By BDaggerhart on

Okay, so I know there's a link right above me where I can go to read about the "right-ness" of Drupal and me. That's not really the question I have though - my question is more about the capabilities of Drupal vs. the ease of something else. I have a decent bit of experience with Drupal so far - I've created one site mostly on my own, and have helped my brother create several other ones (though my "help" was more of an ideas-runner-by than anything else, for the most part). I haven't really delved into Drupal for over a year now, so am probably a bit rusty.

I'm looking to create a local musicians' social networking site. It's not facebook, it's not myspace, but it encompasses a lot of ideas of both of them. Facebook, Myspace, and Bandmix all have aspects of what I want to do, but none of them fully utilize what I think are all the necessary networking functionalities in a web site to really get people involved.

So, my question is, is Drupal really feasible as a social networking site? I know there's wordpress' Buddypress out there now that basically gives you a social site right out of the box, but I like Drupal, and have a friendly relationship with it so far, and would like to continue using it.

The functionalities I need on a site are:
- Advanced Profile Options
- Limited Uploading From Members Based on Paying Memberships
- Ability to Search for Members Based on Multiple Criteria such as "Location," "Music Genre," "Skill Level," Etcetera
- A Classified Ads Section Where Members Can Post and Update Their Ads
- Advanced Forums (May just use a PHPBB or vBulletin Plugin, unless Drupal's Forums have come along more since the last time I used them)
- Login Capabilties from Facebook, Twitter, Google, or Open ID
- Blogging and even Full Web-Sites for Paying Memberships
- Calendar that All Members have Access to, both for their Private Profile Page, but Also Updates Main Site Calendar.

Like I said, I think Drupal can probably handle all that, but I'm not sure which Modules would be the way to go, and even if it's worth trying to hack something together in Drupal, or just try out this Buddypress thing.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

haikubear’s picture

haikubear commented

You can do all that you ask for with just a handful of modules, so, yes, Drupal can do that.

You would use Advanced Profile, Advanced Forum (maybe also Forum Access or TCL/TCLite if you want private forums for paying members), CCK, Views, and maybe Panels/cTools (I'm not sure what you mean by 'full web sites for paying members' - might be sufficient to add a couple of content types, or you might let them create Pages).

A quick search of the modules using the keywords in your post will steer you right. In my experience, the modules play along quite nicely. The trick is presentation - getting the output to look like a cohesive website.

Good luck!

BDaggerhart’s picture

BDaggerhart commented

Thanks Haiku, I'll definitely look in to the TCL/TCLite and Advanced Profile.

When I said "full sites for paying members," I was talking about how members could actually set up their own "site-within-a-site," ala myspace/facebook, where they have their own discussions, upload music, and have their own announcements and such. Of course, looking over it, it may be that the Blog module will help with that, or even OG.

Edit: Hmmm, did you mean ACL instead of "TCL?" I cannot find anything called TCL, nor could I find anything that started with "T" that looked like what you were talking about, but "ACL" seems to be perhaps what you were referring to. If not, could you point me in the right direction?

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

Probably meant TAC. Taxonomy Access Control.

OG is good for the "site-within-a-site".

Michelle

princemishra’s picture

princemishra commented

I used acquia-drupal to create a social networking solution for our Open Source Club at Army Institute of technology, Pune.
Have a look at http://aitoss.net

Go through http://acquia.com/ to download the drupal version. It has all the necessary modules to make a complete social networking solution.