Extension suggestions for a Joomla social network site?
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Hi - I was messing around with RT Trooper when my 15-year-old son got roped into using Myspace by his friends. Apparently that is how they communicate - so I put that project aside. Then he discovered today his Myspace page got hacked and it was sending porn links to him and his friends. It is causing his previously spam-free email address to be spammed. He immediately canceled his account with myspace (good kid
) - and apologized to his friends telling them not to open anything from him. Apparently setting your myspace page to "private" is worthless because the hackers can get right in. His other friends have also been hacked too. A search on the web indicated that this is rampant problem 
Sooo... Mom is back the business of setting up a blogging, forum, photo gallery site with as much like myspace for him and his friends. And of course it has to be easily usable for all these kids who are clueless about this stuff. I want to be able to make as much of it as private as possible. He also has separate groups of friends - e.g. band, swim team, D & D, Final Fantasy, and all the girls he knows.
I have so far added community builder since some here have recommended it before. What else would be good - and cool for teens?
Here is where it is at so far. I may totally redo the background - it was more of a trial thing that I don't think works. phnxdown.com/
Pretty much all it has is a photo of my kid dressed for Halloween (mom is make-up artist too ). Just wanted to get it personalized with his photo to make it feel like it will be his. Otherwise just the basic Joomla install stuff so far.
Thanks in advance for any help here in keeping up my rep of being a cool mom :
And thank goodness Rocket Theme put out this theme just in time to help my rep ;D
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- James Bush
- Hero Rocketeer
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- IT Implentation, Marketing, Business consulting
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UHP2 User Home Page 2... let's them create their own user home pages..-
www.ravenswoodit.co.uk/ works well...
I also run Community Builder... however, I don't see as much use out of some of the features as I'd like.
I use both pony gallery and RS2... both of them work fine. It really depends on how you plan on using it...
Also.... All Videos www.joomlaworks.gr/ is a great application for uploading videos (it even allows them to pull YouTube and other sites stuff in with no problem)
I'm looking at the stuff at www.socioclick.com/ right now... to see if I can figure out what exactly it does.
If you find stuff, I'd like to know as well. Here's why...
I bought every school domain in my county back in 1996. I bought them because I didn't want them to be porn. I then asked the BOE to buy them for $10 each. They said $170 was too much. So... I held on to them all these years figuring I'd do something with them one day.
Well..that day has come. I'm setting up myspace/joomla/Youtubes on 5 high school domains. I put a 'Coming soon - subscribe now" page up for 1 month...and had 300+ subscribers on each site...or 1500 subscriptions. BTW.. that's all it said "Subscribe now- Coming soon" No images or anything...
In the meanwhile... I am setting up "Visionary Marketing Plans" to local businesses using Community Builder and other addons. IF they are in the community...they have the 'opportunity' to purchase ads on the site. It's going well. I have 8 businesses signed up already...and I've only been working it for two weeks. Thier 'community' is construction based..and includes real estate agents, contractors...and the like. I don't make any promises for ROI, but I do know that 90% of the students will go to the sites when they open (slated for january 1st, 2007). The smallest school has 1800 students. The banks are buying in because they want those "new' checking accounts those folks will be opening.
I'm telling you this because.... I would like to know if you run into any really great applications that you think fit into what I'm doing... plus I could use some help. The pay scale isn't great...but I think it will be. My problem right now is spending 5 hours making sales calls...then coming back to try and catch up. I run my own servers, including email on 100mb fiber.
BTW... I can sympathize with the 'cool mom' stuff (although I'm a dad). I bought all 4 of my kids their own domains (firstlastname.com's) 10+ years ago too. I ran Cstrike gaming servers for them, until two oldest went to college and I lost some of my help
They thought I was cool too! heheheh... when actually... my goal was to try to make sure they had control over who played on their server...
I didn't mean to ramble... and I apologize. I just got started and couldn't quit. - Stan
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures.
Right next to the mashed potatoes.
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- Mike VanKirk
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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That is a great story James. You were thinking waaaay ahead of everyone in buying school domains. I will do the same, (get sites setup) when my 2 young children reach the teen years. I am a cool dad, but I also would like them to have a place where their friends can go and hang out.
Excellent ideas come from excellent minds. Feathered Wonders, you will do fine.
Cheers,
Mike - Last Edit: 18 years 1 week ago by .
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- GollumX
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this is a great thread.
by the way, i've never actually seen UHP in action. any of you have a live site or know of one. i havent had time to play around with it, so i dont know config options ... so cant see how far one can customise it.
any real world examples? the demo isnt that good.
thanks
-GX - Say no to Internet Explorer 6.
twitter.com/mark_up
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- James Bush
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Some Sites that are running UHP...
www.columbusgenweb.org/index.php?option=com_uhp&Itemid=65
has alot of user sites... but not updated..
cafety.org/index.php?option=com_uhp&Itemid=55
ccs.filmculture.net/index.php?option=com_uhp&Itemid=37
bicalliance.lunarpages.com/component/option,com_uhp/Itemid,128/
iprea.org/index.php?option=com_uhp&Itemid=52
I've also installed it on one of the high school sites, but I have no users yet, because the site isn't launched. If you want an account... then let me know....
Also.. if you want to see more sites with UHP... then google option=com_uhp - Stan
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures.
Right next to the mashed potatoes.
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- GollumX
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- not too bad actually. thanks for those links James
- Say no to Internet Explorer 6.
twitter.com/mark_up
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- James Bush
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 299
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- IT Implentation, Marketing, Business consulting
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Yep... like everything it depends alot on the skill set of your users.
FYI... I got an email from the folks at that Egg thing today... and they sent me this URL.
www.bebo.com/Tv.jsp
Apparently they use the Egg thing on at least the TV links...
I'll probably try one of those in the near future (week) - Stan
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures.
Right next to the mashed potatoes.
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Wow James - really impressive. I wouldn't even try anything like that here. The school dept's website is a humiliation. And the ones for the HS, Middle school and those that exist for a couple of the elementary schools are useless. But they don't seem to care. And this in a state that pays for laptops for each of the middle school kids.
Unfortunately I don't have the energy to be a mover and shaker like you. Probably because I know how hard the brick walls I would have to slam into to get anything done locally. Just trying to do the middle school band site is an exercise in frustration. If they do an upgrade to their server or configurations - then the schools are denied access to this nonschool server site. This makes it hard for the middle school music teacher to update her site. I may ask to meet with the new mayor-elect who loves my son and was once his Karate teacher. He's a mover and shaker like you James!
Speaking of frustration - I tried to install uhp2. After researching and trying things - apparently my web host is not configured properly for the install. With checkuhp2.php the I got from www.ravenswoodit.co.uk/
"Your PHP configuration flagged a fatal warning. UHP2 will not run on this host without modifications to your PHP configuration"
If fails for decoding scripts. Too fried to try any more tonight. No access to php.ini files on this host. May need to consider another web host for this site.
However - looking around - I really like the way this site set things up:
www.udugu.com
Please note the Rocket Theme template that works great on that site ;D
I have no clue as to what they are using and too fried to try to figure that out tonight either. Tomorrow is another day. If I could figure out how to do something along these lines on a smaller scale - that would work great. If I learn anything - I'll let you know.
Meanwhile - myspace would not cancel my son's account. I sent them an email and my son did also. Nothing yet. I had to go in and delete anything that was spam. Tempted to post links and articles I found regarding the dangers of getting hacked on myspace - maybe that would get their attention His friends just told him to change the password. I noticed the girl next door just got hacked also. Ugh. Oh and those myspace pages are a nightmare visually.
Anyway - will continue checking your links and trying to figure things out. Maybe putting minds together on this is the way to go. I did read in a couple of places (to include the joomla site too I think) - that Drupal is better suited for social networking. I checked out Drupal a long time back and was not impressed at the time. But I would prefer to stick with Joomla. Often things become available as extensions months after I want them. Too bad I can't create them - LOL.
Thanks for all you have shared - just really brilliant!
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Hey Mikey Vee! What happened to the photo with your Macaw? Just figured I'd mention - that it is easier to be a cool parent when your kids are young - since you are the sun, moon and the stars to them. Add 10+ years to you and to them - and it all changes. :
For some reason my son tells me that his friends think I am the coolest mom - but I have no idea how I qualified - LOL. Just keep some tricks up your sleeve for when they reach that age (like your web design and parrots) and pull them out as a surprise. It is fun every so often to totally impress them. My son and his friends are so clueless about web stuff that I could do just about anything and it impresses them with that If I scan their computers for spyware that impresses them. Strangely - it impresses adults too - LOL.
Kids are getting on the internet pretty early these days - maybe you should start thinking of the sites for them when they are "tweens." That age group could also use some safe places to be online. I used to get email from my son's friends in elementary school through my bird website - so if you are accessible online - just an FYI.
Some of the themes here would be perfect for adapting for the younger kids also - just making the fonts bigger. Not sure what extensions tho. But I am sure there will be new ones as your kids get to that age. As I redo the middle school site - I realize I am tapping into the preteens from the elementary schools with it. So might have future suggestions for you
Oh and thanks for the vote of confidence. Tonight I don't feel I will pull this together at all. But I just want these kids to be safe. My major motivation for this effort.
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- excellent thread. Thanks for the tips.. I never saw UHP2 before this! ;D
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