[mygorillanet]

If you would like to have a community website and are having a hard time developing one, this is where you should start.

I decided to write short reviews on a number of freely distributable and commercially available community site engines. Most of these engines come with inbuilt cms, blogs, forums, classifieds, chatrooms, profiling, media upload mechanisms and file sharing. I have tried all of them so I speak with authority in this matter.

All you do is google the titles below.

1.PHPIzabi free
I like the design of the current release codename Alicia. If you are good at templating, then you can modify the design to suit your needs. Its a pretty neat system offering blogs, forums, chatroom, profiles e.t.c score: 4/5

2.Drupal free
This is more of cms based and the layout and design highly depend on how much time you have to organise and put into it. I would recommend this to someone looking more for content driven websites. It also has a host of addons that can easily transform it to a community website. score: 3/5

3. Dolphin Boonex ad supported
The free package is branded with boonex ads. It is a pretty neat package though heavy. It require additional software for all the modules to run and development of additional modules by the community is slow. In short, its nice to look at but unless you host it on boonex servers, then it is a tad bit too hefty to remodel and deploy. score: 4/5

4. Dzoic Handshakes commercial
Might be one of the most complex community sites. It has a great admin panel through which you can control any aspect of your webite. It is rich with all sorts of features. Any feature you can think of, it has. It is however server intensive and the design is drab. Templating for this application is also not an easy fit though do-able. score:3/5

5. Altrasoft E-friends commercialThis package is almost a clone of Dzoic Handshakes but the only difference is it is not as server intensive. Its admin panel is simple but gives you total control. Templating is easier with this package too. score: 4/5

6. Joovili commercial
The design is simple but really great looking. Its is so far the second fastest script (after izabi) and templating is as easy as bananas. There are some security errors with data injection but the developers claim they have solved them. For its lack of professionalism, it scores: 3/5

7. PHPFox commercial
I havent worked with this yet. From the demo however and reviews by some of my web citizens, I think they are not so good with customer support. There have been a lot of claims about buggy scripts. The design leaves a lot to be desired. However, it is easy to intergrate other modules in this script and I am certain templating shouldn't be hard. score: ----


Now go out there an build your own myspace-like community!!

[DarkenProject]

Good reviews Gorilla! I made a very simple Java-based chat program as part of a school project that I was just recycling, but I think I'll take a look at these, especially the first one for its skinning capability. Its nice to let someone else do the work once in a while ^.^

[Loneua Technologies]

Very good reviews.

Thank You

[alcramer]

This is good stuff. Is there any way you could get the post turned into a "Sticky"? I think a number of people might find it useful, over the next few months.

Al Cramer