DISQUS

DevGuru · 3 years ago

There are very few decent social networking scripts out there. The truth is that building a social networking script is not very difficult. There are tons of "developers" capable of doing it but but far fewer capable of developing something that performs well and scales. Just go to some of the sites selling these scripts and look at the demos. You'll typically see noticable delays in page loading times which are due to the lack of any caching which would save the need to go to the database and I bet a lot of the SQL queries in these scripts have not be optimized. A social network that doesn't have caching and database clustering ready to go would not be able to handle a lot of traffic. Thankfully, the people buying these scripts obviously in most cases lack the ability to make a success out of them for obvious reasons so they'll never have to worry about it. But if somebody by miracle starts a social network that gets popular with a script like phpFox, the software will kill it. Ask yourself why somebody with a social networking script in this hot market would sell it for a few hundred or few thousand dollars. So Pete it's not just about being able to make it look good. If your foundation and architecture are lacking from the beginning you're screwed and it's easier to build something right from scratch that to customize something that's flawed.

Wolfgang · 3 years ago

You mitght consider starting with a script to be the first online and then build your own scalable application. We found that a lot of startups opt for adding more functionality rather than scalability in an early phase and start thinking about scalability only when the users come in.

bzovi · 3 years ago

Read the comments tooo

DevGuru · 3 years ago

Wolfgang, no offense but if I were you I wouldn't have associated your web design shop with that comment. Scalability is not something that you think about only when the users come in. If you have a serious business, you expect that you will get them and build your application accordingly. Scalability has to be dealt with immediately. Adding features on top of a foundation that is not scalable only creates a bigger nightmare. The more you build on top of a flawed foundation, the flaws multiply and it becomes flawed beyond the point of no return. I have been involved in very few projects where the client had a poorly designed and poorly written application and that didn't take an almost complete rewrite to fix the performance and scalability problems (and note that performance and scalability are not the same but are both important). I have looked at some of these cheap scripts and would turn down any project where the client actually wanted me to fix the problems with them. It'd be easier to write something from scratch because most of them are just so poorly designed and written. What do you expect though for something being sold for a few hundred dollars?

If you think that you can only start thinking about scalability when the users come in, you might want to look at the history of Friendster too. They didn't plan properly and lost ownership of the social networking market because they basically had to rewrite their entire application because they couldn't fix the original one's performance and scalability problems before it was too late, and they had millions in VC funds.

Robert Franklin · 3 years ago

You only have a short time to market, limited resources and a long to do list. You can spend your time and resources building a scalable backend or delivering content your users want. Spend to much time on your backend and you will never get the opportunity to test if it truly scales for you will never build an audience.

For example, 99.9% of MySpace users could care less about the technical architecture of the application, that is not why they are spending their time on MySpace.

I am not saying that you should stick you head in the sand and not research and implement a sound technical design, however the highest priority must be the content. I agree with Pete that Open Source is a great starting point, however you must still do your due dilligence to find the right Open Source project for your needs. I have built FamilyThrive.com on Joomla. There are threads that say it might have issues scaling with over a 100,000 users. As our site grows these will be great problems to have and I am confident they can be addressed within the Joomla community. I am not going to spend any energy addressing these issues right now. As a social networking startup funded by myself, I must spend the majority of my time building my audience.

DevGuru · 3 years ago

There is an element of truth in what you're saying about time to market, limited resources, etc. but you are missing the point that if your technology isn't ready for market, then you shouldn't be launching. Content and technology aren't mutually exclusive. You don't launch a half-baked startup.

Nobody ever said that MySpace users care about the architecture, but it is the architecture that enables the service to run. MySpace won the social networking market because they were able to deal better with scalability issues than Friendster, which had great success in building a huge audience but lost it all because they were built on an architecture that they couldn't get to scale and by the time they redeveloped everything, everybody was gone. If you expect to be successful, you plan for success, you don't let yourself get put in a situation where you can become a victim of it.

Your comment that you are confident that the Joomla community can solve scalability issues is a bit naive. Maybe they can, but if you want to build a successful business, you can't rely on others to handle mission-critical needs. If I am to be brutally honest, this probably will never become an issue because the 1000s of copycat social sites like FamilyThrive will most likely never obtain a large enough audience where they have any problems. They will fail to gain traction and disappear.

Robert Franklin · 3 years ago

DevGuru,

Time will tell where FamilyThrive will end up. I certainly plan on proving you wrong. I also do not view FamilyThrive as a copycat but as an innovator in the social networking arena. We are still in soft launch with some major changes coming.

In a perfect world what you say makes sense. If I had unlimited time, money and resources I would implement a project per your suggestions. Since most of us do not have endless resources we need to risk mitigate and maximize our chance for success based on our experience. The question is really when is your technology ready for market? I am sure that we have way different views on what ready means. An Example: I am a strong proponent of the 37 Signals philosophy that you don't go out and spend $100,000 on hardware because you want to be ready when the flood of people come to your site. I agree with you that most sites will never see that flood and it would be ill spent money. This is not to say that you should not be planning and ready for the flood when it happens, just you don't run out and buy $100,000 of servers for your web launch.

I will clarify my Joomla comment as I wanted to keep it short in my original post. When I mention the "community" I did not mean that they would fix my issue, what I did mean is that the experts in the community are already coming up with innovative scaling stratigies and when the time comes I will reach out and hire the best and brightest to help me scale as I know it is possible. The key is, I KNOW it is possible to scale on Joomla.

IMHO your Friendster argument is flawed and is more an example of poor managment, greed, and egos than a scaling issue. Yes, they had severe performance issues, however they choose to ignore them and when they finally woke up it was too late. Had they handled their performance situation differently they could have rectified them a lot sooner and perhaps things would have ended up differently for them.

Daniela A. (Asaro) · 3 years ago

Users that are savvy will know pretty much in an instant that the site is developed using a script--especially one as crappy and buggy as phpfox. These kind of users should be the types of people you want to attract as they are most likely the ones waiting for something 'better' than myspace to come along.

Will there ever be a time when the masses pick up and leave myspace to something else? Not sure, but what I am sure of is some people who want to build social networks are hoping that will be the case. By using these scripts--you won't have that kind of success--or anything close to it.

Robert Schoolcraft · 2 years ago

I could not resist replying to this remark by DevGuru - who in my opinion is talking like a programmer rather than a marketer - :

"If your foundation and architecture are lacking from the beginning you’re screwed... and it’s easier to build something right from scratch that to customize something that’s flawed..."

Have you ever heard of Microsoft?

Which again proves that it is the marketers "don't be perfect stance" that win out over the programmers. After all, we know all about Digg founder Kevin Rose but we have no idea wrote the original site script.

Big E · 2 years ago

I am one of those "limited resource" developers and I was actually considering phpfox, until I heard all of the bad revews. Can anyone suggest a good script?

xpepper · 2 years ago

Have you been on ScriptMimic.com these days? Its hacked down! How ironic :-)

Frank · 2 years ago

yep looks like it is down

Light · 2 years ago

I loved scripts especially cutenews, it makes you modify a lot!

wavelabs · 2 years ago

First off. ive read quite a bit here.
you all missed the concept of why people are on myspace.

since you dont know, or care not to. I will inlightin you on it my friend.

people are on myspace, becuase they dont have to come up with the money to pay to build themselfs a private and a actual website.
THATS ONE.

TWO:
in order for people to get loads of people to come to their website is nearly impossible.
and if the go about it another way, they will have to pay a company or some one to submit their website to search engine so the user "owner of the website" can get TRAFFIC to their website.
DONT HOLD YOUR BREATH.

And 99.9% of the people really dont give a flying shit about developing or wanting to develope a damn website.
because they have better things to do.

THREE:
on myspace, their network TRAFFIC is well over 3 million and growing.
SO:
the question is,
Do you make a professional website where you have to purchase HD Space, web designing, and promotion for traffic, Just in the hopes that people will go to your website and check out what you have.????
KEEP HOLDING YOUR BREATH...

OR: Do you make a FREE simple Website on myspace that will cost you NOTHING. and you have 3 MILLION people to fuck with on your network where your website lays down at. ????

see what I mean, you missed the BIGGER picture down the line.

FIRST OFF:
Myspace was not suppose to be this HUGE, it happened as a fluke.
because it was 2 guys with some talent and brains, that wanted to make a Website Social Network for their COLLEGE students so they cant stay in contact with each other.
and pass cheating exams sheets ect ect.

it was suppose to be used ONLY for college kids. for their little hang out.
and the site blow the hell up into this MASSIVE network.

Before anyone starts talking about myspace and things..
just read this damn post and it will shure keep it in reality for you. real quick..!!!

windows vista · 2 years ago

Seems to work for me, possibly temporary outage.

Search Scripts · 2 years ago

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Karel Soupal · 1 year ago

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