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Techie can't decide on So.Network solution

Hi all thanks in advance.

I am a competent coder, who has an 'already paid for' hosting account.

I.e. Running my own So.Network using something like BuddyPress won't relly cost me financially, nor phase me technically.

But those issues aside. I am soooo overwhelmed by all the options available to run a Social Network:

My network would initially be a hobby, and may or may not one day make money.

And I don't want to allocate huge amounts of time to it, until I know it would make money.

Spruz sounds initeresting, and so does BuddyPress, but then again so do 20 other different solutions!!!

I need a forum, picture uploads, profiles & private messaging as a minimum.

I might one day want payment handling, and video (if the Network takes-off).

I am also worried about potential bandwidth issues....forums are bandwidth heavy aren't they?

Thats fine when/if the netowkr pays for itslef, but not fine if it earns nothing and busts through my smallish bandwith limits.

And then there's ownership issues....????

HELP!!!!! Any suggestions?

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Permalink Reply by JenSocial on May 28, 2010 at 6:12pm

I think if you're concerned about ownership issues, you need to go with your own hosted solution. Hopefully BuddyPress is intuitive enough to get it going fairly quickly. For a hosted solution that another company hosts, then I would suggest Spruz.

Or, if you're sure you won't need the video and music uploads, maybe Ning's Plus plan would work for you.

I will warn you, it won't matter much what you use. The time involved to run and build a Social Network, at least in my 3 years of constant working, is the biggest time suck I've ever encountered in my Professional life. Sorry for that news, but that's the way it's been for me.

Good luck,
Jen

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Permalink Reply by Avanti Online Marketing on May 31, 2010 at 12:13pm

Thank you Jen
Thats good advice.

My worry over something like Spruz, would be 'what if i tried them and didn't like them?' can I leave? And take my user and data with me?

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Permalink Reply by JenSocial on May 31, 2010 at 3:13pm

I think in the case of any software platform like Ning or Spruz, or any really, even a self hosted solution like BuddyPress - - it will be difficult to take all of your content over to another platform. It's because each database and relationships of the data, is going to be completely different, except maybe the member data. It will be very interesting to see what Ning is going to offer come July for exporting content. But regardless, that content will have to be formatted special for whatever platform it is imported into. So for example, unless Spruz is willing to write a routine to format the content from Ning, in a way that most of it can be imported into their system, it's just data. Word on the Internet Street is: Spruz will try to do just that. ;-)
Good luck and keep us posted.
Best Regards,
Jen