Programming requirements for a social network

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1

I am developing a social network that is similar to facebook in how it functions, and am trying to find out what kind of programmers I would need to hire to build it from scratch.

The website would have the following:

  1. Profile with multiple tabs (like facebook)

  2. Live Feed from users status updates onto each users home page (like facebook)

  3. Photos and videos. I want to be able to post videos directly to the site as opposed to linking it to another site like youtube or vimeo. (like facebook)

  4. Message boards and a large database (like IMDb)

  5. Very advanced search options (not just looking someone up, but filling out detailed criteria for a search)

  6. Strong User ID Verification.

  7. Strong Privacy settings.

  8. Rating system. Users will be able to rate certain things which will then be displayed as an average score. (like costumer reviews on amazon.com)

  9. And, of course, all the standard stuff that comes with a social network like chat, comments, adding friends, sending messages, etc.

So, those are the features I need, but what languages would people need to build that kind of site? Would PHP, MySQL, and HTML be enough? Or would they need Perl and/or Javascript, or something else?

If anybody has the time and really wants to break it down for me, you can explain what each of the languages are primarily used for, or direct me to some resource that explains that.

Any help would be great.

2

Anybody?

3

If you are using apache, you will want somebody who knows PHP and MySQL. Since you are hoping to grow large you will want somebody who knows about scalability. A major thing is database normalization. Throwing a database isn’t too hard, but if you do it sloppy, things could turn ugly fast.

Have you looked at ning?

4

I have looked at Ning. It doesn’t come close to what I’m developing.

So, you’re saying that if I find a programmer that knows PHP and MySQL who knows about scalability and database normalization, he can build me a website that does all of the above?

No HTML, no AJAX, no Perl?

5

lol, uhm, you need to know html if you do php…
AJAX will be possibly needed.

6

i believe you need more than a programmer - someone who is very experienced in building large scale websites. Good knowledge of system architecture project management skill… good luck.