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Vanilla, a base for Social Networking?

ResilientResilient
edited November 2007 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
There are many social networking applications available freely out there such as Joomla!, PHPIzabi and the more popular Drupal. For those that aren't aware, these open source applications act as the base to developing social networking sites. With added extensions (as is the case with Vanilla), the building-blocks are set for features such as integrating user profiles, blogs, etc.

Vanilla, as minimal as it may seem in comparison to the above mentioned, is in fact quite powerful. The extensions repository is amazingly large with a variety of hinted social networking extensions. The learning curve, as I've mentioned in my first ever post on here, is very easy to pick up on, and that's coming from a web designer with limited dynamic programming knowledge.

My question to the community here, is would you use, or could you see Vanilla being used as the core foundation for a social networking website? How would you go about doing it? What extensions would you personally want developed for it?

Comments

  • raykrayk New
    I personally think that vanilla is best as a discussion board and not as a cms, so I'd say the best bet would be to integrate it into some form of cms like drupal. I kinda see having a forum on a social networking site as a conflict, do you keep in touch through participation in threads, or by commenting on each others profile? Just my thoughts : ]
  • angelic_venusangelic_venus
    edited August 2007
    I agree with rayk. I don't think that Vanilla is comparable to Drupal, Drupal is a fully blown CMS, Vanilla is very specifically tailored to handle messages between users. I think that Vanilla is the best forum, and (personally) Drupal is the best CMS... so I prefer a mix of the both.

    But then, I don't think either of them are particularly the foundation for 'social networks', social network sites generally (by their very nature - each having to find and supply for a niche) need bespoke software.

    Adam.
  • NeverenderNeverender
    edited October 2007
    I'm with Resilient. It may not be the best thing to use, but I can see it happening. You would need more extensions based on user profile pages. I got WallPhone to make me this the other day. Stuff like that. Uh... maybe one that lets users customize their profile. Also, theres a friends extension, but the guy stopped developing it. I'd like to see that completed. You would need it for sure. Oh and User Wall (which still needs a fix to work with friendly urls.)

    Edit: Found a discussion about profile customization
  • houseinprogresshouseinprogress
    As for adding external content to profile pages, it seems like integrating Google's new OpenSocial API would now be the way to go...

    http://opensocialapis.blogspot.com/2007/11/web-is-better-when-its-social.html
  • dan39dan39 New
    I had a similar thought when I heard the news about OpenSocial.
  • mis-onemis-one
    Looks as if MySpace has agreed to adapt to the platform. Would be nice to get a great discussion application like Vanilla interfaced to these social networks and vice versa.
This discussion has been closed.