By roachclipguy on

We want to develop an portal that includes full social networking features, but also is integrated with ecommerce, information and entertainment functions. We have decided to use Drupal as our CMS, but we were wondering if it is possible to completely integrate another platform into the Drupal system. I realize that Drupal has many networking features, but PHPfox (phpfox.com) seems to have a great system out of the box. Any thoughts on this?

(Sorry to be so obviously non-tech)

Comments

yelvington’s picture

yelvington commented

I took only a brief look at the demo site, but I didn't see anything that can't already be done with Drupal. What distinct value does this commercial application provide?

dman’s picture

dman commented

And why for that matter would you need Drupal if it does all that it says it can do

I'd really go with one or the other, trying to tie two things that do such similar jobs together would be a pain.

.dan.
How to troubleshoot Drupal
http://www.coders.co.nz/

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards

ezhil’s picture

ezhil commented

//
trying to tie two things that do such similar jobs together would be a pain
//
it shouldn't be if organized properly

roachclipguy’s picture

roachclipguy commented

Appreciate all comments. Reason for asking is we have recently lost our programmers (one to cancer and one was a slacker). Drupal seems to have far more capability for the long run (managing content, ecommerce, ad management, expandable back end, etc.) , but it seems much more difficult to get a social network up and running. At this point we have one newbie programmer (really a graphics expert) and we are planning on posting project on job board.

Extremely helpful forums, I will be sure any work we have done is added to the community. :-)

jarea’s picture

jarea commented

I too have been looking at Drupal and PHPFox and have come to the conclusion that PHPFox is inherently much more capable when it comes to supporting the needs of a large community with hundreds or thousands of groups. To start with, there is no category system for dealing with large numbers of groups. Groups are not a node type that appear in the taxonomy vocabulary, so you can't use that to build a category system (and I wonder if it would even work). Another flaw is that groups (at least the image gallery module) are built to take advantage of the taxonomy system rather than having their own infrastructure, thus, whenever a new group (image gallery) is created, it adds a new vocabulary to the taxonomy system and if you have taxonomy menu added, it will be added to the menu block as well. That is fine if you have a handful of groups, but if you have a couple of thousand, it is out of control. Forums also get similarly quickly cluttered up when the number of groups begins to scale.

I am looking at interfacing the user registration and login between Drupal and PHPFox and doing some light menu integration and common CSS theming to allow the Drupal and PHPFox worlds coexist together. If my tests prove successful, I will post an example site for people to take a look at.

If there are any developers out there that are interested in working on this project, drop me a note.

Finally, to the OG developers I would like to say that there is a lot that I DO like about OG and I think it is a wonderful start for a lot of basic community functionality. I just don't see it scaling to large communities with the current architecture. I would love to be proven wrong by the developers.

Florianp123’s picture

Florianp123 commented

I am very interrested in the integration of drupal and PHPFox since a I have a community site that I need to update with a new interface.
Have you manage to make the integration? I will be interrested to have a chat with you

regards

florian

pgascoine’s picture

pgascoine commented

We are looking at integrating Drupal with PhpFox as well. If you make any progress in this arena, I'd like to chat with you. We have a site that involves both a social network and an ezine, so both feature sets would be desirable. Like you mentioned, the integration of the registration/login between the two platforms would be ideal.

ladycentaur’s picture

ladycentaur commented

You could take a look at the way Drupalation is integrating MySpace into Drupal here:

http://www.drupalution.com/mods

You might be able to use the same technique to integrate PHPFox.

RichinOhio’s picture

RichinOhio commented

From what I can see and read, that Drupalution site and project has stopped being worked on over a year ago. Nothing there is useful - it just looks tempting with the petty graphics, but there's no code and functionality to back up the ideas it presents.. Too bad.

Florianp123’s picture

Florianp123 commented

I think it could be good to create an article on how to build a social network with Drupal. I have made some search and there is a lot of module that can be use (buddy list ajaxim guestbook..)

It could be a good idea to share all the avaible information at a single place.

Does someone have a good knowledge on the subject?

tks

Florian

spleenless’s picture

spleenless commented

I'd love so more information on the subject aswell. phpfox doesn't fit my budget, and so i'm wondering what possibilities area available simply within drupal. thanks! -splnlss

pamphile’s picture

pamphile commented

It's just a matter of adding features one by one, and making them obviously useful.

Oversimplified... I know..

ladycentaur’s picture

ladycentaur commented

You could always try to integrate Dolphin with Drupal...

http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/

Florianp123’s picture

Florianp123 commented

The problem with those script is first that you have to pay and then their user community is not develop enought to help you in building all the function you are looking for.

I would like to build a 100% drupal site using only drupal modules. I will try to make an article in the book section so that anyone can add is own knowledge.

regards

Florian