Best Social Network Platform

Elgg, ning, kickapps

[SiteTutor]

I have been looking to move my custom coded website to a social network platform. The current website gets about 35,000 unique visitors per month from organic traffic and has a page one google ranking for the term "surfing" in all 3 major search engines.

The two questions are as follows:
- if I move over to the hosted social network platform, will I lose my rankings...even if I do the proper 301 redirects.
- which social network platform would you recommend. I have reviewed the following, NING, Elgg and kickapps. Are there others or which of the ones above do you consider the best.

Thanks for your assistance.

[rogerd]

Do you really want to relinquish control to a hosted solution? I'd be concerned that even though you can 301 to the new site, you might not be able to 301 back out if you opt to self-host. Something to check, at least.

[SiteTutor]

Thanks for the response. I agree that utilizing a hosted solution is a negative. Especially since it currently runs on its own server.

My issue is that it doesn't generate enough money to support running on its own server plus the being necessary to be responsible for all the various upgrades etc....

That is not to say that I have decided to host or not. that is just one of the issues. Are there others that I should focus one in making my decision? Thanks for your thoughts.

[rogerd]

I don't know what your hosting cost is, but consider a VPS or cloud server. I've got a blog site that's a little busier than the site you describe that runs like a champ on a cloud server at well under $100/mo. (The cloud server cost just a little more than the VPS the site was on before, and offered a big boost in specs and actual site performance.)