Implementing a Social Media Service

[benhowdle89]

Hi,

Just need a bit of advice, no code or anything, i know someone at quite a large company who is interested in implementing their own social media site for their employees. Roughly how would one go about coding/setting this up, i imagined it would take alot of heavy duty PHP code and alot of Ajax/jQuery etc, databases..??

Any other ideas??

[metalix]

Actually you can set these up very simply,
It usually takes me less than an hour to make this completely
All you need to do is use simple php requests and large databases.
these are the simple steps.

Set up page layout:
main page
- links to profiles, blogs ect.
profile page
- display the current logged in users profile, pic, info, ect
blog page
- links to all the blogs
sub-blogs page
- display the blog relevant to what has been clicked
- eg: subblog?blog=newcheese
gallery page
- display pictures of whatever gallery your in.

for a user to upload pictures you will need either a ftp script or store the images direct in a mysql database (tutorial coming soon)
also you may need a script that creates thumbnails on request so as to save data space (easy script)

tables
- user (the user data)
- imagedir (the image directory uploaded with the corresponding user via ftp)
- images (the images uploaded with the corresponding user via mysql if storing in database)
- bloglist (the bloggs inc. date, who posted it, category, ect)
- blog (the actual blog)

plus maybe a couple more

this is a basic summary hope it helps :)

[metalix]

Oh also you only need AJAX if you want to connect to the server without the user leaving the page.
And jquery is only used for special effects.

[benhowdle89]

Nice, great breakdown! Helped alot, i take it the number of users is just dependant on mysql database size?

I use jQuery for more than special effects, very useful for industrial web applications, monitoring live temperatures, pH levels etc, using the .load() function to a PHP script!

But i understand what you are saying, have you made any social networking sites i could take a look at to get a better grip on what i would do?

Thanks

[metalix]

yeah pretty much the columns represent each value of data and the rows represent each user

ex columns:
user:
first name, last name, username(UNIQUE), password, age, email(UNIQUE), imagedir(UNIQUE) gender, ect.

so just look at the whole thing as a logic pattern and it becomes simple

Sorry all my network sites are private based

hope this helps :)

[jrivera]

You would need alot of PHP but it can be simplified by using a framework or a precreated open source script, which you could tweak to your needs. There are many groups/individuals that have created social media apps that you can program in.

Alternatively, you could do a little digging around on the web for something you can implement. My company is looking into using this app and creating an installation and configuration service around it. http://www.jambok.com. It's just one of many off-the-shelf options.

All in all, you have the right idea. I would include also the use of MySQL as well to keep record of the data.

Hi,

Just need a bit of advice, no code or anything, i know someone at quite a large company who is interested in implementing their own social media site for their employees. Roughly how would one go about coding/setting this up, i imagined it would take alot of heavy duty PHP code and alot of Ajax/jQuery etc, databases..??

Any other ideas??