I create themes for SocialGO. It’s a robust hosted social networking solution. If you just want to pay a reasonable monthly fee and have someone else handle the backend it’s a good choice. They are currenly working on V2 of their platform that will allow more customization.
Two things SocialGO has that BP does not. Media (pics/videos) and privacy controls. You can add these options via plugins.
SocialGo looks like another hosted service, like Ning.com, not a self-hosted script like Buddypress. It depends what you need; ease of use, with lots of drag-and-drop etc., or ability to customize and expand however you want.
SG is a great platform initially when you want to start up a social network.
I have been with them for 3 months. Great software and easy to use but there are MANY limitaions. YOu don’t host anything yourself you you are reliant on their servers which as of late have been terrible. Lot’s of problems, slow page loads etc and issues with widgets not working.
They have just moved data centres so that should improve.
The biggest problem I have is not having access to the content my users create. the vaule of our sites is often user generated material such as forums.
Yes of course SG is secure but what happens if we build a network with a couple of thousand users. they may create thousands of posts which give our site value. Just say SG end up having problems with their servers or indeed don’t last out and aren’t in business down the line. All of our content is gone.
Also you are pretty much limited to their widgets for chat etc which are lacking.
Some good stuff to test out your niche market but I am looking at migrating to BuddyPress in th enext couple of months. I’m putting everything together now.
If you have any questions just ask
Cheers.
Totally agree with Peterverkooijen.
Remember that the freedom and control over you stuff that you get thanks to a self-hosted platform (like BuddyPress) is really priceless.
Before you start your net you could try playing around with it enough to master the basics and more.
If you have used WP, you will have no issues at all installing and running BP.
Stay away from Ning, SocialGo and other external providers, they wanna make money out of it, dont forget it.
I’d have to say that Buddypress is soooo flexible, you can do anything. I’m sticking with BP.
@all. Yeah, you’re all correct about a few proprietary drag and drop widgets being not that valuable in the long run. The limitations are much greater than BP and don’t have the remarkable benefits of this forum. It’s great to see people post a problem/question and have it resolved anywhere from an hour to a day for free.
They’re customization package is a one time $350 fee that yields a product in 6-8 weeks. Yuck.
Again, open source has a wealth of benefits and value that SG couldn’t compete with. Thank you for the helpful feedback!
In SocialGo’s defense, there’s nothing wrong with asking money for a service/product. SocialGo and Ning are good solutions for a certain class of users. The difference is “software as a service” vs self-hosted.
Another option is SocialEngine, which is self-hosted but not free and probably a bit more business-ready than Buddypress because of it – better member mgmt, anti-spam, photo + event plugins, etc.
Hey man, I realize this post is pretty old but you all seemed very knowledgeable. I have a site idea with ENORMOUS potential and is catered around a very niche clientelle. It has the possibility of thousands of users generating thousands of posts daily. I was looking into Ning but didn’t like what you said above, however, when I looked into Buddypress it seemed lacking some of the features I need. What I need is…
Profile members. All member’s profile should have geo tags on their profiles.
An activity page that shares posts on certain pages which all members can tune into and have updated on a correlating IOS and android app (if possible).
A search for profile members that are attending an event that include their proximity to the person searching. Meaning. If I am attending an event and there are several other members that are too, I’d like to be able to see which members are near me.
I realize this is a lot so I’m posting in several places.
All the best,
Jeduhu
You have been answered by @r-a-y in your other post. Closing this thread. Please refrain from posting multiple times with same topics. Also it’s bad forum etiquite to bump topics that are this old.
