By tanyi on
My colleagues and I would like to get a quote to build a site like Linkedin usng Drupal. The site will function exactly like Linkedin with some very minor modifications. Please provide quote and timeframe for such a job. Thanks in advance.
Comments
You can copy a system, but
You can copy a system, but you can't copy success.
Even if you could replicate the exact LinkedIN functionality, what would you do with it? You'd need a team of marketeers and bucketloads of advertising to do anything with it. Have you an idea of the complexity behind a site like LinkedIn? It's not realistic to ask for a LinkedIn clone, especially not in a 2-line post on Drupal.org. You need a lot more than a Drupal specialist. You need a team of project managers, designers, developers.
Let me break it down for you:
- concept and planning phase: 6-12 months
- design phase: 6 months
- development phase: 12-18 months
- deployment and market launch phase: 6 months
Monthly hosting cost: 50K USD$ and up
Total development budget: 5-15 million USD$ (excluding marketing)
Team: 10-15 FTE of strategists, designers, developers
+1
+1
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I actually disagree with some of this post, simply because it is a little contradictory. It says you can copy the system but you can't copy success. That is true, but then the costs provided assume you ARE successful.
For example, to start a social networking site, you aren't going to have to pay $50k a month in hosting. If you ARE LinkedIn, sure, it's going to be expensive. But if LI, Facebook, Twitter, etc started off at $50k a month, we wouldn't have any of those sites. Do you think Zuckerburg put up $50k his first month?
So your hosting cost isn't going to be that high starting out. It will once you get to the popularity and success of LI, but by that time, you've been gaining traction in all the areas where you start getting funding like the other large sites. You start getting ad fees, private funding, etc.
the total development budget is also high for a new social media site. None of the major social networks cost $10mil initially. Again, once you get there, your development costs will be ongoing and get into the millions. The first phase and probably into your beta you aren't going to be spending $10mil. Once you get tot the point to start hiring employees, and further the development, it will get into the millions.
Not possible
I don't think you can build a Linkedin Clone with Drupal. Drupal is a hog on database and the relationships in Linkedin, Groups, Q&A sections, search,and other features are not fit for CMS like Drupal.
You would be better off building it from ground up with custom programming.
Roshan Shah
http://www.gloscon.com
Agreed
Yes. You can do simpler social networking with Drupal. Organic Groups module is nice but painfully buggy in my experience, and there are other modules
http://www.228webstudio.com/content/top-7-drupal-modules-building-social...
It is going to place heavy demands on the server.
But it will fall far short of Linkedin, which has to be designed and written from the ground up, and is said (like Facebook) to use a variety of programming languages.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
Not worth the effort
Personally, I do no think anyone should even try putting slightest effort in trying to build linkedin type site with Drupal. Better to use Drupal for small to medium corporate sites, university sites, newspaper sites or developer community portals which has lot more simpler needs.
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I've seen people post things like "Can you make me a Facebook site?" and want a clone of Facebook. I think it's funny they just think it's a little bit of code and some blue color.
If everything were that easy everyone would have a Facebook site.
Tanyi Dont get discouraged
Tanyi, Don't be discouraged by all these remarks, You can do it,
When you ask a question like this, discouraging remarks are common.
I know and understand what you mean by "A clone of linkedin" means it is not exactly the same as linkedin.And I am damn sure that you don't want it to be like Linkedin, your site may deffer in one way or the other, The success of the site is not depending on whether it is like linkedin or face book, The success is depending on how useful it is and to how many users, linkedin got success, because money was pumped in and launched overnight, and the uses are many,there is no targeted user bases, As far as I can see all the functions of Linkeidn are not useful for all, in fact it is only useful as a professional contact builder,Believe me, I own more than 50 Linkedin groups, and almost my group membership is more than 50000 each in a few groups!!! There are articles about me on net which is not relevant here, just I am sharing info here to encourage you,
if you need such thing there is already a install profile Drupal Commons , how ever, current core version is Drupal 6.23, this is a major disadvantage, I dont think there will D7 version,Also remember, nothing comes free, but Start it some where and make your way to achieve your goal
Don't ask this question anywhere else,I did the same mistake, you will not get the correct answer, you will be advised to go for custom development, because that's where they get money.No offense Folks
Possible...
I think you could do something similar in Drupal, but best case scenario would take one or two good developers a year. Doesn't get over the issue of getting people to visit the site...
The comments above, of people
The comments above, of people saying it can't be done in Drupal, and referring to the "buggy" nature of Drupal/Social Media integration and heavy on DB. etc, etc... are obviously from those that are used to using Drupal "out of the box", with purely contributed modules and on a "less-than-enterprise" hosting platform.
How can you build weather.com on Drupal with the mindset of some of the above comments? There are many ways to accomplish monster sites in Drupal but it will mean having top-notch developers that know how to build custom modules and know how to setup Drupal as a headless hybrid with Java or some other lightweight front end, etc.
So like kaizerkin said above... don't be discouraged by the comments above. I've been building Drupal for almost 10 years and I've never seen anything that Drupal couldn't handle, at least for the most part and then through integration, completely...
Go forth and DRUPAL!
1. I did not say Drupal was
1. I did not say Drupal was buggy. I said OG was buggy - which is unfair now: remember I was writing that when the Drupal 7 version of OG was at a relatively early stage; admittedly, my knowledge of OG was already a few months out of date when I wrote that. Why did you revive a four-year-old thread..? Anyway, all contributions to the forum are good!
2. OP wants to use Drupal 'with some very minor modifications' - you seem to be agreeing that some degree of custom code will be required to emulate Linkedin?
Go forth, read carefully, then Drupal :-)
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors