[Drupal] 10 essential Drupal modules for building a social networking site
Trying to build the next Facebook? Then build it with Drupal. Use Drupal’s vast collection of modules to convert a basic Drupal site to a social network that can rival MySpace or Linkedin. We have listed the 10 essential modules for building a social networking site using Drupal. If you are looking for professional Drupal expertise for building your social networking site using Drupal, contact us. We can provide a host of Drupal services including but not limited to Drupal Performance, Drupal Security & Drupal Theming.
Logintoboggan
Enabling users to create accounts is a part and parcel of all Web Based Social Networks. The Logintoboggan module offers several modifications to the standard Drupal login procedure enabling users to login either with their username or their e-mail address and many more such logging options that are found in typical social networking sites.
Profile Setup
Social networks needs to provide users with options to create a profile. This Profile Setup module extends the current Drupal profile and passes users through a profile setup process where they are allowed to upload a profile picture and fill out profile fields provided by the core profile module.
Facebook Style Statuses
Anyone who has used Facebook cannot forget Facebook's trademark Status messages. Drupal can easily emulate this notable feature using the Facebook style status module. This Drupal module can provide a stream of status updates which can be viewed and acted upon by other users in a community. Also supports hashtags.
Radioactivity
This module provides a field type which can be used as a hotness metric or a regular view counter for entities in a Drupal site. Entities which receive attention are heated up and others are slowly cooled down.
Organic Groups
Groups and communities are yet another aspect of a Social networking website. This module enables users to create their own groups in a Drupal website. Each group can have subscribers, a group home page where group members can communicate with each other posting via the usual node types. This module provides a block which facilitates these posts and also summary information about the group.
Voting Api
Voting Api allows rating of Content which includes, comments, nodes, users and all the stuff you can think of. It also supports multi criteria voting where users can put their votes based on multiple criteria. Finally it supports tabulation of voting results. This module just provides the API. For allowing users to vote The Voting API provides a platform for modules like five_star or extra_voting_forms.
Invite
Social Networks grow exponentially by allowing existing users to invite new users to join their flock. Invite can provide this functionality to a Drupal website using its Invite a Friend Feature to allow users of a Drupal website to send and track invitations.
Comment Notify
Social Networks entice you to keep coming back to them via a regular stream of updates. The Comment Notify module can provide that functionality to your Drupal website by sending notification emails to visitors about new, published comments on pages where they have commented. This brings back anonymous users to a Drupal site and is critical in bringing a blog comment community.
meetu Game Platform
What is a Social network without a few social games?? meetu is a Drupal module that can provide a platform for running games that encourage people to connect with one another. It does this by providing the organizers of the games with the facility to create missions that participants of the game are required to complete by interacting with one another.
Download meetu Game Platform
DrupalChat
Last but not the least important feature is giving your users the ability to chat with each other on your social networking site. The DrupalChat module gives such a feature to your Drupal website by enabling users of your site to chat with each other either publicly or privately. It provides a sleek chat bar at the bottom of the client window, notifications for events and the ability to retain a log of the chats. This is an indispensable module if you want to increase interaction between users in your social network
