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Top 10 Open-Source Platforms to Build Your Own Social Network

Building a social network isn’t an easy task, let alone a successful one. As developers our job is to create, build, and bring to life the gears and functions of a social network. When it comes to marketing, well that’s a different department in most cases. We build then later deploy, and in order to develop a highly efficient and functional social network we’ll need to use a few tools.
Most developers are switching from building networks from scratch using PHP to highly-customizable social network platforms that give way to flexibility. Below we’re going to cover several of the most sought after open-source platforms that allow you create your very own social network and run it on a server of your choice. These networks will give you a hyphened control over the front/back end design along with a social networks most valuable asset; the database. Let us know if we’ve missed any and which ones appeal to you the most through the form of a comment!

BuddyPress

BuddyPress is the social network platform version of WordPress. As you can guess WordPress is one of the most popular CMS’s available due to its quality, same goes for BuddyPress, this is one of the most widely used platforms. It’s absolutely free, allows you to fully customize your social network, and offer your users a unique experience through the use of features such as friend connections, extended profiles, discussion forums, private messaging, and powerful plugins.
On top of the social network platform, you also receive the option to integrate WordPress as your ultimate blogging solution for each of your users. Here you’ll find a massive collection of quality plugins.

Sites Running on BuddyPress

CUNY Academic Commons

H-Mag

Unstructure

Pligg

Pligg was created as a social networking CMS. While most content management systems are designed for only a handful of authors, Pligg CMS was designed to manage a site with an unlimited number of authors. All of these registered users are in control of the website’s content. It is a user driven CMS that relies on independent authors’ content and participation to manage news articles.

Sites Running on Pligg

MotoTagz

Dezinews

GluvSnap

Elgg

Elgg is a powerful social networking platform that is backed by a growing community of developers and interactive users. It has great usability, ease of use, various features, and offers added functionality through Elgg plugins.
This piece of software offers pretty much everything you need to develop a social network in no time. Elgg uses and regularly operates on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) therefore if you’re a developer who likes to get their hands dirty then this is the platform for you.

Sites Running on Elgg

Hedge Hogs Funding

TeachBox

1st Angel Art Mag

KickApps

KickApps gives enterprises, corporations, small/large brands the power to create an interactive social network based on a one of a kind platform that offers an active, dynamic, distributed and data-structured solution. Build your very own community, begin photo/video sharing, easily add widgets, custom video players, other user generated content, comments, ratings, and much more. KickApps can fully operate as a CMS allowing you to manage all of your social media needs in one place.

Sites Running on KickApps

H&R Block Community

American Express Publishing

Dell’s Community

Lovd by Less

Lovd by Less is a widely used and distributed open-source social networking platform that was built using Ruby on Rails. Since it was built on RoR (a full-stack framework), developers will be able to develop using the Model-View-Control pattern, and all you need to go live is a database and a web server. Current and up-to-date features include mutual following, private messaging, comments, user blogs, photo galleries, site-wide friend search, insertion of profile bio, easy to interact with user dashboard, email activity, quick and simple Flickr integration, and YouTube inclusion as well.

Sites Running on Lovd by Less

ImitateLife

SchoolPage

73S

Mixxt

Mixxt is a intelligently designed open source platform that helps you build your very own social network at rapid development speeds. Develop, manage, and run your own community with ease and the help of forums, wikis, a custom design, the addition of photos, and a private network that’s dedicated to your community. You’ll also be able to work alongside other members to build and grow your community.

Sites Running on Mixxt

Design Camp Cologne

FuCamp

RadioCamp 2010

Insoshi

Insoshi housed at Git Hub is a liberal open-source social networking platform written and powered by Ruby on Rails. Insoshi’s source code is free to use and available under the MIT License. This platform was developed by Michael Hartl. It comes with an effective deployment system and version control support. The installation process should take roughly around half an hour. Remember to take your time and make sure you follow every single step.

Sites Running on Insoshi

TomZConsulting

Xoops

Xoops is an innovative extensible open-source platform that allows you to create a social network with everything you need. You can actually just begin by creating your own blog and then upgrading it to a social network through the use of several community modules. Xoops is written and maintained in PHP and MySQL.

Sites Running on Xoops

Baqains Medical

BikeFlirt

CommunityEngine

CommunityEngine is another open-source social networking platform for Ruby on Rails applications. All you would have to do is drop it into our existing RoR application and immediately begin to enjoy all of the extensible features that you would need to start your very own social network. Features such as photo uploading, tagging, private messaging, forums, blogs, events, and customized user profiles are just the beginning of what you can accomplish with CommunityEngine.

Sites Running on CommunityEngine

WeeBabyStuff

TennisMetro

BugLabs

AstroSPACES

AstroSPACES is mostly named as the world’s firriest open source social networking solution that was heavily coded from scratch. It’s extremely efficient, very easy to use, stable, easy to customize and was written in PHP. It also uses the Smarty Template Engine, and is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL)

Sites Running on AstroSPACES

Astro Demo

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Free Printable Sketching, Wireframing and Note-Taking PDF Templates

Sketching and wireframing are a specialized style of drawing, used for fleshing out preliminary complex ideas, group brain-storming, a lo-fi method for evaluating interaction concepts, and as a way of roughly perfecting a design technique.

Sketch and wireframe paper is essentially drawing paper that is designed specifically for this purpose. You could use it for web page design, web app design, architectural or structural design, graphic design, movie direction, animation… basically any type of design that needs a physical creative outlet or group collaboration.

Not all sketch and wireframe sheets are universal, most are specialized for a particular medium, such as storyboards and specialized grid paper (axonometric perspective templates).

Below you will find a concise collection of ready to print sketching, wireframing and note-taking templates. Most, as expected, are geared towards the design community, but there are also templates that could be used within any industry and for any purpose.

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• 35 Excellent Wireframing Resources
• 50 Free UI and Web Design Wireframing Kits, Resources and Source Files

[By the way: The network tab (on the top of the page) is updated several times a day. It features manually selected articles from the best web design blogs!]

Wireframing and Sketching Paper

Paper Browser – It's a browser, only in paper
This PDF can be used for creating a website’s wireframe. The entire PDF is proportionally scaled at a 1024×768 screen resolution, with guides for designs that use a 960px or 800px layout and with each grid sized at 32×32px. The PDFs are available in both A4 and A3.

Web Sketching Template – Single Page
This A4 template has been designed for sketching a website with a resolution of 1024×768.

iPhone Wireframe Templates for Sketching
These iPhone paper prototyping and design templates are available to download in two different styles: the basic iPhone design template and a more advanced one that also has the iPhone sketch template but leaves space for making notes. Both can be downloaded in a .zip-file which also contains the templates in Viso (VSD) format.

iPad Idea Sheet
This template has been designed for wireframing iPad apps. There are three templates within the zip-archive: The first template allows for full size iPad sketching (100%), the second has two iPad templates (at 70% of the normal size) and the last has four iPads sized at 50% of the regular size.

iPhone Idea Sheet
This iPhone idea sheet has been designed by the same people that released the iPad Idea Sheet above. The .zip-file contains 4 different printable templates: two templates are sized at 100% of the actual iPhone with a choice of horizontally or vertically aligned sheets and the other two sketching templates each have 9 iPhone designs (sized at 75% of the actual iPhone) and again with a choice of either horizontal or vertical orientation.

iPhone Application Sketch Template
This iPhone template has a grid with the grid squares sized at 10px; it is designed with tick marks to indicate the heights of the status bar, nav bar, keyboard, tab bar and toolbar. The download is a 300dpi A4 JPEG.

Android Wireframe Templates
This sketching set for Android contains templates for Nexus One, HTC Dream, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, HTC Tattoo and Motorola Droid.

Wireframe Print and Sketch Template

A4 & A3 Sketching Paper
This printable grid sketching paper can be useful for the initial stages of web design, concept designing. You can choose between the A4 size or A3.

Basic Wireframing Paper
This is a basic grid box which you can use for concept diagrams, sitemaps, spectrums, tables, and whatever else you may need to sketch.

Wireframe and Notes Paper
This is a wireframe grid divided into 24 columns with gutters between each column. The column units are numbered along the top of the grid. To the right of the grid there is a ruled column for adding labels and annotations.

Two-by-Two Wireframe Paper
This template is a two by two grid with 4 cells divided by an x-y axis.

Blank Grid and Graph Paper

ZURB Grid Paper
With this grid paper you can connect the dots to give your sketches a little more structure while exploring refined concepts on paper.

Graph Paper with Two Lines Per Inch – Letter-Sized
This basic letter-sized graph paper has two aqua blue lines per inch.

Four Dots Per Inch A4 Paper
This printable dot paper has four dots per inch and is in portrait (vertical) orientation on letter-sized paper.

Storyboard Templates

4 Cell Storyboard Paper
This is a basic storyboard sketching template with 4 cells with each cell having a simple grid.

MBTI Sketching Paper for Ideation
With this MBTI sketching paper for ideation sessions, you can describe a design challenge on every piece of sketching paper which represents the problem you want to solve. There’s also some space for annotations. You can download the PDF in A4 and A3.

ZURB Sketchsheets
A set of editable PDF sketchsheets ideal for rough ideas and presentation to clients. There are five slightly different templates in the .zip-download package.

Storyboard Template

Storyboard with Notes
A storyboard template with 4 cells, with the area space beneath each cell for notes.

Web Sketching Template – 6 Pages
An A4 web design sketching template with space for notes.

Scenario, Taskflow and Grid Sketchsheets
This all-in-one PDF download package contains scenario, task-flow and grid templates. All can be useful during the early stages of web development process. Here are the three templates:

Lined and Notepad Paper

A4 Narrow-Ruled
This letter-sized lined paper is narrow ruled in portrait (vertical) orientation.

8.25" x 11" Lined and Squared Paper
This lined and squared paper template is sized 8.25"x11", and available in both PDF and JPEG.

Speciality Paper

Printable Cornell Note Paper
This Cornell Notes paper is lined and additionally formatted with two large blank areas for a summary and a cue (on which to later note and review main ideas, ask questions, or draw diagrams).

Moleskine Writing Template by Rod Graves
This template is based on a medieval page layout principle described in Robert Bringhurst’s classic book on typography, The Elements of Typographic Style. The Large sized notebook’s dimensions are nearly equivalent to a Golden Section rectangle (1:1.61803…). The design of the template is related to the golden section / the Fibonacci sequence.

Penmanship Paper
You can use this dashed paper to practice penmanship. The PDF is in the size A4 and has twelve lines per page, in portrait (vertical) orientation.

Calendars

Weekly Printable Calendar
This calendar's overview format lets you prioritize tasks, schedule appointments, and jot down notes all on one page. Custom options include Letter and A4 printing sizes, start day of the week, time range, and multiple languages.

Monthly Printable Calendar
This template lets you create printable monthly calendars for letter and A4 paper sizes.

5-Day Monthly Calendar
Create and print a 5-day calendar with holidays and your choice of start day by using the generator.

Lined Weekly Printable Calendar
Create and print lined weekly calendars in horizontal or vertical format with your choice of start day.

Index card sized Printable Calendars
Choose from 4 different compact templates for printing directly to3×5 and 4×6 index cards (with the dates already filled in). Here are the download links: Monthly Calendar, Split Month Calendar, Yearly Calendar and 2-Year Calendar.

Music Sheets

Music Paper from the University of Virginia
There are many sites where you can download blank music sheets, but none are as a comprehensive and detailed as this resource. You can select PostScript or PDF formats for your templates; they are all sized 8^1/2 x 11 (portrait orientation). Overall, there are 37 templates available and they are split into the following categories: General (9 templates), Solo (3 templates), Ensemble (8 templates), Band (4 templates), Orchestra (4 templates) and finally templates for Choral (8 templates). Below you can see examples of the Basic template and the Full Orchestra templates:

Generators and Tools

Incompetech Grid and Graph Paper Generator
On this site you can generate basic graph templates in any size, color and even by grid spacing, you can also choose from the scores of different graph variations: Axonometric Perspective, Cross Grid, Inverted, Equilateral Triangle, Octagonal, Hexagonal, Semi-bisected Trapezoid and Tumbling Block – Trapezoid.

Notepad Generator
This tool allows you to customize a PDF notepad which you can then print it out on standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper.

Print Free Graph Paper
Here you can choose the size (Letter or A4), paper type (Cartesian, Polar, Isometric…), measuring units (Millimetres or Inches) and finally whether you want the paper formatted or un-formatted.

All work and no play PDFs

Downloadable Origami Templates
You know the saying “all work and no play…”. Well, not all printable PDFs are geared towards work. How about a fun stress reliever? This site offers a huge database of printable origami models that will keep you amused for hours. Best not to make these during collaboration and brainstorming meetings though!

Design Police – Bring bad design to justice
Fed up with the bad design choices of your colleagues? Design-Police.org has created, as they call it, “visual enforcement kit” for designers. Help bring bad design to justice!

Related Posts

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• 35 Excellent Wireframing Resources
• 50 Free UI and Web Design Wireframing Kits, Resources and Source Files

What other goodies would you like us to collect?

Would you like us to collect other PDFs, files, download kits? Let us know what you need in the comments below and we will collect them and present them in one of our upcoming posts!

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