Social networking CMS recommendation

Gordon

I've been looking around the web for a content management system that has social networking abilities like Myspace (user generated pages) but am having difficulty. I'd love to have a Drupal/joomla type cms with user pages (css editable user profiles for example).

I started out looking at elgg and some others akin to that but couldn't get them to work for varying reasons.. Then I realised that maybe Drupal had modules that would be cool for this type of thing but I've skimmed through hundreds of modules and I don't know what to look for!

Can anyone give me either some good keywords (user homepages seems to mean customisable front pages as opposed to actual user websites for example) or some good modules for open source CMS's?

Many thanks.

Bob the Builder

Same as myself Gordon, i was looking at the same thing, the problem is mainly that it can be done, btu there will be a lot of module editing takiing place, and you will have to inject all sorts of modules to do one thing. Drupal is a bit dry for that sort. Joomla is the closest I came to it.

miju

there is an open source cms specifically for social networking with loads of modules for different functions (though you do have to pay for some modules), have played about with it and its very good and looks pretty decent design wise as well

will dig out the linky for ye later

Goodshape

Same as yourselves too.. looking for something like this for a project I'm working on at the moment.

I've worked with Joomla but (for a lot of things, not just this) I find that while it always comes close, it never quite gets to where you want it to be, functionality-wise. And while the interface (back-end in particular) is very nice, it's not as customisable as it could be, I think.

I've started working with Drupal now (5.1). I'm finding it quite a bit better than Joomla -- still not quite there, but a combination of some modules and a good bit of hacking I think I might be able to get what I want.

Gordon -- make sure you check out the 'Community Builder' module for Drupal. there's Buddy List and PM modules too.

There doesn't seem to be an out-of-the-box MySpace style solution, but a bit of hacking and you could get lucky.

If I find anything, or manage to hack-together anything useful, I'll post it here in the coming weeks.

Gordon

Thanks miju.

nevf, have you been looking at the community builder for joomla? I'm trying to work my head around it.
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,210/Itemid,35/

/edit Goodshape beat me to the Community Builder

phil

Just a bit of drupal flag waving here. If you can get drupal to do what you want and you're handy with a bit of PHP it knocks most other CMS' on their heads from a coding/design perspective.

Goodshape

Ah, actually -- it was the Organic Groups module for Drupal I was thinking of.

http://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/90

Enable users to create and manage their own 'groups'. Each group can have subscribers, and maintains a group home page where subscribers communicate amongst themselves.

...it's not exactly MySpace but again, with a few hacks it may be useful.

I've tried Joomla's Community Builder too; though I got sick of it after a while.

Goodshape

phil wrote:

Just a bit of drupal flag waving here. If you can get drupal to do what you want and you're handy with a bit of PHP it knocks most other CMS' on their heads from a coding/design perspective.

That's exactly what I've found, and the main reason I'm now working with it over Joomla.

miju

dammit cant find the one in particular i was looking for (was a brill one) but check out here it lists a good few out of the box myspace type sites

http://www.hotscripts.com/search/14809206-1.html

Gordon

Organic Groups for Drupal is looking nice.

How easy is Drupal to customise/skin btw? I've reskinned phpBB and eCommerce before and found it relatively painless (to a degree!).

Goodshape

I find it's one of the easier one to theme. Much better than Joomla at any rate. Good adherence to HTML/CSS standereds in the bundled templates. Not too many restricting tables in the modules.

Almost everything can be changed with a fresh coat of CSS, or changed even more if you want to tinker with the HTML.

And if you don't like the default templating engine there are others ones (such as Smarty) available to download.

Bob the Builder

I tried with Drupal, it was desperate, I got rid of it. I had an install of Joomla on my server with the Community Builder on it, I dont know if I still have the install of Joomla on it, I dont think it's still there tho. I'll have a look.

I tested Elgg for the last few hours, and it seems better than Joomla(even with all those modules in joomla). If you want to have a go at my test version of Elgg, just give me a pm, and I'll giv you the password and all the credentials. That applies for every1

destraynor

Php fox

I've never used it, but I know people who do. It does the job apparently.
http://www.phpfox.com/

Bob the Builder

destraynor wrote:

Php fox

I've never used it, but I know people who do. It does the job apparently.
http://www.phpfox.com/

http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2164233