Discussion: Software to build and manage an online social community

[mosaicpro]

I disagree.

Getting wordpress and building or buying plugins is not the way to go. At lease not the cleanest in my opinion. If something happens and you want to extend the functionality or to tweek existing one you'll have very very hard time doing that.

I suggest build Everything from scratch. You should get away for €15.000 - €25.000 and should be sorted within 6 months. This in my opinion is a fair price.

What you can do starting now and is free is doing all the structuring & features you want for your website to have. That is a good starting point no matter what options you choose.

[James77]

Thanks for the posts so far.

I understand that I am unlikely to get a complete solution out of the box, but I'm sure there must be solutions that can be customised that will get you a lot further down the raod a lot quicker than building everything from scratch. This is the starting block I'm looking for, and then integrate it into our current system - I realise that I'm going to need a lot of customisation etc, but this is not an issue - I've got 10 offshore developers working for me full time.

Anyone used http://telligent.com/ ? - This looks like its built for what I want - Hover I'm pretty loath to have a salesman telling me about how ideal it is - independant recommendation is really what I'm after.

[James77]

Re-doing everything in PHP is not an option - Our current system runs our entire office systems, website, accounts etc - 2 years to build with 10 developers full time - its not a small system that could be done by customising wordpress! We currently use wordpress for our blog - however I want to change that - its already been hacked twice.

[mosaicpro]

If you have 10 offshore developers working for you why are you looking for ready made solutions that are going to mess up your life :). 10 developers working full time on 1 site can finish your project fully within 1 month. Put 3 developers working on each major feature and you will see how feature by feature pops out.

[ReneReinholdt]

I completely agree with ennovation..

You most likely won't find a boxed solution that will work for you. You need a custom solution. Get your developers on the job.

[James77]

Umm - Either your developers are amazing or mine are crap . Seriously I think mine are pretty good having work with a lot of teams over the past 10 years, and I honestly think it would take a time scale in years, to fully spec and then build something like what I am looking for from the ground up - if you were to spec and build something like vBulletin for the forum solution, then this is not a task that can be done in weeks. There seems to be a enourmous amount of software that effectively says it should get me to 90% there, but I need to sort out what is the best solution to do this. For example I would doubt SEOMOZ is totally built from scratch (Maybe I'm wrong and they can advise)

[ReneReinholdt]

as i said you need a requirements specification paper and a developer to get a real idea of the time / money involved in a project like yours.

And from what I hear from you so far most of the site is already made, meaning it's a question of building on top of an existing platform.

But I'm shooting in the dark here without a detailed spec it's impossible to guess on how long it would take, well ok you could guess but you would most likely be wrong

[mosaicpro]

First i would bet my house on it that SEOMoz is totally built from scratch.

Second - Of course is not hard coded i suppose there is a framework to ease the process of building stuff ex: Zend Framework.

A framework would make it easier and cleaner for building scalable website solutions.

Third - I don't think a website no matter what type it is needs all the vBulletin complete forum solution. I think you would need certain forum features as you want to connect a user though the entire website so he does not have to register 10 x times.

If your entire system (office) is .net i suggest create a common bridge ex: database and let the online stuff work with php ... and keep your system asp.

It's only my view. Again i can be wrong.

[James77]

Ok thanks for the advise.

Quick question - Our website is also built in .NET - Although its not ideal to mix .Net and php etc, do you think its a feasible option - if for example we wanted to use wordpress for the blog - or a bad idea to even consider it?

[mosaicpro]

because your site runs on .net you would have problems doing this

domain.com/blog ... that would be the only issue...  the rest it only about url structuring... where if you have an option of putting wordpress making the layout html exactly the same as your website is now... so only addition is /blog then you should be fine. + Keep header and footer the same

[OgyDog]

Hello Big Zee,

based on what you're looking for, your best bet is using:

• Joomla CMS http://www.joomla.org/

• JomSocial (Facebook Integration, Profiles, etc) included: http://www.jomsocial.com/

• Blogs, Forums, Video/Photo Galleries could be easily integrated.

Best,

Ogy

[James77]

Hi,

Yes I'd definately be looking at Joomla or Droopal as a starting point if our systems were built in php - but they aren't - its all .NET - and a I think long term there would end up being issues with integration.

I'm currently looking at .NET equivelants - Sueetie, Kentico, Episerver and Umbraco, as a starting point.

While I agree with a lot of people saying build something totally from scratch as that way you will get EXACTLY what your after (Note we have spent 2 years building a total ground up solution to run our entire office and core of our website), I would disagree that when it comes to things like blogs, forums etc that it the best solution is to build totally from the ground up - if there is a blog / forum solution for example that does 95% of what you want then use that and customise to get that missing 5%.

I guess it is just impossible for people to give an objective answer without knowing the exact details - I believe there are cases for total ground up builds and customisation of existing application, depending on the situation. It's all a case looking for solution that provides the optimal ROI.

[CTGUK]

Just a thought...

Ever think about looking around for a few days and find someone who has something similar to what you are looking for, then approach them about purchasing it? Then alter it to your own specification. I know the pitfalls, but this may be a quicker and cheaper solution.