Social network implementation has become a necessity for successful websites. Joomla!, the popular Open-Source CMS, has some great and affordable ways to bring your site to the social networking level. Let’s review how.
This article will walk through the beginnings of setting up a social site using Joomla. Some of the end goals and solutions will vary depending on your needs.
Joomla! shouldn’t just be looked at as a CMS but a framework from which to build your applications and accomplish your dreams. Before you jump in and start lacing together extensions to build your site, proper planning and a roadmap is essential.
Site Strategy
So you want to start a social network with Joomla! you say? First you need a purpose statement. In our sample, this is our purpose:
To create and nurture business relationships by offering free network and support opportunities.
After establishing the site purpose we need to know the site requirements. Start by asking questions:
How will people use my site?
Users will create custom content and events. They will also comment and review past events and content.
How will they interact with others?
Interaction will come by having user created groups, messaging, blogs / articles and helps, etc.
How much control do I want to give them?
Users will have unrestricted access to create content, events, comments, etc. Moderators will monitor the activity.
Are there features I can offer users to generate site income?
Users may purchase banner ad spots on the different pages.
Once we obtain answers to our questions, we need to create requirement guidelines to help us find the right Joomla plugins to use. We need the following features:
- Messaging / commenting system for user interaction towards custom created content.
- Event creation, registration, etc.
- Blogging
- Groups
- Banner system
- A Forum for helpful discussion threads (it’s in our purpose statement)
You can find almost anything you need at the Joomla Extension Directory
Finding the Right Plugins
With any large CMS community such as Joomla! there will be a lot of good and bad extensions to choose. Using a bogus plugin could make or break your website. It’s important you get it right the first time! Fortunately, Joomla! has some great extension directories for us to look at; each with reviews, ratings, and more. Here are some good resources for Joomla! plugins:
After surfing the directories and reviewing features, I chose the following extensions:
-
JomSocial
Most of the core features we need are in this component. It also has a plugin system, making our site future-proof and giving us the opportunity to offer new features to our users.
-
EventList
This component has event creation, management, plugins, registration, and more. It integrates with JomSocial as well.
-
MyBlog
This component extends the core Joomla content features for a more social blogging experience. This has JomSocial integration as well.
-
Kunea
This will offer our users a support forum. They are working on a JomSocial integration for the user profiles.
-
JReviews
This will allow for reviews and commenting. It has integration with JomSocial and EventList.
-
JomComments
This is another option we could use for commenting. This will allow users to comment on user created content. It also integrates into the social component core, so comments can be displayed on user profile pages.
-
Ad Agency
This allow an easy way for users to publish ads on our site.
I had some determining factors in deciding the components to use. I wanted to make sure they were well supported, had good developers behind them, integrated with each other, and easy to customize.
The default JomSocial template
You will notice that some of these are commercial plugins and the core plugin we’re using, JomSocial, is quite expensive. There are free alternatives out there to try as well. Community Builder is a quality Joomla! extension that could accomplish a lot of the same things JomSocial does. It has a lot of extension integrations available as well. There are open-source commenting and banner ad extensions you can find in the Joomla directories. Amy Stephen and some other developers are creating the impressive new blog extension, Tamka. It should be available for BETA soon!
In the end, I chose the more expensive route because I am comfortable with what they can do.
Implementation
Using Joomla’s installer we can systematically install our extensions into the site. Once this is done, all that is left is configuring the individual extensions and tweaking our layouts. Let’s go over some of the highlights:
Templates that come with JomSocial
JomSocial Customization
You will find the settings for JomSocial are easy to manage. Because of the nature of our social network, our users will be doing a lot of the managing and setup too! Some of the initial things that must be done are:
- Setup initial groups
- Setup user profile fields and information
- Setup the user point system
- Customize the look and feel
To control the look and feel, JomSocial has many templates to choose from or you can create your own. You can also use template overrides to customize the site too!
The EventList Dashboard
EventList
Allowing users to create their own events, venues, etc. is important but you should have some initial ones created to fill things in. As with all the extensions I chose, EventList is easy to customize the look and feel to match the site. You can edit the CSS file right from the administration panel if needed. Once EventList is up and running we need to install the plugin integration with JomSocial.
Blog, Comments, and the Forum
These extensions follow suite. Configuring them and linking them appropriately in your menus is all you have to do.
Conclusion
Each of the extensions we chose should be easily implemented into our site. As mentioned before, one of the reasons I chose the above extensions is for customization. Most have templating / view files where you can change the markup and CSS to mold it to the look and feel of your design.
With so many extensions available for Joomla!, it’s easy to setup a cost-effective social network. Here are some Joomla! social network launches (for your inspiration):
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I’ve been using Joomla! for nearly three years now and it truly is an incredible application; however, unfortunately, understanding OOPHP might as well be a prerequisite for developing your own extensions (but, not for Template design).
About two weeks ago, I launched my first social networking site (webDevelopmentVideos.com) and it is built around the J! Framework, JomSocial, JomComment and a few other extensions. Due to Joomla’s extensibility, I would highly recommend it to a fellow programmer; however, if you are a designer then there may be easier alternatives to achieve your goals. They may not be as flexible, but there’s always more than one way to achieve any “web development” goal.
Anyway, several people asked to see a SN that was built with Joomla / JomSocial so I recommend you check out my site. It’s still young and I have yet to do much as far as content development, but I think it came together quite nice considering I built it all in one night! ;-)
For those of you who are interested, I sent a note to Tuts+ earlier and asked them what kind of Joomla! tutorials they were looking for… If you have any suggestions then send me a message through my site and I’ll see what I can do. So far, I have one video tutorial that will show you how to create your own Joomla! module from scratch (with minimal scripting / PHP), and my next tutorial will show you how to use the J! Framework’s SimpleXML to import job listings from Indeed.com into JS Jobs (a Joomla! “job board” component).
Any other ideas? Drop me a line…
Btw, Mike I was expecting more from this tut… But, then again, I thought you were going to walk people through the process, as opposed to, recommending extensions… Nonetheless, it’s a good start for those who aren’t familiar with Joomla!.
Correction; sorry Rick for calling you Mike (it’s 5:35 Am and it has been a long night)… I don’t know what I was thinking. lol.
estamos intentando implementarla, pero el facebook conect no funciona :S
Nice post about joomla theme.A+ to this post. thanks for posting.
Nice Tutorial, Thanks
!?
never thought about jooomla before
Very nice tut…the age of web design has changed…using any cms is ok as long as it gets the job done and most importantly, if u get paid doing it..like me.
I use joomla and boy do i get paid
Nice article. But all in all I would rather use Drupal.
This is just an advertisement for JomSocial, which costs a MINIMUM of $100 and much more if you’re talking about multiple sites and advanced features.
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JomSocial feel and look is very professional and web 2.0 like. It’s hard to find something like this with zero configuration. I’ve tried ning.com and socialgo.com, but even they are for professional community, the look is not up to par of what it should be.
Has anyone seen the upcoming template for joomla and jomsocial by prothemer/joomlajunkie?
http://www.joomlajunkie.com/images/chris/creativa/
That is one beautiful social community template. Can’t wait till it is released
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Great tut. you can also try community builder which is free and is comparable to jomsocial.
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great post buddy !!! it helped me a lot to instal joomla on ma site
(sorry for my English mistakes)
I tried Joomla 1 year ago. I was looking for a framework to build a kind of social network. I’ve tried Jomsocial, and the ‘new’ Joomla extensions ZOO and K2, but honestly Joomla sucks for building a social network. Why? To be short this is my Joomla blcklist:
1. Front-end edition. It’s terrible try to use Joomla for that purpose, even using Joomsocial, K2, etc.
2. Develop/customize your own plugins. You will be forced to write tons of PHP code just for simple tasks.
3. PHP sucks, trust me (or find for security vulnerabilities of Joomla/Drupal in securityfocus, or any other security site).
4. Joomla has a really poor design and you need extensions for almost everything (multi-languaje support, pretty URLs/SEO, strong permission management).
5. The Joomla extensions have LOT of compatibility/integration problems.
6. CCKs like ZOO or K2 should be integrated in the Joomla Core.
So, If you want to build a social network using a CMS with not enough infrastructure to do that, go ahead and good luck. I’d like to recommend you something like the Django framework instead http://www.djangoproject.com/. Ruby on Rails would be fine too.
Even better, you can try Web2Py http://www.web2py.com/ and use the Google AppEngine cloud.
My 2 cents
x13ar
Joomla! 1.5 can work as fast as Drupal or even faster. There are a number of possible solutions, i.e.CssJsMinify, JRE, but the most powerful is Web Optimizer (with Joomla plugin which enables System-Cache properly). It’s really a must-have addon.
This article may not give specific directions on the How-to of building a social network but it certainly goes a long way towards educating people of the possibilities. I have built sites with DNN, Efusion, WordPress and have to say the number of available modules Joomla! has to offer really attracts me – Drupal already has the Social Group thing down but the admin is a little ugly compare to Joomla!.
I’ve been using Ning.com for a while now but they are about to start charging in July 2010 – about $200 per year for a decent Ning site.
Nice job man – keep up the good work and thanks.
Thnx for sharing list of this useful plugins and tips.
I’ve been toying with the idea of JomSocial for a while now as I find Community Builder not particularly attractive in appearance. The problem is that most of the time all the sites I’m working on need are a few basic profile pages that highlight the user and their business.
Not only does JomSocial cost a lot more but it would be like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It’s complete overkill, which is a shame as I’d love to use it!
The end result is that I keep coming back to Community Builder, even though I’m sick of it, and I never seem to get much out of it (visually). I just wish there was some sort of visually appealing (GPL) solution that was somewhere between Community Builder and JomSocial.
Chris
Never thot about ths before, mail me mo
The developer of tuiyo (ignite) has finally opensource his code and you can download it now from http://ignite.tuiyo.co.uk or http://github.com/tuiyo/ignite. In my opinion has the potential to be the best social networking component for Joomla
I usually just use wordpress, but I may just do some more research on Joomla. Cheers.
JomSocial is releasing 2.2 Version with a lot of new features. And it’s compatible with Joomla 1.6.
This is just to promote jomsocial. An advertisement for them. nothing else. Shame
great post buddy !!! it helped me a lot to instal joomla on ma site………………
Nice post. social networking extensions listings! thanks for sharing..
3 Nasty Facts:
1.) Community Builder encrypts their view files using ionCude. There is no way to decrypt it thus no way to change the layout of many modules in CB.
2.) There is no real open source development community (check their license).
2.) Support tickets cost over $100 USD per ticket.
I fell into this trap. Think twice before using CB.
Thanks but I want to know everything in more detailed. But this is helpful one.
http://www.anahitapolis.com/ is the best :)
its very great tutorial, even it’s really need a lot of space hosting to make it happen.
I am new to web designing and it made me more confused when I stumble into this content-management-system thing. I’m planning to update a site that is not designed using JOOMLA and was wondering if I can use Joomla to update it.
|I should add that I’m not that technical, so a solution that is easy to use would be more appropriate of the two.