The Social Networking Script of Choice Part 2

This is part two of a two part blog post detailing the platform we chose to use in our social networking site. Previously, I outlined the reasons why we chose the Boonex Dolphin script to be the foundation of our social network. Now we will look at some of the frustrations in using the Dolphin platform.
Any good social networking site must get a few things right to have any chance of succeeding in today’s competitive environment. It needs to be useful for members, it needs to be easy to use, it needs to have good performance, and it should look decent. Unfortunately, Dolphin isn’t a total success in any of these requirements as we will see as we go through the features. While I can’t say it’s a total failure, there’s a lot of room for improvement.

The Social Networking Script of Choice

In the previous posts, we’ve discussed various aspects of social networking, including general thoughts about social networking, goals for running a social network, and what platform choices are available to creating and maintaining an S/N site. Now I’m going to be specific and review the platform of choice for building our social network. For the first part, I’ll mention the positive aspects of the platform we’re using and later, I’ll mention the negative aspects. There’s plenty of things to mention in both parts so reading part one is long enough for one sitting.

Social Networks: Choosing the Platform

The foundation of any social network website is the software the operates the site. Once the goals of the social network are in place, the most important decision to be made is choosing the platform for which will become the building blocks of the site. It’s important because once a platform is chosen, it will likely have to be used for the entirety of the site’s life. That means that any deficiencies and limitations inherint to the platform will permanently be an issue for the site. While it is possible to switch platforms after the site goes live, there are great risked involved in do this. So let’s look broadly at the choices one has to build a social network.

Social Networking: What is it About?

Anyone who has been around the Internet over the last few years almost cannot help but stumble upon a social networking site such as Myspace or Facebook or LinkedIn. They all have some common elements but also have different features and even different foci. So we ask, what is a social network (S/N) site? What differentiates an S/N site from other user-centric websites? Let’s take a look.

The Making of a Niche Social Network: The Beginning

As the first post of this journal, we can start by asking “why”? Why build a new social network when there are hundreds, if not thousands of social networking (S/N) sites floating around the Internet? Why not stop now while we’re ahead? What will this new site have to offer that the other big sites don’t offer? Fair questions.