A nation of community builders since Jan 21, 2009

Community Building Software

Information

This group is dedicated to discuss and share your knowledge about various software available for online community builders. It could be web based hosted solutions like Ning.com or fully customizable software solutions like Dolphin.

Members: 9
Latest Activity: Dec 19

List of CMS and Web Based Community Building Tools

Ning
It's the easiest tool to build your own community. Commania is running on Ning. For as low as 4.95 USD per month, you can host your community on your own domain. There are some more premium services like, removing ads, removing Ning branding etc.

Expression Engine

Comes in two versions; free and premium. Martin Reed's Female Forum is running on Expression Engine. It support cool templates, and a clean look and feel.

Social Go
Social Networking website that allows users to create their own customized social network. Both free and premium networks are available, the latter offering a wider variety of tools, including live video chat. (From Crunch Base)

But the pricing seems to be way too high compared to Ning.

Wack Wall

WackWall is a free service that lets you create your own social network website.
No installation, no downloads, NO FEES - choose the title and address for your social network and go customize it.

Unlike Ning; you are allowed to host your network on your own domain, for free. I'm still confused about what's their revenue model. May be they are trying to build up a customer base, and then attract someone to buy them off! A well known straggly in most dot coms recently!

Discussion Forum

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Comment by David Herron on December 19, 2009 at 4:51am: I use Drupal to run a community site. It's eminently flexible, free (tho you have to pay for proper hosting) and their tagline is "Community Plumbing".

Comment by Judy Vorfeld on February 22, 2009 at 5:13pm: Matt, thanks for the BuddyPress link. I'm trying that out as well and comparing it with Ning.

Comment by Amitha on February 22, 2009 at 4:57pm: Thanks Becky for the feedback! I actually did not tried it. May be that's the secret behind keeping it all free :-)

Comment by Mark Schooling on February 22, 2009 at 4:00pm: spamheaven....I hate that!
Matt thanks for the Buddypress link - interesting.

Comment by Becky on February 22, 2009 at 3:29pm: I signed up at wackwall. it should be called spamheaven. The minute I created a network I had 18 spam messages in my inbox. I went no further and spent the next hour deleting popups.

Comment by Amitha on February 22, 2009 at 8:42am: Thanks Matt! I wasn't aware of BuddyPress. We use WordPress for our company blog and we are happy about it.

Comment by Matt Cheney on February 22, 2009 at 12:56am: There's also BuddyPress which is a new(ish) community building tool made by WordPress.

I really like the flexibility and stability of Ning, but I'm also a huge fan of WordPress. BuddyPress is currently in beta, so there's lots of missing functionality and stability issues but...

While attending a WordCamp a few months ago, someone asked Mark Jaquith (one of WordPress' lead developers) about BuddyPress vs. Ning, and he made an excellent point. BuddyPress doesn't own your content. Ning does. As of now, there's no way to export anything besides your member list. Hopefully that policy changes with Ning and I plan on playing around with BuddyPress over the next year.

Comment by Judy Vorfeld on February 11, 2009 at 2:47pm: Some of my software knowledge comes via trusted colleagues who do more programming than I. I may know what a client wants, but I go to these people to choose the software. People like Jackie McCutcheon.

Jackie has been a tech rep for Will Bontrager's WillMaster products, and she's installed many of his programs. The thing about WillMaster's products is that they are always guaranteed. I've known him for years and use many of his products.

I'm getting to know Ning through creating my own space there. I want to be able to help clients use Ning, but I have to learn it first.

Other software that I like is NoteTabPro, CoffeeCup products, and VisualThesaurus.

I'm an editor as well as Web developer, so Visual Thesaurus is very valuable to me. A colleague bought the CD for me a few years ago, and I use it often.

Why NoteTabPro? It's a lot like the text software that comes with all computers, but infinitely more complex and helpful. I may be copying and pasting from one client document to another, but need to delete bullets, etc. The search and replace feature is great. And so are its other features. It lets you code with HTML, gives text stats, changes case, alphabetizes lists, and ever so much more.

That's the tip of the iceberg in terms of software that helps me achieve results. Another is Firefox, PicasaWeb, and TinyUrl.

I create both of my text ezines in NoteTabPro.

I'd like to know what others use and how it helps them in their businesses.

Comment by Amitha on February 11, 2009 at 7:19am: This group is dedicated to discuss and share your knowledge about various software available for online community builders. It could be web based hosted solutions like Ning.com or fully customizable software solutions like Dolphin.

Please join and share your knowledge about the software available; free or at a cost.