

Ask YC: Open source platform for a social network with lots of UGC(structured) - jyothi

I want to put up a quick prototype of a community based site with lots of structured user generated content. Support for multi-media content is preferred. Please suggest.<p>I need an open source solution rather than a hosted platform.<p>I am considering Insoshi - http://portal.insoshi.com/.
Drupal with specific templates might work too.<p>Anything more robust and cleanly designed ?<p>PS: I would essentially build on top of the platform. I expect to have lot of changes in layout and interactions. As long as I cut down the development effort on the common things - sign up, profile page, connections, feeds etc i am good.
======
gregwebs
Rails

<http://www.actsascommunity.com/>

<http://www.missingmethod.com/projects/community_engine/>

<http://beonebody.org/>

[http://www.missingmethod.com/2007/01/08/how-to-build-a-
socia...](http://www.missingmethod.com/2007/01/08/how-to-build-a-social-
network-with-ruby-on-rails/)

------
greatreorx
Unless you aren't interested in using Ruby on Rails, you might want to check
out LovdByLess:

<http://lovdbyless.com>

~~~
jyothi
thanks for the link. Seems to have a bunch of features I am interested in. I
see that it has had close to 17K downloads and a quick search didn't result in
many reviews or fan following.

How mature is this? Would you have a first hand experience using this platform
by any chance ?

~~~
greatreorx
It's only about 6 months old. My only experience was getting it up and running
locally and testing out the functionality. It took a couple of hours to get
going (mostly due to updating gem versions). From my standpoint I was happy
with how it looked. I had considered Wordpress and Drupal, but I liked the
smaller, more manageable codebase - even if it meant I may be fixing bugs in
the project code as I went.

I hadn't checked in on the project in awhile. I'm surprised it's not more
active. FYI it looks like there was a fork recently and Luvfoo is being more
actively developed (but no existing community)

<http://www.justinball.com/projects/>

~~~
pius
Nice find with _luvdfoo_ . . . somehow, I missed this before!

~~~
jbasdf
We're currently working on building a community around Luvfoo. So far we have
a few guys from around the world helping us out. I estimate that we are about
a month away from having something that is easy for 3rd parties to deploy.
Right now the project is centered around Teachers Without Borders as they are
providing funding for the project. However, there is a need to make it easy to
deploy the same system for other groups and so that is a focus. Now to be fair
I have met the guys behind Elgg. Both of them are very smart and great guys. I
think that project is still in development. Wordpress is working on a social
networking project called buddypress which looks very promising. If you want
something fast it is hard to beat Ning (but it is a hosted service). In the
Rails world Acts as Community looks like a great project. Best of luck in your
choice. There is a lot of really great open source software out there.

~~~
pius
You guys are doing an outstanding job -- kudos on the steady stream of solid
commits.

On a related note, I've actually documented a few of the steps I took in order
to deploy . . . I'll send over a pull request for my README.

------
Wesmax27
May I ask why you need an open source solution? My company does exactly what
you are looking for, but it is a hosted solution.

Email me if you're interested in discussing further.

wbarrow@realitydigital.com

------
trickjarrett
You also might check out www.elgg.org as they just released version 1. I
played with it but the project never took off so I don't have a great deal of
experience with it.

------
jotto
<http://wiki.ringsidenetworks.org/> is a reverse engineered Facebook with an
application platform.

------
sonink
I hope you know that there is nothing that Drupal can't do.

~~~
jyothi
To an extent I agree. Drupal is probably the most matured platform with tons
of templates and plugins.

But I felt its a bit too heavy and it is php. Last resort I would use that.
Just wondering if there is anything new more suitable and lighter.

------
umangjaipuria
Wordpress? It's really extensible. And you'd get a lot of help from the open
source community for any plugins that you might write.

------
dnaquin
Pinax <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J91Ownq-7g>

~~~
jyothi
Ah python. I am more comfortable with php, ruby, java and perl. But can hack
anyway if its going to be a huge plus using pinax in terms of features etc.

But what I infer from the video and James Tauber blog is that it is far from
being mature and not ahead of drupal either. Your thoughts ?

~~~
dnaquin
I mean the advantage to other options mentioned here is building on top would
be easier than a CMS. But if you're more comfortable with ruby, go with
something on rails, not Django. I'm sure there's an equivalent project.

