Platform advice

[talk2D]

I want to start a membership site/community type of site in the tech niche. I have so much passion for tech.
I need your advice on sources to get news (example: techcrunch) where do they get news?
I'm just worried abt what to put on the site to make it engaging and active.
Also, pls what platform(free or best custom; that can be good for large audience if possible) that is the best for a community/forum site or possibly news also.
Thanks

 

[pixelbypixel]

Recommended community platforms are things like ELGG and Lithium (from my past use).

Would strongly advise avoiding SocialEngine it is awfully built.

If you want something less 'social network' targeted than the above, then your talking Drupal/Joomla really.

 

[Key]

I would suggest buddypress (wordpress powered) as platform if you're looking for an easy and free solution. You can get a good theme for that as well. It won't get too complicated and have setup for basic communication like forum, profiles, personal message etc and It will be easy to make a tech news site. You can search wordpress plugins directory to include lots of other things. Some very large and busy sites are running with wordpress.

 

[Obscend]

There's going to be a line drawn between news and social platforms. Are you needing to make a news website or a social platform? I understand both but don't focus on two big projects to tackle until you have a base for one or the other.

If you need a blog style website like Gizmodo, TechCrunch, etc, try Wordpress as a blogging platform and bbpress for your membership platform.

If you're just trying to build a social community, try vBulletin or Invision Power Board if you're serious about a start-up, or just use something simple like Vanilla Forum or phpBB for a freebie.

 

[e1326]

1) I will also strongly suggest WORDPRESS/BUDDYPRESS as blogging and social networking site platform. I had good experience with my clients with similar projects. Coz wordpress with buddypress will provide almost all functionality you are expecting from this site. like blog,forum, members profile and more etc.

2) Well as for content. News and article websites have various sources for like in-house authors, self, friends, network, guest posts and of course sometimes auto blogging.

 

[PhpOG]

Custom code man... it is easy and you will get better performance than open source junk.

 

[PhpOG]

WORDPRESS/BUDDYPRESS ? Are you kidding me? Have you ever benchmarked them?

 

[evtimii]

My suggestion will be Wordpress - it is easy to use, you could find really of lot of information about it (for example how to customize it). There are a lot of plugins available for it and free themes that you could use for a start. The chances are that Wordpress probably have all the functionality that you'll ever need.

lampninjaman, it's not always about performance - a custom made CMS with the functionality of Wordpress requires significant amount of time/money for development. Also that "open source junk" is powering a lot of significant websites:

http://en.wordpress.com/notable-users/

As for the resources required for a Wordpress blog, you could check this article:

"WordPress site that runs on cheap VPS with 80MB of memory."

http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/wordpress-cheap-vps-lowendscript/

 

[PhpOG]

1. It is always about performance.
2. It is always about profit.
3. The low memory site you listed cannot handle a digg event, so it is a waste of time discussing.
4. The sites you listed have huge server bills. Server clusters are not cheap. That is how they run so fast, they run on dual quad core servers clustered together. Streamlining at the time of development would have saved them tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next 5 years and would have helped the economy by creating jobs.
5. Nothing worthwhile is easy or fast.
6. Have you ever tried changing software AFTER establishing your online community? It is not pretty. I guarantee you that in 5 years, half of those sites will be using different software.

We should remember the basics above all else:

1. A website is NOTHING without profit.
2. Performance leads to traffic.
3. Traffic brings leads.
4. Leads bring money.
5. Money keeps the site online.
6. The average user will not wait for a slow site to load.

Some reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/t...e-slow-loading-sites.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/psychology-web-performance/

http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2012/05/31/average-web-user-two-days-a-year-waiting-page-load/

 

[evtimii]

1. I've never said that Wordpress is performing slow - it would not be used by so many websites if it does. However, if you make your own custom CMS, you could optimize it completely for your needs, and that won't be just performance.

Optimization is the maximum performance that you could get, without sacrificing your functionality and features. There are other free CMS systems, a lot lighter than Wordpress, but they does not have all of it's functions.



2,3,4,5
You do not start a small blog/forum website on a huge cloud cluster - it will be a waste of money. As your website grow up, you could always upgrade your shared hosting plan/VPS/Dedicated server/Cluster.

6. Yes, I have. It's possible that in 5 years these websites could've changed the software that they're using - everything changes.

 

[PhpOG]

The answer is never upgrading the servers to make up for poor performance. You do the job correctly so that come upgrade time, it causes less overhead.

Evtimmii, chillax bro.

 

[ptoone]

I have found the best to be phpFox. I have tried all of them and phpFox has most features plus regular updates.

You need to beware of their recommended hosts and go with someone like www.thexyzserver.com with a cPanel vps who can actually support the script. Also DM if you want 20% off.

 

[adira]

The Different platforms have their own benfits and hurdles: so some of the famous are ,Phbb is a completely customizable Open Source bulletin board package which contains a user-friendly interface. vBulletin has been written in the scripting language PHP and is excellently complemented by an extraordinarily efficient and mega fast back-end database utilizing MySQL. IPB, or Invision Power Board, is one of the planet’s leading providers of community solutions. An amazing number of large companies have chosen IPB as their primary Forum Platform.MyBB is a powerfully efficient as well as a free forum package which was developed in PHP and MySQL..... Selection depends on some of the technical issues so need expert opinion.

 

[ProSence]

XenForo!