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I lead a team of 4 PHP developers and we have been tasked with developing a custom social network site/portal. By social I mean Facebook-like social - activity streams, comments, popularity, various kinds of content, etc. We don't have years to develop it from scratch so I'm thinking about building on top of the existing CMS - either Wordpress with BuddyPress or Drupal. The choice between the two is a tough one for me. My team is very proficient in PHP but has no significant experience with neither of the CMSes. Both platforms provide similar end-user features but I wonder how easy it is to hack BuddyPress (if we need to, which is very likely) vs something (likely Commons modules) on Drupal.

The problem with Drupal is that D7 is there but Commons modules haven't been portedto it yet. Developing on D6 doesn't make a lot of sense to me as I've read it will be problematic to migrate to D7 in the future.

The social network site we have to develop is not really centered around a blog. What would you recommend?

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Had you considered elgg? –  jprofitt Jul 13 '12 at 0:01
Yes, but haven't find their feature set compelling. Also, example sites do not inspire. –  intellion Jul 13 '12 at 1:03
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closed as not constructive by Clive, ThiefMaster Jul 13 '12 at 12:12


3 Answers

WordPress has a rich architecture for plugins to extend the system, and you can similarly extend BuddyPress. You can also extend Drupal Commons.

The primary thing that Drupal Commons has that BuddyPress doesn't is commercial support.

(BTW, WordPress isn't necessarily centered around a blog either. One radio button selected in its settings changes its default view to CMS (Static Front Page), and the "blog" features can be hidden entirely if desired.)

The decision is going to be driven by the requirements you haven't yet specified. For instance, if you expect users to generate a lot of content, this will probably be easier with BuddyPress. But if you need the commercial support, then you have to go with Drupal Commons despite any potential drawbacks.

If you can be more specific about the features/requirements for your new site, it will be easier to determine whether one of the packages meets those requirements and to what extent.

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This seems mostly right to me. Both systems are designed to be extensible, so on that count it's a draw. I'd only add that, while BuddyPress isn't commercially supported in the same way that Acquia supports Drual Commons, there are plenty of freelancers and development shops that specialize in BuddyPress implementation and customization. So if you need outside help (which it sounds like you may not), you'll have options either way. –  Boone Gorges Jul 12 '12 at 19:34
As I have mentioned already we are a development shop by ourselves - so the commercial support is likely not needed. What I would like to get opinions on is the quality of the code, documentation and the size/activity of the community. In my mind these would be the main factors defining benefits/drawback of one platform vs another for developers –  intellion Jul 12 '12 at 20:06
On the specific features/requirements for my site - we need some basic social things like: groups, activity stream, follow/who follows, galleries, discussions. I've heard that BP is not integrated into WP well from the API standpoint –  intellion Jul 12 '12 at 22:12
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I think it depends entirely on which features you are likely to use. If you like the feature set of Drupal Commons and don't necessarily need too much outside of that, then I would recommend Commons as it is professionally-supported and very well done. However, if you need an extremely customized community, you may want to opt for BuddyPress which has 412 plugins available for the platform currently and more being added every day. The quality of these extensions range from excellent to very poor. Some developers don't have the time to support their plugins past the initial version and others make a living from their plugin and make sure it's always ready for the latest releases of WordPress and BuddyPress. I wrote a basic comparison between the two platforms that you might find to be useful:

Open Source Social Networking Matchup: BuddyPress vs. Drupal Commons

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You never want to "hack" a CMS. Changing the CMS's code introduces security vulnerability. What I recommend will be not to use any kind of CMS, but use a framework (if you must) such as symfony.

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Well, by "hacking" I meant extending, not necessarily changing the core (but that may be needed too, I don't know this yet). Symfony is just a framework which means we'll have do reinvent the wheel over and over again with all the social components (status updates, comments, etc). Building from the ground up is the most flexible and the most time consuming way to do it. –  intellion Jul 12 '12 at 20:13
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