Thinking of setting up a SN and need some advice

Hey everyone,

I've been thinking of setting up a SN for the last few years and I'm finally getting to the stage where I can get into it properly. I'm looking for an off the shelf option, and to hire someone to basically modify it to how I want it. So some questions.

1. So far these are looking good to me, Elgg, Joomla and socialEngine. What's the strengths and weaknesses of each?
   
2. I've just had a look at jomsocial for Joomla, it's looking good, anyone had any experience of using that?
   
3. I want to be able to get the design how I want it, how difficult or hard will it be to do that with the above 3 options?
   
4. Adding adsense to the pages of the SN is important, which gives the greater flexability ?
   
5. What would the costs involved be of the general setup, plus specific to each ?
   
6. Where would I find someone to hire to do this?

thanks for any advice.

 

I couldnt get Elgg to install properly. Then I download and installed dolphin, it was too buggy and slow. I didn't want to shell out all the money for social engine.

I did download and buy Jomsocial. Trying to figure out how to get it to work right now. (Hence the reason I searching these forums)

Good luck to you.

 

What kind of budget/how much time do you have for this project? Are you looking to create a small SN with blogs, forums and PM's or are you looking for more applications/features? A good social network will take you a lot of time to create (like 1000 hours) depending on how advanced you are at programming. Dolphin/Boonex is alright out of box and very inexpensive, but it's slow and you'll be opening a can of worms with that if you are trying to customize it as well. We have a basic social network package in Drupal that is out of box ready, but even for that you'll need a substantial budget. I'd say go with Drupal as Joomla is not secure, but if you've never used it there's definitely a learning curve.

 

surely you would go with phpfox if you are going to get it developed - they are a professional open code solution and I highly recommend them and their forum.