Create Your Own Social Networking Site With Ning
If you are looking to set up a social networking site, but are not sure where to start, then you might want to give Ning a look. The basic package for Ning is completely free and comes with a ton of features. Each user gets their own blog and can do everything that a normal social networking site can do, along with some extra features (eg. events, forums, videos, music) that only the big social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have. The good thing about sites setup using Ning is that each one loads the packages from the main Ning site, which get updated and improved for free.
For a little extra cost (currently $4.95 a month) you can opt to have a custom domain name for your network, rather than the default of <yournetwork>.ning.com. This is excellent if you want to promote your networking site as an independent site, rather than it being connected with Ning.
To keep things free Ning will add adverts and promotional links to your networking site, but you can pay a nominal fee each month to make things totally white labelled. A good example of a well optimised and active social networking site can be seen at www.thinkatheist.com, but you can also search for lots more on the Ning home page.
If you are still unconvinced then you can always try and off the shelf social networking site like Elgg, which has improved a lot since I last saw it and is still a viable open source alternative.
Philip Norton
Lead Developer, Research and Development
