Help needed: How would I make a D-I-Y 'social network'?

May 24th, 2010 § 8 comments

I was looking through the domains I own, and one of them set off a light bulb in me head.

I have theraiclan.com and I do recall that at the time I got it, I imagined doing something centred around my family. Looking at it today, I suddenly thought of making a social network for the whole clan. Which could number in the thousands. (Yes, there’s a gazillion Rais out there, and where I come from, there’s a very loose definition of ‘family’.)

Would be nice to have a family tree/connection kinda thing, plus a place to interact, plus public and private spaces. Ideas are still firing in my brain, but this is where I’d start.
Now, I’m not hugely technical, and I can’t think of the tools I could use off-hand which do what I want and are easy to integrate. Plus it’d have to be easy to use for n00bs and g33ks alike.

Any ideas? (And no, Facebook doesn’t count :P)

Tagged , , , ,

§ 8 Responses to Help needed: How would I make a D-I-Y 'social network'?"

  • Pseudyx says:

    You already have all the tools at your displosal. Start with a web-mash based site, for your base, and find the widgets that help you to achieve what your looking for… Something like netvibes.com and use an HTML embed widget to embed a tangler forum or tangler live discussion, and you have your “comment wall”. etcetera until you have all the features you want.

  • Loic says:

    What things are you looking to integrate?
    If you are not technical, try to use a CMS (Joomla, WordPress…) and then, as Pseudyx said, just install some widgets/plugins.

  • dekrazee1 says:

    hmmm… yeah, will prob end up doing something like that, Pseudyx & Loic. However, not too keen on someone else owning the stuff the community might end up producing. Which is an issue with widgets (inc a TanglerLive embed) or Ning. :-/

  • Chris Ledden says:

    check out http://lovdbyless.com/ – they are a open source social network Rails app. Take, host, tweak & release!

  • dekrazee1 says:

    Hey, lovdbyless looks promising! Pretty much what I’ve been looking for. Thanks Chris!

  • Anu says:

    Community sites usually translate to ‘Drupal’ for me. Drop me a line if you want to know more/chat about it.

  • dekrazee1 says:

    Drupal sounds scary 🙂
    Will hit you up for info when I look into it. Thanks!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

What's this?

You are currently reading Help needed: How would I make a D-I-Y 'social network'? at dek's blog.

meta