Thread

We are thinking of developing our own social networking framework in CI. We are just not sure about one thing,

“Are social networking sites still in demand?”

We have already built our own website-in-a-box system called Halogy which you can read about on our blog, and there is a definate demand for applications like these, but social networking?

We have had a client request it, but I just wondered, if we made a framework on CodeIgniter would anyone else use it? Would there be a demand for it?

What do you all think?

Thanks

Stu

I personally think a ‘do all’ social based sites are soon to meet their ends. Niche social networking is where it is at, and I am not sure how you would design a do all application for the specifics. (Think Oracle ERP, without a million bugs).

🤷 I am not a big fan of those sites though.

Yeah I’m thinking a white label social networking framework that could be re-used for niche social networks.

If that makes any sense at all… 😊

Why not just make some custom libraries to drop in our current CI applications. An entire framework just for social networking web sites seems like overkill.

If you want to confirm demand for niche social networks, take a look at Ning.  They have around 750,000 social networks (in around 2 years), with 3,000 being added each day.

Check out http://elgg.org/.  Its not CI based but has an awesome api.

And the web is going social, if not already there. The most effective will be making their site work and integrate with other social platforms.

Integrating social concepts into existing sites with integration for existing social networks is where its at.

Don’t bother building it yourself as people wont want to sign up to a new site to add all their friends. Look at digg and blip.tv for some great Facebook Connect examples.

SocialEngine is another php solution to build a social network.

But i wonder what a social network site is, technically speaking. Isn’t it just a CMS where the admins provide content for other admins to see/react on/collaborate instead of the traditional admin-visitor roles?

Ning is a “make your own niche social network” tool.  It’s written in PHP, and you can be given the source files for our own network so you can modify it.  (or at least you could branch the last time I checked so time ago.)

i have worked on drupal,elgg and also explored cakephp so now i know making social networking site in cms is not a good appoach in a long run.So now i have decided to start one oon a framework. Right now i am confuse between CI and cakephp both are great but finding who is scaleable ......??? these are the questions revolving around my mind

Funny, munnu, I actually just ditched CI in favor of Drupal for a community site. The breadth and quality of community-related modules for Drupal is what sold me.

yeah absolutely you are right but if you know drupal is cms but i use it as framework i have used their modules and develope as well,after 1 year i have realized that code management in cms is quiet tough. And we need alot of optimization in drupal to make it faster so now i am trying to use CI for social networks. And i am also looking forward to make CI plugin/library for social networks like user relationship is very famous in drupal but if i make it CI plugin for user relationship then people will prefer CI on drupal as i am thinking :D

This is a totally unbiased response, as I’ve developed web applications in PHP, Ruby, Python, and Perl.  I’ve also written numerous applications in many frameworks, from Cake, to Zend, to Symfony, Akelos, CodeIgniter, Kohana, Ruby On Rails, Django, and also authored a custom frameworks for a few companies that have actually been quite successful. 

I’m also familiar with various CMS solutions, like Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress. 

The key here, is Drupal is a CMS, NOT a Web Framework.  Use a CMS when you have a site that’s been done a million times, and don’t expect to hire developers to maintain and enhance it much more than changing the theme.  CMS’s are meant to be out-of-box solutions for a handful of the most common content management projects, ie a BLOG.

Drupal is a HORRIBLE solution for a social network.

Coming from an extensive background in white label as well as custom niche social network solutions ( refer to personal website and resume ), and also personally experiencing a company that moved away from CI to Drupal early on - I can say that Drupal does not scale, the modules within are poorly written, poorly maintained, poorly documented.  Security loopholes are enormous.  The out-of-box user system is incredibly weak, and further very hard to extend due to the poor code base.  A particular example was a comparison between time to integrate a CAPTCHA in Drupal vs CI.  Drupal a team of programmers took almost 3 weeks to get a working reCaptcha module working.  In CI, it was all of 15 mins.  This tends to be the case in everything in Drupal if you try to use it as a development platform - simply because it is NOT.

However, CodeIgniter is a proper general purpose web framework.  Designed and catered to building these types of solutions with best practices and performance in mind.

Don’t be fooled by out of the box features of outdated Drupal technology - they lack tremendously when it comes to building a custom product.  A quick blog for your local music store, sure, do what you want…

If you need to build a product that scales for real world competitive technology companies, then go with a community made of more solid developers and best practices in CodeIgniter.

I have a few articles on “Choosing the best tool for the job” on my blog and across the internet.  Please do your research before your company goes down in flames from a poor technology choice.