Hello to everyone in this special little community!
I and a colleague of mine are currently setting up a non-profit assocation with global scope and we want to create a website for this task. The website should offer social media like functionality. We are aware that open source solutions exist (eg. Humhub). However, my passion for plain design and full data discretion urges me gentle but straight to utilize Kirby, also for this task.
That said I look for comments and assessment (1) whether this is really a good idea and (2) if the one or other would like to contribute? After clarification of the scope and setting up a roadmap funding will be available. The idea is to share resulting code and templates as open source. You may also want to utilize this option to improve or extend an existing plugin or template.
Features we are currently considering:
profile page w. options to add own content
status messages
setting relationships (“friends”)
add events to calendar
set messaging options (to receive newsletter, statusinfos and events)
Well, it depends on the number of users. If the scope was limited to a defined group of people, it would definitely be possible to do this with the Kirby CMS alone.
For many users it makes sense to connect the site to a database using the Kirby Toolkit. The question is: Do you want to use Kirby because you also want the site to have static content (e.g. a blog, information about the association etc.) or will the site just be the social network? If no static content is required, it might make sense to use the Kirby Toolkit alone without the CMS.
Most if not all of the features you’re describing have little to do with a CMS, and Kirby will not particularly help you for building them (though the Kirby Toolkit can be helpful for coding). So what you are considering is building a bespoke social network from scratch — a daunting enterprise.
The website should offer social media like functionality.
I don’t know your project, but every time I have a prospective client or “business partner” show up with communication and project management needs and their answer is “we need to build a social network for our users”, I know for a fact that their project will crash and burn (or be abandoned before that).
There are plenty of tools out there for communication, newsletters, signing up to stuff, collaborative project management, etc. I suggest you use some of those tools (starting with one or two and expanding to more only if the number of people involved justify it), build a small communication website to present what your organization does and generate some leads, and use elbow grease (rather than a list of “social” features) to make it work.
You’re not planning an integrated tool suite for an already established organization with needs that grew and revealed themselves organically. You’re “setting up a non-profit assocation” and as a result cannot know what you will need.
Many thanks for your clear feedback. As the website will hopefully grow with the users and vice versa, we in this very moment do indeed not know what we will need at the end of the day. So our options are to choose a full fledged solution and hope that the arising feature demands fit the features available. Or we can choose to start from scratch and add exactly what we need.
I agree completely that there are plenty tools out there. But this advantage is twofold: Because the time to assess functionality and matureness, get the details, check available resources, test it, etc. can be excessive. So that building it from scratch might even be faster?
Your comment will support our decision; in case you have specific tools in mind which seem worth to be evaluated to let our project thrive I would be happy if you can share them.
Yes, the scope will be limited to a defined group of people and there will also be static content. I guess that a database will make sense to capture the userdata appropriately and to grant a certain, though manageable scalability. The idea to utilize the Kirby toolkit only was not clear to me: It sounds interesting, thanks for bringing this up!