Best social networking software?

[Phaedrus]

I'm trying to add a social networking element to my site, I already have a Vbulletin forum. Can anyone advise on this, are the scripts out there robust enough? If you cannot mention names please PM me. Thanks!

[rogerd]

This is an interesting question without a good answer at the moment. There's a "MySpace" hack for vBulletin that's really a combination of about a dozen other hacks, most of them profile expansions, public buddy list with photos, etc. I haven't tried it - when you start layering that many mods in a few areas of the code, you run the risk of breaking something. You could always pick & choose a few of the hacks if you are looking for specific functionality.

There's something called phpfox that is supposed to provide social networking and be compatible with vBulletin. It got mixed reviews a few months ago: [webmasterworld.com...]

At the time, a new version was in the works... any phpFox updates, or any other suggestions?

[Phaedrus]

right - thats the impression I got, making me think I should take some classes in php and try to do it myself! Vbulletin did such a great job with the forum software (all the leading forum sites in my niche use it) wish something as solid was available to add on to it.

[rogerd]

There's a lot of interest in adding social networking to vBB, but they have been quite slow in introducing such features. They said they would have personal blogs as a means of demoing the plug-in system, but that never happened.

PhpFox looks interesting, and the Konsort version is now shipping. I also note that there are various third parties offering customization services - that might be worth checking out before you launch a major internal coding project.

[lorenzinho2]

Ning, People Aggregator, and OneSite all have white label social networking platforms.