I want to start a social network on my own server. Where to start?

by Will Lion

Question by Loren Haskins: I want to start a social network on my own server. Where to start?
I wanted to start a small social network on my website and am having trouble getting anything started. I’ve tried Elgg and couldn’t get it to work, as well as Dolphin which seems to be a huge mess.

Anyone know anything that works well? I basically just want a forum but with extensive profile pages (like photo albums for each person)

Preferably free software but … if there isn’t any I guess something cheap would do.

Thanks!

Best answer:

Answer by KaiPam
You can try VBulletin. They have tons of plugins and mods that allow you to have extensive profiles and whatnot.

It’s not free, and you need to do install/edit templates and mods in order to get it working.

The other thing I can think of is Ning (http://www.ning.com/), but you cannot run it on your own servers.

What do you think? Answer below!