Which framework to use to build a Community website for my family?

July 15, 2008 8:24 AM

Looking for community building tool to create a family website. I have family all across the US and would like to create a website where each family member could create their own profile, make posts, share photos. Like a MySpace or Facebook but something more private and to a degree less complex. Something that is just for invited users, something that is easy to use for non-technical users and something that I can host and administer. Open source solutions would be preferred. I have used wordpress, drupal, and joomla but each requires tweaking and modules, and lots of research to setup. Just wondering if there are any prepackages solutions or easier to use modules for WP, drupal, or joomla. Thanks.
posted by mountainfrog to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Have you considered Kindo?
posted by ruwan at 8:41 AM on July 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

Try Ning, it's extremely simple and customizable.
posted by acidic at 9:33 AM on July 15, 2008

seconding ning. in fact, your use case was pretty much what it was designed for. However, it is not self-hosted.
posted by fishfucker at 1:01 PM on July 15, 2008

Thirding Ning. It's perfect for exactly what you want except for the self-hosted thing.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:23 PM on July 15, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks for the info so far. I have looked into Ning but I prefer a self-hosted solution. Looks like Kindo is also not self-hosted. I am putting up pixs/video/info of my family and prefer to store all of that data on my own servers. I was hoping someone or some company had developed a platform I could install and host myself.
posted by mountainfrog at 5:32 PM on July 15, 2008

Hmm, okay, try SocialEngine, Flux, KickApps, or ONESite. I recall that these are self-hosted but could be wrong. Most self-hosted social networks are oriented toward enterprise use, understandably, so the cost or effort might be prohibitive, unfortunately.
posted by acidic at 2:31 PM on July 16, 2008