How to Create a Social Networking Website like Facebook in Ten minutes : Step by Step Tutorial

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Monik

This is a quick step by step tutorial of how to make a Social Networking Website like Facebook in TEN Minutes. (This is an Updated tutorial version of the past one)

Step 1.) To Begin with, you need to have a web hosting account. You can get a free hosting account (list of free web hosts) but the problem with these hosts is that they have forced ads or bad uptime or unnecessary stuff required. Make sure the free host gives you FTP access and at least one MySQL Database and PHP support. I recommend you to buy a HostGator hosting account to begin with as it has all things required. Their Hatchling plan is superbly cheap (less than $4 a month) and use a coupon for more discount.

Step 2.) Get a domain too if you’ve bought hosting and configure domain with the hosting account. After all that has been done you will have to install WordPress. There are many ways of installing WordPress. If you’ve got Cpanel, then you can install WordPress with one click installer. If not, you will have to manually do that. Here’s how to do that too. Make sure you install that in the root directory of your hosting account.

Step 3.) After you have done that, you will have to log into your WordPress Blog. Now go to Plugins >> Add New. Type in “BuddyPress” and install that plugin. If you want to manually install it, here’s the link to the plugin.

Step 4.) Activate the Plugin.

Step 5.) Now go to Manage Themes and activate the Buddypress Default Theme.

Step 6.) You’re half way through. Now Few more things and you are there! On your WordPress Dashboard, go to General Settings and tick mark Anyone can Register option.

Step 7.) Now go to Profile Field setup and add the fields to be filled by users when signing up (stuff like Age, Website, Gender, Interests, bla bla).

Step 8.) You’ve got loads of features already. If you want to add more features like Photo Albums, Videos, Chat, you can install plugins to do that. (Here’s a complete list).

Step 9.) If you are annoyed with the current design, you can use a new theme to match your Social Network. A full list of Buddypress Compatible themes.

Step 10.) All set to go! An Example of a working website is testbp.org. You have made something like this!

If you find this difficult, you can mail the author for help or get a full fledged working social network with full support for a affordable price within 24 hours. [Contact : monik[at]etiole[dot]com]

RockMelt doesn’t melt a rock : Desktop Social Browser won’t work now

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Monik

I just landed on Techmeme and was greeted with tons of posts hitting rocking the headline about RockMelt, the new Social browser which opened up for Beta today.

Frankly, it really doesn’t bother me which browser I am running as long it is fast, reliable, has a good UI, bookmarks, and it doesn’t clutter the screen. RockMelt might be good with the former but with conserving your screen’s real estate, duh.

It integrates Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, YouTube, infact the whole social web especially with a large part of its attention diverted to FaceBook.

The left column of the browser is for Facebook freaks. Its got chat, sending messages and status messages. Right column for Twitter and RSS feeds which updates itself in the background. The browser is based on chromium so not much difference with icognito window and other identical features.

The search bar has been modified to pull up relevant results from relevant websites directly without actually showcasing all google results.

What I hate about it, it’s the biggest distraction. I am sure, its not going to be allowed in office. You are trying to finish preparing reports before todays presentation and then you hear a ‘pop’, Jacy wants you to join her at some ice cream parlor. Nice.

Right and Left columns are gone and take away lot of pixels on my screen. And finally, how many of you spend social networking on your computer? I think there has been a major shift to smartphones and Tablets. This really doesn’t make sense unless they come up with apps for portable devices too. This browser could be the answer to those networking freaks who spend hours on those sites but if you are a serious worker, Chrome “ki Jai ho“.

Keep your 3GB apple laptop functions on a high with an Intel core 960 processor and quality Intel motherboard.

Facebook Evolution : It sucks more than it actually should

Posted on May 9, 2010 by Monik

I am not a corporate guy with bags of pie charts and stats to explain vividly simple stuff any layman would understand with just words. I am just a school student with eyes to observe things going around me and being a web developer gives a bit more insight into how things work online.

Hottest thing up everywhere – Facebook. For some reason or the other, those doctors call Facebook, “treacherous”, and i don’t think Facebook will ever need to defend itself, it’s got 400 million users with nothing else but to do that.

Social Media is the big thing right now, but it’s more ugly than it looks like, esp. with Facebook being a key game changer in this. The original concept behind the 20,000 + server stacks that run Facebook is simple – Networking.

The truth is that it’s passé. Facebook has grown into what it should not be. Most adversely affected are the USERS. Damn it.

A decade back, when camera’s were every gadget geek’s wish, which is probably not so today-ish, people did stuff to enjoy it. Today with every piece of digital crap having image capturing lens (except iPad!) blows its reach to a much much huge market. It includes kids, who do make up a huge part of the Facebook population. What Effect I am talking about is simple, people do things just so that they can capture it with their $10 worth lens, create the fuss on facebook (so called “likes and comments”) and get lost.

The mind concept being generated in today is bull s***. I just can’t digest it, if I am going on a cable car ride to some peak couple of thousand meter high, why shall I stick my face to the window, just do all types of trials and have the scenery fit in with my face in that damn picture made of pixels, all so that I can upload it and make others burn about it? Yuk.

This way, your missing out on the actual fun, and if you don’t know what I am speaking about your probably one of those facebook-take-a-pic-and-upload-it-addicts.

Misery Songs, I hear them a lot these days on Facebook, don’t you? Unless you’ve got Russel Peters as your friend on Facebook you are most probably to hear them from “Depressed Souls” on Facebook. Negativity keeps flowing in from those dull statuses, comments and to some extent, even pictures. A Social Network is there for you to connect and not to viralize your sadness!

Bullying, Fights, and all. This one screws my head. Wars, who loves them? Ah yah, some bullies do who can ramble with words and flaunt their skills harassing people with better jobs to spend time answering their shit. Man, Network? Where do fights fit in?

The whole reason behind this lengthy post is – What Social Media was meant for and What we’ve made it. I just wanted to propel difference between these two. If doesn’t sounds as sick yet, wait till your hit by this hurricane OR Avoid It.

Facebook’s Mission to take Over the Web : Battle Begins

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Monik

It’s been roughly three years or so since the word, Social Networking / Social Media / or whatever the newspaper journalists call it, has come into existence. Market penetration is sky-high, social networks are cashing millions of dollars and advertising culture has been altered. This has made a huge impact on how corporate brands plan their advertising budgets. What are they all looking for?

Users. People. You.

It’s quite obvious, every bit of code written on Facebook is written with the intention of making a difference as to how you play yourself online or network or share stuff. Everything is targeted towards you. This means you are their biggest priority and you make them work. Simple isn’t it? Nah, not that it’s rocket science but lot of corporate boardroom stuff goes into setting a whole thing like this to work and keep more than 400 Million people connected. Let’s get to the point. What will all this result in? Web going social. A hell lot more. Facebook’s got plan to take over the whole web. If you thought Facebook’s got a brawl with Twitter, think again. It’s no more Facebook Vs. Twitter, it’s Facebook Vs. Google. Here are Facebook’s plan why they will make you reconsider your thought.

Facebook Connect : Facebook everywhere!

Facebook.com isn’t just exploding over but it’s getting everywhere. Like a injection, the rest of the web is getting successive doses. About 80,000 websites use Facebook connect to import users from facebook to their service which include services like Digg and soon, Yahoo! too. This means facebook is in charge of users not only on it’s own platform but everywhere else too. Google also has something like Facebook connect but it sucks compared to the popular facebook buddy.

Hang in there Baby!

If you thought Facebook Connect was the biggest invasion into the the huge web itself then here’s some time to alter your thoughts again. Facebook has got another master plan. It’s planning to take over that little strip of real estate in your browser bottom most with a toolbar. That means Facebook everywhere, yes, everywhere!

Like This, Share That.

The “share” and “like” buttons you might be familiar with, will now be available all over the web. Yes, all across the web just like and share any webpage, link, object you like! Facebook now wants to control everything you read and share with your friends.

Geolocation Tagging

With what people do, where they do it is also important as social networks are increasingly growing location aware, especially with the entrance of augmented reality applications. Recently, Twitter added location tagging tweets too and then, there is foursquare, a whole network setup for the location purpose. Facebook will then not only control what you do and share, but also where you do it and how. Now this sounds fun!

The invasion has begun!

Note : As you see above, the invasion has already begun and facebook has started taking the first steps!

Google Buzz to Buzz up your social networking experience online

Posted on February 9, 2010 by Monik

Google rules all the market except one, Social Networking. They did try to tap it using Orkut which worked out only in Brazil and India and few other parts of the world. Facebook gained 400 Million users this week which proves Social Networking is a massive market and Google does not want to leave it.

There they come. No, not with a new product, but with new features! It’s Google Buzz that is making all the buzz in the town. Google buzz is a new Social Addon to Google’s existing product Gmail which is used by masses.

I would term it a very smart move, and the biggest reason being that Google doesn’t need a new user base to make up for the social network, they already have the Gmail users. So existing users can get into the network. Another great concept of Google Buzz is that it’s directly from the Inbox so no hazzles of logging into seperate websites. Just log into Gmail and you are there!

Social Web is huge and every second there is something or the other to know. Too many tweets, messages would make one go haywire. Google claims that it will cure all the problems, or perhaps the social disease and sort it the right way. Google Buzz will arrange all the social happenings in the timeline systematically and the best feature is that you can integrate it with service like Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and Google Reader. (Where’s Facebook?)

Everything here is real time, so no F5 required. Your content can be private or public, as simple as this. Another key feature is the inbox integration of this service. Comment’s are sent into your inbox so you can easily keep track of conversations. This is photo friendly and will show all thumbnails and full screen pictures for service using them.

It’s like a huge timeline with updates from people you follow. You can comment, like and email a reply too. Seems like a mashup of all service around! Google’s timeline aggregater promises that it will include only the stuff you might care about and neglect crappy useless stuff like “brb” messages.

Google Buzz would be surely concentrating on the mobile market too so they are iPhone, Android ready from the beginning. As we said, the location aware internet is on the rise and geo tagging with every post is automatically done with every post. Now this is the complete mashup of all good parts of the best services on the web!

FaceBook Crosses 350 Million users, 1000 employees and 400 Million Unique visitors

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Monik

What a day it is for Facebook! If you did log on to Facebook today, you would have observed a small box on top of your page and if you did take the pains of going to see what it was about you know what i am talking about. If not, then read on.

350 Million users is no joke. A month back they had about 325 Million users and now its a 25 Million user jump and let me mention, Facebook had 200 Million members during April 2009 but in 7 months and 150 Million members more? Amazing! Seems quite a surprise to us but not to them.

They have also crossed over the 1000 employees mark and are hiring more people. More Dataservers [Currently 30,000 and growing!] and stuff like that is being worked on. But apart from that a lot of development is being done on the front end.

The user interface is being worked upon and if that’s not enough, Facebook is also soon going to roll out their new Privacy Policy. You know what that means? Last time their one change created a hell lot of Ruckus over the web, people fighting to get the old policies back.

Here’s a quote from their blog post,

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model forprivacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

They policies coming up would give you better control over the content you upload online and share, who will be able to access what kind of information, etc. I think this is what was needed, after all Facebook gets 400+ million unique visits every month.

If the predictions are to be believed Facebook will cross the 375 Million users before the end of this year.

Credits : AlltheFB