Hi folks,

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas or could point me in the right direction (websites/people/etc) on how to create my own community website such as Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, etc. I would really appreciate any and all information.

Thanks!

Hi Spydey, Wow what a question. We could probably write a series of books on this question.

This is more of a concept process involving marketing more than anything else. If you get a great idea, you can find VC money to fund the project. You probably wouldn't get a bank to back you.

From a technical standpoint, you need a good team of programmers.
There will be a lot of functions that will need to be created. For a site like this most of it will need to be created by hand. No precanned programming.

Marketing will run your project and work very closely with the tech side. Your entire concept will need to be defined before you get started. A project of this magnitude will not succeed if you just shoot from the hip. It would require a Project Management Model to follow and you would be best to hire a professional Project Manager to run the show for you.

you are talking mucho denaro..

I am of course making the presumption that you want to create a *successful* product that is going to compete with some of the sites that you mentioned.

thank you chip for for the info...can you tell me more about the technical side of the project? I am definitely not technicaly but I believe some sort of PHP/...would be used. I actually do know a relatively decent community website which was created by one person..it definitely hasn't blown up yet but i do believe it has the potential...check it out: www.lunchspark.com

also what kind of servers would you suggest and what would be the price range of hosting a relatively small community site at first...the site I have in mind would be geared towards a specific niche so it has potential to be big but definitely not catered to everyone...

oh btw would anyone have any links or books you would suggest I read up on...again I am only in the planning stages so I'm definitely just trying to find as much info as possible...

(This is a quick thing - sorry I do not have time today to edit, this post. So it is as-is.)

Personaly do not have the answers at my disposal. Here are a few musing from the top of my head - This is where I would start.<rant> I am not a programmer, I am a Project Manaber so this is coming from this point of view. Which personally I think every project should be build from the PM point of view instead of the Programmer's point of view. Believe it or not, there are quite a few Web Development companies that actully end up using the programmer as the Project Manager. If they have PM skills fine, usually they do not, and the site is build from the technical aspect. </rant>

If I were to undertake this I would start by creating the Buisness Model that you you would like to follow. How do you plan on making money with the venture will need to be one of the first things that you do.

Will you use adSense, and/or will local advertising inclusions pay for the site? How wide of a advertising market will be present to advertise on your site? i.e., how many diferent kinds of businesses are there for you to market too.

Remember, your site is going to offer itself on the premise much like a niche magazine. Your visitors will need to be defined so that you can then target who will be willing to advertise on the site.

I know that you asked about the technical side but until you define what the funtionality of the site needs to be, the technical issues cannot be addressed, and until you define the business model the site will follow funtionality cannot be addressed.

Moving on. Looking at these factors next you can move into deciding what funtionality the site will require. And, when YOU do this, you don't need to list the technical funtions per se, rather you just need to story board, what the site is going to do, and provide for the user.

Then you can take your story boards to someone that can build the site for you.
You have a few options, and since I am not sure of what kind of budget you are expecting, here are some ideas.

1) Contract a Web Dev company to do the thing for you. This way you will have designers, coders, back-end teams to take of things. It is a bit more expensive but throrough.

2) You be the project manager.

What you will need:

A designer. you can go to the local college and get kids who are awesome graphics designers. The thing with this is you need to make sure that they really know how to *optimize* graphics for the web, and from experience, everybody THINKS they know how to optimize graphics for the web.

HTML. You will need someone to actually build the site. This person will have to wear many hats. Being reponsible for creating the pages, usability issues, etc., etc. This person will need to be very effecient with html, css, javaScript, at least, and also it would be good for him to be a good hack at whatever program you build in. asp, php.

Programmer. Decide what will be the best platform to handle the site (Who is going to host the server. You will want to use a dedicated server for the site.) and determine what language you prefer to use. asp,php -Now you can get a programmer to do the programming for you. A couple of options: 1) hire a Web Copany to do the programming for you. 2) Hire a full time programmer. What! you say! hire a guy full time. Well for $50k a year you will have a person working full time for you getting this project completed. It is going to need an ongoing programmer for quite a while even after you think the programming is done. This can be one of the most cost effective approaches to use.

* Someone else might be better informed, but personally if I took the asp route I would want a programmer that can do it in C+ rather than VB. Or better yet asp.net.

Your html guy will build the templates for the site using the code that the Programmer builds

Three books that I donot leave home without. If you plan on building a site and you want to be the Project Manager you MUST read these books.

1 - Secrets of Successful Web Sites
2 - Designing Web Sites That Sell
3 - Great Web Architecture

Hi Chip,

Again I really appreciate all your insight and information that you provided. I do believe that I will be acting as a project manager on this because I do not have the technical skills required. I do have all the necessary people that would fill each role you mentioned but again I am still in the early planning stages of the idea. Thank you for those recommended readings. I've bought used copies of each book from Amazon already. Wish I could PM this message but I do not have the minimum amount of posts yet but I hope to contact you for more suggestions or cousel soon enough.

I can do it. I would use PHP, MySQL for database, and AJAX to make it user-friendly. If you got the advertising budget, and could offer me good return, I would be more than happy to program the entire site for you.

The key is to find a good domain name and have the startup budget for adverting the site. I am also an expert in SEO, but that takes months to gain popularity.

One more thing, I work best alone when programming. I can do what a team of developers can do in have the time. I have worked in teams and it just slows everything down. A real programmer is an artist and he works best alone.

The first thing to do is write a detailed plan of everything you want to achieve, what you envisage the site to offer, how people will use it and so on. Don't worry about what coding language it uses at this stage. If this is a business project then this would be your business plan and would also include financial data.

Once you have your plan look at each individual point and analyse it to see if there are any "ifs and buts" and add these to the list. Ie "if a user is not logged in they can't see member profiles". Doing this will start to build up the specification to actually build the front end.

Also think about things like marketing, maintenance etc etc

When you have your plan, ideas and needs documented you can then put the work out to tender. The developer will need precise details on how the site will work and your prework will do most of this.

You will also have to do things like write your own copy text, but you could farm this work out. Included in this are things like page messages, about, and most importantly help information on how to use the site.

The site will need to be hosted somewhere and you would need at least one dedicated server to start with, you'll also need a good amount of bandwidth to serve all those big files at a reasonable speed.

And when the site is all done and live you will need to provide support, and if you have 000's of members you'll probably need someone full time.


As with any project, be prepared for the unexpected and have a "plan B" just in case!

Hehe..
A person who knows wont tell you that
If someone knows he'll do it by himself

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Spdye,

I checked out that snacklunch page, pretty interesting, something I will definitely use, since it's in Plainfield. I know exactly where that's at. I grew up in New Lenox and currently living in Wilmington, my cousin just bought a house out there. Anyways this is the first time, I 've actually run across someone on these forums that actually lived in the same area. I will definitely keep an eye on this website..


sasquash :0)

Some great ideas very helpful information I think the best thing to do is start by referring the top members from other forums and then you have a good base to start.

Originally Posted by modtfc

Some great ideas very helpful information I think the best thing to do is start by referring the top members from other forums and then you have a good base to start.

Good idea.