Question

Topic: Social Media

Best Way To Add Your Own Social Network To A Website?

Posted by Anonymous on 2/6/2010 at 6:19 AM ET 250 Points
I am in the process of building a website thats function is to ease the transition of people relocating. Obviously a social, or community, function is a vital component to being able to achieve my goal. I am relatively new to building a site myself, so I'm using templates to help with the design and structure right now. Do you know of an inexpensive option to be able to add networking capabilities to a site without having to go through something like Ning, or Facebook? I'd just use them, but I need to be able to restrict certain user accounts and/or information because of privacy concerns.

Any advice, or thoughts you could share would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 2/6/2010 at 10:47 AM Accepted
    People are already inundated with offers to join social network sites. Instead of trying to get them to join yours', why not create a spot for them on their site (as you mentioned, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)? You can choose who to allow in and administer the membership yourself.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 2/6/2010 at 6:04 PM Accepted
    Dear Imagineimages,

    Use a forum. This will then be solely connected to your site, has no connection with Facebook or any other social media platform.

    If you set things up so that people have to log into the system under, if they choose to, a nickname or an assumed name, then there are fewer privacy concerns and you have an extra incentive for people to join your network.

    I hope this helps.

    Gary Bloomer
    Wilmington, DE, USA
  • Posted on 2/7/2010 at 9:37 PM Author
    I appreciate the feedback from both of you, and completely know where you are coming from on the 'over-abundance' of social networks Jay. In a way, I feel like they are becoming as prevalent as email campaign spam. However, it's an aspect that is going to need to be present for the site to meet its goals.

    After looking into the idea you suggested a bit more Gary, I think this is definitely the way to go... it seems that forums are a pretty easy add-on too, if I'm not mistaken?

    Maybe this would be best to open in a seperate question, but does anyone happen to know if it's possible to go through the source code of your website and make changes to optimize it for SEO if it was created using a website design/creation template? And if so, do you know what is required to do so?

    Thanks again!
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 2/8/2010 at 9:30 AM Accepted
    Dear Imagineimages,

    Your best bet for optimized SEO is Wordpress. I'm currently rearranging my blog (currently hosted through Tumblr) so that it runs on Wordpress exclusively.

    You could retain your main site and offer links from it to your WP site. Huge pain in the tush i know, but search engines LIKE Wordpress and what's good for SEO is good for you, at least, that's my thinking but to be doubly sure you might want to consider asking for other advice on
    WP forums like this one: https://wordpress.org/support/forum/3

    I hope this helps.

    Gary Bloomer
    Wilmington, DE, USA
  • Posted on 2/9/2010 at 9:02 PM Accepted
    I second Gary's suggestion to try Wordpress. In addition to being a user AND search-friendly platform to build on, you can find a plugin for just about anything, including some of the social features mentioned above (forums, social network integration, even SEO tools). This means that you can add desired functionality (without changing your page templates) via a very simple installation process. Good luck!
  • Posted on 2/12/2010 at 12:24 AM Author
    Thank you all very much for your insight!
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