. so I can think of how many I will need. so if you have a social network please give me some numbers
Well, its really tough in the beginning to get members for your networking site. But once when you have enough members you are gonna enjoy with your site ! Good luck
agree with Digital_shubhi, i dont have social networking site but i have own social bookmarking site : goboom.search4i.com
getting members won't be a problem. but I have this problem, I am affraid that if I buy a hosting, then my social network will grow too fast. and then I have to buy new hosting again. so if someone has a social network, could you tell us how much bandwidht and space you use. and could you tell how much members your site has. thanks
some of you must have a social network so please just give me some numbers, I want to start the social network so badly
I used to run a social networking and it is not as heavy as it may seem, except for few stuffs that I will point out. If you are offering video uploads, music uploads, file uploads, then you are in for a big surprise. I suggest that you try to find a way to do this via api, like upload them to youtube, photobucket etc via your system, else, you are looking at a terrabytesssssss of space needed (notice the many 's'). Social networking are just like forums, what tends to grow is the database, especailly if you are offering blogs and other stuffs, it doesnt differ to any popular membership site. I suggest that you consider much on where to piggyback your "other" bandwidth requirements (video or photo upload). Let us look at this scenario, John Doe uploads a 5mb video in your site, now, uploading it eats up bandwidth already, then the system process the video and turn it into an flv, another bandwidth consumption, puts in on public for viewing, the problem is, John puts it on a site that gets 2000 visitors a day... now that will be 2000 X 5mb for just John Doe alone... and you got like 10,000 John Doe's in your site uploading a mere 5mb of video... are you ready to handle such? just do that math... If you have solved your bandwidth piggybacking issue, you can actually start off one using bluehost or any cheap hosting but you need to be ready to get a dedicated hosting if needed. Again, try to consider what you are offering, this is where you will scale your bandwidth needs.
I hope you already get the answer. When you have done if you let me enjoy with your site i will be very thanx to you.
thank you, this was what i needed. I already didn't want to add video and file upload. they can do this via youtube, rapidshare. but as for the pictures, is this better to have it on photobucket, or just on upload. the images won't take much space, only if you have a lot of members.
"but as for the pictures, is this better to have it on photobucket, or just on upload. the images won't take much space, only if you have a lot of members." This depends on what you think your community is, part reason that it is good you host it on big sites like photobucket is that it gets filtered by other members of that community (photobucket for example), the bad part part is, if you have grown so big, you will have to "usually" pay for the service. The good part is, you dont need to worry about your bandwidth for now. The other good part is, when you change hosting, no need to transfer the files from one server to the other. Of course, this will depend on your financial capacity. If you have spare $$$ to spend on hosting, then I really would suggest that you do it on your own host, what I was suggesting is to do it with minimal resources. If you are good in php/asp, you can somehow do a resize of images and/or limit them. Resizing images will help you minimize the load because you only display the thumbnail and not the large image. Just research a little bit more and plan your approach, because it will be very hard when you already have thousands of images uploaded already. Check with your potential members, see if they are into photouploading, see what amount would they will upload. Also, you may wish to add an option on your admin to allow only X numbers of images, this way, you will be able to assess your potential load, say allow 5 for each member, and limit it to 200kb in size, if you have 1000 members already, just do 1000 X 5 X 200kb = your load, you now know what your load is. Hope it helps P.S. I was running a social networking site with more than 50k members only, I offered video upload through "videoegg" which was free then, and had my images uploaded to imageshack.us, I was not having big issues with my bandwidth, just spikes here and there but as I said, it was just like a forum, the load was a normal big site only...
wow why did you stop, You were making lots of money I think with 50k members. thanks, for the info. but what software did you use for the social network. do you think it's better for me to use ELGG or dolphin. and dolphin, does it matter if it is a nulled script. I don't want to buy it.
Social networks take much resources. Even if you use photobucket and youtube you will need VPS or dedicated servers once you get popularity. Thats coz visitors tend to spend more time in social networks and use them as compared to other sites. For example if you use scripts like PHPizabi you need: Hardware Requirements From 0 to 10,000 users Shared Public Host Processor: 800Mhz Memory: 128Mb Storage: ~10Gb From 10,000 to 50,000 users Shared Public Host Processor: 1.4Ghz Memory: 256Mb Storage: ~20Gb From 50,000 to 120,000 users Shared Private Host Processor: 1.4Ghz Memory: 256Mb Storage: ~35Gb From 120,000 to 500,000 users Dedicated Host Processor: 1.8Ghz Memory: 512Mb Storage: ~50Gb From 500,000 to 1,000,000 users Dedicated Host Processor: 2.8Ghz Memory: 1Gb Storage: ~120Gb Over 1,000,000 users Dedicated Load Balanced (2) DB/HT Processors: 3.0Ghz Memory: 3Gb Storage: ~240Gb Hope that helps REGARDS BUBAIPAL
Well, I did stop because there was no money for me on it even if I have more than 50k members, it is more of an expense rather than an earning... AS BUBAIPAL states, this can be true, your needs will grow as your site grows, however, even if I had more than 50k members, they weren't logging in simultaneously, only if they log in at the same time will my server spike... ELGG or dolphin looks nice but they are so bloated (IMHO) so you process more than what you need, as for nulled scripts, you are taking a big chance here, not that I recommend it because there are chances you end up getting sued, if you opt to use a nulled version, then it is your choice, but by the time you earn from your site, get the license, buy it.... I created my own system because I couldn't find any that isn't bloated and resource hog... For now, as a starter, get those cheap hosting like from bluehost... but you should always be ready to get a better one (VPS or Dedicated) when the need comes... I suggest that you check your traffic... you should know how many members are logging in and how many uses all of your site functions... if you have a simultaneous logged in members that are around 500-1000 (or more), you will max out your database server connection if you are using those cheap ones, this is where vps or dedicated will come in play, this is why doing social networking without knowledge of your potential visitors is a little bit costly and dangerous (to your pocket hehe). This is also one reason why I had to write my own code, to make an optimized script to only get what it needs from database and make the codes small and based on includes, I only include the file I need to call, making the load smaller... Just be wise and study your market first before you go and do this... it will save you lots of time and effort and money...
your absolutely right. all these great info, thank you. I will try to go with elgg, and customize it. and after I'm beginning to earn money from it, I will buy a better script, or I will hire a programmer to do it for me so you think: when I have 1000 members and then step over to dedicated server, or when I have 500 members.
"so you think: when I have 1000 members and then step over to dedicated server, or when I have 500 members." - it still depends, if these 500 are logging in simultaneously and uploading stuffs on a daily basis and they use your site like it was part of their life... as I said, don't count your traffic by the number of members you have, count it by the daily traffic you will have, or the bandwidth consumption they are costing you, because you can have 1,000,000,000,000 members recorded but only 10 of them logs in... still no bandwidth there So play it by ear, watch and learn your member, then you decide at the right time. As for your plan of using elgg then moving, I suggest you plan it as early as now, there is always an issue of database migration, a lot of people get stuck on one system they started with because of the difficulties of database migration... research a bit on how easy/hard porting their database into some other system.
Sniper: Are you planning to monitize with Adsense or some kind of affiliate program? I wonder as well if you are targetting a "niche networking" kind of crowd?! I'm launching my own in the next few weeks, just trying to develop some kind of viral strategy.
well, I am going to monetize it with adsense. I think if you have lots of members, a lot of them would click. and when You get good traffic, and have a lot members than I'm going to put in some affiliate programm, that I think it will interest them