Hello , Why is is against EE policy to create a MySpace type of community? If I am paying for my own hosting of my own community then why can I not offer my members their own blog tools? I do not understand this? I was really excited to find EE but this really disappoints me due to the fact I am wanting to create a community site that focuses on a particular niche that includes offering my members the ability to create their own blogs etc. This is a great application from what I have seen thus far - However , EE policy is going to prevent many users from using their product due to this policy. The future is Web 2.0 and customers as myself will have to look else where for their Web 2.0 needs.
Any info that anyone can provide will be so greatly appreciated.

Thank you ,
Jason

These guys run a business, part of their business is selling a particularly good CMS system.

It is entirely up to the authors of this systems as to how it should be used.

I’m quite sure ellislabs would be over the moon if you set up blogs for all your clients as long as they paid the required licensing fees.

The terms and conditions are actually quite good. If you run a thing for profit you pay, if you run for community/non-profit you dont pay. Seems quite fare to me.

Hi Medic18,

This is actually an easy question to answer. EE is a web publishing system. What you’re describe is a social networking application. Though EE has some aspects and features of a social network, its not designed to be a full-featured social network application that enables people to build myspace type sites.

License issues aside, ExpressionEngine does not currently have a management system in place that permits a user to sign up and receive a totally configured weblog.  You’d have to manually set-up each weblog and assign it to a user.  Templates have to be created, member groups have to be assigned, etc.  While ExpressionEngine supports multiple weblogs, a blogging service requires a lot of extra backend functionality in order to permit easy management (or more appropriately, self management), which means ExpressionEngine is not a suitable fit for the task.

In other words, its not just a license issue. What you want to do is simply not what the current version of EE is intended to do.

You might want to look at Drupal, it seems to be the “Social Network” tool of choice right now (so I’ve read/heard). But, it’s not nearly as nice and easy to configure as EE but as Les said, EE is a CMS not a MySpace creator.

PXLated - 27 April 2007 01:52 PM

You might want to look at Drupal, it seems to be the “Social Network” tool of choice right now (so I’ve read/heard). But, it’s not nearly as nice and easy to configure as EE but as Les said, EE is a CMS not a MySpace creator.

I concur.  I tried Dupal and found it very confusing.  I have an idea for a social network type site, but if it means using Drupal to do it, no thanks. 

What about other simple social networking features, like: create a buddy list. See what your buddies posted, private messaging, invite buddies.
And, by the way…can you not have a myspace-like page with today’s EE using the custom member profile fields?

Tom