Hi!
I have a bit of time off and want to start a social networking site, or at least a rough copy of one.
I am going to start on my local server using XAMP.
I would like to outline my general ideas and steps and would really enjoy if the many of you who surf these forums could respond and critique my thought process!
Before I get started, my general plan is to practice on a local server maybe have a test website and then hopefully find friends that could help me with a better CMS and API for the website. That’s a while away tho 
Ok so! This is where I’m at.
- Download and install xampp
- Sign up for Drupal & Discqus
- Install Navicat for MySQL Lite
- This is where I am right now
I have already drafted my outline for my website and now will need to look for a theme.
I look forward to everyone’s suggestions. I will likely use this for all of my website queries unless they are very specific and then I would allocate the questions based on topic accordingly.
I’m a bit confused. You want to build a social networking site, and what you’ve done so far is get your local server running?
Social Networking is only a blanket term for a bunch of interactive websites. If you’re looking to build such a site then surely you’ll have most of it planned out in regards to the level of users you’ll cater for, what the site will be about, how users will interact, etc? That design stage is the most important aspect to start with, and any information you have on that would make this thread a lot easier to follow.
If, when you say social network, you are referring to sites like Facebook/MySpace/Bebo, then you should have a look at Social Engine and phpFox. They are both excellent scripts, and there are a lot of templates, however I would recommend a custom template as the standard templates are a dime a dozen.
Great thanks! I’ll look into them. I’m actually starting on a smaller project first. Similar to fmylife. Do you have any expertise in Drupal or that type of “story” like commenting?
Story like commenting? I’m not quite sure what you mean. Drupal is a CMS.
Personally I am not very familiar with Drupal, however there is a lot of documentation and information on their website.