How do I go about creating a social networking site?

Hello,

Me and a friend are looking to create a type of social networking website where people can register, log in, create and maintain a profile while interacting with other users. Now my question is how would I go about doing this? Php is pretty foreign to me. Are there any pre-writen easy to customize codes out there on the net availible for download?

We also want people to be able to upload a profile pic, post youtube videos to their profiles etc...something like facebook but a little less features. We have the general site design down and hope to have the site up and running in sometime under a year...we are just weighing up our options on how to go about getting the code for the site.

Any advice, feedback and suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks a million!
Josh

We've been looking at http://www.socialengine.net/ which is a social engine php which you can purchase for 300 dollars but are unsure if its the best way to go??

Well honestly if php is foreign to you then getting a pre built system to modify will be just as foreign to you as well. Despite what these pre built stuff people say how easy it is, keep in mind they want you to buy their product, so of course they going to say that.

Would you buy it if they said on their website if you dont know php your screwed but thanks for the money? So what does this mean to you? Good news PHP is not hard to learn at all and I got a book for you. Its one of my favorite books and I turn to it atleast once a project.

here is a link to the book you can buy it on amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Interactive-Web-Sites-Services/dp/0782142796

This book will teach you php and get you going on the right foot. This brings me to my next point.
What your basicly wanting is a Content Management Site. I dont understand why people want to buy these premade or use free premade CMS. Its very easy to build your own, and thats the other reason I suggest that book, cause it will show you how to build a CMS site even with a shopping cart system.

Alot of stuff they talk about that book you can build off of to create the other features you want as well, even though they are not covered in that book its not hard to figure out how to do the other stuff you want such as build profiles allow users to post stuff. Basicly that just comes down to some form validations, query a database and display the info.

So thats my suggestion to you dont go out and spend 300 dollars for something you might not be able to modify. I would just build your own. It might take a bit longer, depending on your experiance level, but you will learn a lot more, and you feel good about creating such a system.

I'm pretty much self-taught (Which can be heavy on forums-reliant ). I once in a while have so much time that I create other's people's script here for free but don't count on me... I'm not doing it

What I mean to say, go ahead and learn PHP we will help you (If you really set your mind to it). I created some tutorials here... but to tell you the truth, it is somewhat hard to give off knowledge through tutorials... unless you work along with them

So, if you want to do such a thing, even editing a premade script would require knowledge in PHP... if you don't believe me, try to edit the following sentence... there is one error in it... find the error

Can't do it? The "та" in "кто-та" should be "кто-тo"...

Anyway, that was to prove a point... Russian is much harder to learn than PHP... believe me

You can learn PHP in a week I did... sloppily but I did

Is this social networking website for an internal organization, or are you aiming to compete with the mainstream sites such as Facebook and MySpace?

Not to crush any dreams or anything, but do you honestly think you and a friend are going to attract any users away from sites that already link them to their friends with the features you've described, and more? On top of this, without any development knowledge?

The thing is that the http://www.socialengine.net/ engine has an admin pannel where you can alter pretty much any minute detail of the site without knowing really any php... i just found this out going through the site demo.

thanks for the feedback btw...let me know if any better options are open to me

Spork made a good point even though they might have admin things to help you, you are going to come across a problem or bug in the system that with out any knowledge of PHP your going to shell out more money for someone to fix.

Not to mention somewhere down the line you want add a feature in thats another 3rd party script with out any knowledge of PHP your going to have a hard time figuring out where to put it.

Keep in mind one of the first things we learned when I was in college taking c++, there is no such thing as a bug free program. Just some things to keep in mind before you shell out money for something you dont understand. I hate to see that happen to you I seen it happen many times before. I have done it myself. Its not fun.

If you dont have good web development knowledge .. and if you have to go for that site.. its better to hire someone ..