Posted by jdeyburg on July 18, 2008 at 3:09am
Hi, I have been looking at social networking sites that use Drupal and have not seen anyone that exactly matches my requirements.
My site has to have the following requirements I have not seen in other drupal implementations:
- The site has hard-coded groups that is assigned by the system administrator. Members can select to join one of these groups.
- Members can create their own groups that they can manage and control.
- Members can have their own blogs. Groups can have their own blogs.
Optional but extremely useful requirement:
4. Each group can have it's won message boards.
So is this possible using the standard modules within drupal? Can it easlily be done?
Thanks, John!
Comments
Yes, this can be done easily with contributed modules
All you need to do is take a look at Organic Groups module.
Check http://drupal.org/project/og for more details.
Cheers.
It's very possible and easy
It's very possible and easy to do - we accomplished all of those requirements on Greenopolis.com with the Organic Groups module.
Thanks for the replies
Thanks, I will take a look at Organic Groops. Greenopolis.com is extremely impressive and contains the exact functionality I am looking for. Was the entire thing done using off the shelf Drupal modules? Do you have a list of modules you used?
Thanks again for your help!
John
About 90% of Greenopolis
About 90% of Greenopolis uses contributed modules, and is quite extensive. The rest is custom-developed. The list of modules in use is pretty extensive, and uses modules such as OG, Invite, Event, Signup, Private Message, Userpoints, Fivestar, etc.
Wow the site is really green!
I like it personally, congratulation to you guys.
I'm kinda thinkin' here if there's any contributed module here already available where you can seamlessly integrate your drupal site to a mobile phone [SMS control] like www.rummble.com ?
Is that possible also for drupal to come up with that module?
Need some help in terms of that seamless integration of web to mobile social networking site.
Hope to hear from you guys. Thanks.
Hi, I too believe for the
Hi,
I too believe for the most part that Drupal can give you a social networking platform just by using contrib module but i do think if you want to stand out from the crowd you may need to drop in some more custom functionality into your site.
Tom
http://drupalsn.com/user/thomjjames
http://drupalsn.com/user/thomjjames
Hi jdeyburg, Drupal can meet
Hi jdeyburg,
Drupal can meet the standard Social Network requirements almost everything - friendlist, guestboks, blogs, forums, communities including your all demands you have specified.
Check out at http://gurukool.net .
You can build up communities using OG module including message boards.
Check out og module at http://drupal.org/project/og .
sorry for second post
sorry for second post
Try it out
I have a demo site of Drupal already setup for social networking with OG (and many other modules) installed. You can log in and play around with it to see what you think:
socialnetworkingwebsites.realtidings.com
username: admin
password: admin
The site resets every 4 hours, so you should have enough time to play with a few groups and get used to the config options. Have fun!
Ron
Social Networking Websites
Peace, Compassion, Prosperity
Peace, Compassion, Prosperity
Keeping It Orderly
I'm just getting started on a local social networking site, along the lines of Michelle's Coulee Region site, and I'm wondering: how do you keep it all halfway organized? For example, let's say I set up a bunch of forums and put some posts in them, to get the ball rolling, and one is a Bicycling forum. Then after a few weeks, someone joins and starts a Group for the local bicyclists club, and starts a forum within that. Then someone else who doesn't belong to the biking club starts a blog on biking, and people have a conversation there in the comments. Maybe each location ends up with 5-10 participants, but not enough to sustain the kind of regular conversation that keeps people checking in every day.
It seems like that kind of splintering of topics would happen a lot, with all the different ways people can create content and conversations, and that would be bad for a new site that's trying to develop enough content "inertia" to sustain regular use. Is that just an inevitable result, or are there things you can do to try to keep topics organized and prevent that kind of splintering?
Not just drupal
Well aaron, that's a challenge you will find in ANY social networking site. If its small scale, you combat it by offering Featured Groups and other ways to get a group's visibility out there to ensure people end up talking in the right place rather than starting a new area. If it gets to a large scale, you just rely that there are enough people talking that it doesn't matter that there are 3 different groups on bikes.
In your case, the challenge is in the site's design - rather than the functionality - to lead users to the areas that are best for their interest. Make that easier, and you will find less duplicate groups and duplicate conversations.
Well, that's what I
Well, that's what I suspected, since even big community sites like MySpace or Yahoo Groups end up with topics splintered all over the place, but I hoped there might be some tricks to help combat it. I guess I should just expect to do a lot of handholding and traffic-directing at first, to help people with the same interests find each other in one place. Thanks!
Views & taxonomy
If you don't want to control "space creation" you can always handle the mess with taxonomy and views. Provide subject tags and encourage people to use them. Then use views to show all posts tagged "bike, biking, bycling, etc" in one list.
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region