Hello... I am so happy I stumbled across this site!

I am trying to start a professional networking site. The way I do it now is... my members have to fill out fields on a form and send me thier info and then I create a page for them and post it on my site. This is time consuming and inconvenient for me and my members.

What I want to do is use a social networking software program and make the necessary changes to fit my needs. This way members can create and manage their own pages. I do not want a lot of the extras many of these programs come with (I am assuming I can remove them as the administrator) such as smilies, video links etc.

My question is... what software do you recommend for my situation? I have no programming ability. I have considered programs such as Webscribble, Kiickapps, phpFox and DZOIC Handshake. I am leaning toward Handshake but don't know if I have explored enough options.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

Dave

Have you considered Ning? It is very easy to launch a social network site and you don't need to know any programming, just that for the design you need to understand a little bit about css if you want a customized design. They already have some pre-designed layouts you can use as well and they are customizable as well. I used ning to create a Gears Of War social network site an it was very simple. Kind of like creating a blog with blooger, but with more features.

Carlos, I did check into ning. I can't remember why I ruled them out. I think it was because it did not seem to be customizable enough. If I recall, it would always have that "Social" networking site look and I want to convert it to a "professional" networking site. I will check back into it though. Perhaps I am remembering wrong or I can do more with it than appears. Thanks

Any time you use the remotely hosted / free social networking platforms, your options are always going to be pretty limited. I don't know how much you want to invest on this but you may want to think about outsourcing the work from a site like rentacoder.com. Developing a site like this can be very costly but it may be worth it if you have very specific needs and you can't find any ready-made scripts out here.

Also before you decide to do this, I always caution people to really think about how you're going to market these types of sites. If you have yet to establish an audience with a site or blog, launching these types of sites from scratch can be challenging as far as drawing enough traffic to get people to actually sign up and participate. So just keep that in mind. I've read so many stories of people paying programmers 4 figures to setup these cool sites but end up getting stuck when it comes to marketing and getting participation.

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Thanks Lisa. I definitely do not want to use a free hosted platform.

I came across a program by the name of SocialSiteGenerator and got very excited about it initially. It has 90% of what I am looking for allong with the amount of customization I need. There was one major thing missing and that was the ability to have two different membership levels. One needs to be free and the other a paid membership.

I had another HUGE concern... I could not find much by the way of reviews by individuals actually using the script. However, found a lot of warnings regarding the vulnerability of the code. The only website I found that was using the script had been hacked.

Back to Handshake I guess. I just don't like the comments I am reading regarding the attitude of the staff at DZOIC and their pay me pay me pay me approach toward their customers as well as prospective customers. I will say this though, those who are tolerating that attitude, love the software.

Dave