Do not purchase COSTLY social networking scripts

Its end of the day for costly social networking scripts like phpfox, dzoic, socialengine. For some of them you have to pay extra for primitive forum or blog modules. For all of them, apart from the baseprice of $300+ you have to pay $50 or more for brandname removal if you want.

These super costly scripts are
- NOT as robust and finely programmed as VBB or IBB, or joomla/drupal
- Support by community is better and wider at joomla/drupal/boonex/vbb/ibb
- If you want furher dev/tweaking you have to pay in both cases
- Features/modules etc are MORE in joomla/drupal/xoops/boonex/elgg
- Load handing capacity is much, much better by drupal/joomla/boonex

See this thread also - forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=821194

If you have xamp, you can test the social networking things from
boonex/xoops/joomla/drupal and you can also test the demo sites of phpfox/dzoic/social engine. The testing on localhost takes only few minutes to download or install or in most cases the core installation can be done by cpanel fantastico, which most webhosts have

If you feel a necessary feature that this free scripts do not have but a paid one has, please chime in.

 

You can also digg this at digg.com/software/Do_not_PURCHASE_costly_socialnetworking_scripts

 

- If you want furher dev/tweaking you have to pay in both cases

I suppose this one is true for EVERY script, unless you find a lot of good-willed people..

 

Is $300 costly?

What if someone has better things to do with their time than try to figure out how to make all the free stuff work?

 

whats he trying to say is to stay away from abledate : )

i think
they cost more and give less

 

As far as costs go, if you dont mind branding, Dolphin is the best.

If you want branding free and have 300 to spend, phpfox IMO is better.

We run modification stores for both of these systems:

DolphinElite.com
Konsort.org

 

$300 may not be costly or may be costly - it depends BUT it costs.
Not just money, but also time and hassels.
Actually with all those $300 plus scripts you have to try to figure out how to make things work, while the so called "free" stuff is MORE complete, more supported, more robust and more modules.
Prove me wrong with actual facts.

Dzoic, nearly $350 or more DO NOT HAVE profile comments or scraps or wall writing, whatever you call it, the MOST important part of a social profile. And you have to figure out how to have it and yet have no solution
PHPfox Groups - the group admins cannot edit any comment in their groups. The Blog is miserable, as also the inbuilt forum so either you keep on figuring what to do or pay extra $200 to $300 for vbb/ibb boards and blog
Branding free PHPFox will cost not $300 but $400 or more.
Social Engine - they do not have even half the features ready and ask to pay a developer for whatever you want

Compare this to so called free ones
Dolphin boonex is feature rich and feature complete
Elgg is feature rich and feature complete
Joomla + CB + Groupjive, nothing to figure out or work, out of the box you get social network package
Drupal + OG + some more modules - social network package
Xoops + Yogurt - fully ready social package

If you invest $300 and do not get what you want BUT get what you want in Elgg/Dolphin/Joomla/Drupal etc
what is the point in purchasing those scripts ? Even if you purchase you still have to plug in many loose holes, you will find many modules missing and you have to pay through your nose for customizations, and if your site gets some good crowd you will find the scripts going slow or consuming too many resources as none of these - phpfoz dzoic etc have ever been tested on large sites like drupal, joomla, elgg etc

 

you have a point ...!! do you think ... CMS based social network can be ... customized as these paid scripts ... i mean these paid scripts are basically designed for creating social network do you think ... CMS can be better ?? personally i think it can be but dnt have any idea comments plz

 

I am sorry Rebekka, but your comments are false and misleading.

Dzoic does have profile comments for a couple of years now. Also, which one would you rather have, a CMS hacked to function somewhat like a social network, or a social network built to be just that, a social network (like Dzoic Handshakes) Anyone reading this, check out Dzoic Handshakes in my sig, I have 3 sites based on it, one with 40 000 members, on a single dedicated server, without an issue for 2 years now!

All the best.

Cheers,
G

 

@giorgio79 - rebekka is mostly correct. But not entirely , i also think Dzoi is the best of the lot ... but personally will never recommend it.

Most scripts are badly written and not really quality. But try getting a SNS developed and these will look like a bargain and will cost nothing in comparasion. Only good OSS with SNS functionality is drupal , but people who can make it do that job well are very expensive.

So if you not a programmer and dont want to run around installing and configuring loads of modules and dont have time or money for custom development... these things are ur best bet. Or if you are happy with someone else hosting ur network ... give ning / socialgo a shot , they are the best for a non techi IMO.

Also no one ever built the next big thing on an off the shelf script.

 

This thread is kind of pointless. If someone is very serious about a social networking script they are going to have something custom coded. You are not going to get anywhere with a script that 1000 other people are using

 

any social networking scripts will be a beginning, if you want to run an unique social network, you have to add something custom coded, but they will save much time.

 

part of your post is correct

 

Not exactly true... for instance, Myspace, Microsoft AdCenter and a lot of other huge sites have used Community Server.

 

If you just want to display simple profiles, joomla+cb is my pic.

 

hehe, thank for advice, but need to check it again.