Drupal is ideally equipped to serve as a base system for creating a custom social networking site like Facebook or MySpace. While these large social networks have their place, niche social networking websites can help promote businesses, products, projects, and hobbies of any nature.
Drupal 7 Social Networking provides careful instructions and clear explanations to take you through the setup and management of your social network site, covering topics from users, to marketing, to maintenance. It will help you create your own social networking site, suitable for whatever audience you choose!
Starting from the very basics of both Drupal and Social Networking, right through to more complicated aspects, you will progressively learn how to add to and expand your social networking site and add more features. You will learn how to secure your social network, deploy it on the Internet, and keep it running and well maintained. As social networking sites rely on the participation of their users, this book helps you to structure your site in such a way so that users can easily and enjoyably contribute, thus creating a powerful social network.
Build a social networking site from the ground up using Drupal 7
Use a combination of features, modules, and simple customization to allow user interaction, contributions, and communication
Import content from the Internet to your site using the Aggregator module
Create user profiles, set up roles and permissions, and handle security settings
Use Drupal s modular system to create modules to add functionality
Customize the look and feel of your site by enabling and installing new themes, ensuring that your site is distinctive
Deploy and maintain your social networking site on the Internet using the maintenance mode, reports, and cron to keep everything running smoothly
Recover from virus attacks and hacking attempts on your social network by making and maintaining regular backups, in case the worst should happen
Promote and market your social network using advertisements, advertising networks, other social networks, and search engine optimization
Let your users contribute to the site, from those who wish to add a little content to those who wish to help run the site on a daily basis
By the end of this book, you will have a powerful social network which you can either choose to model on the case-study, or create to your own unique design.
Businesses – building a social network around a product or service can improve your company profile and increase customer loyalty, while an internal social network gives you employees a place to keep resources, discuss ideas, raise concerns, and keep up to date on company policies.
Hobbyists – create a community around your hobbies and interests; create a local or distributed user group.
Organizations and charities – raise your profile, promote your events, services, and fundraisers, and get help from the community in organizing them.
Families – for large families based across the country or across the globe, keep up to date with everyone, and let everyone know what you are up to.
You don't need any experience of Drupal or PHP to use this book. If you are a Drupal user you will find this book a great way to rapidly tailor an existing installation into a socially orientated website.