Social Network

[n04h]

Hey guys, I want to do something to get my mind off the game I have been working on and thought that I might make a little social network. My main question is, what goes in a Social Network? I think that a S.N has,

Html
css
mysql/php
maybe javascript

but I'm not sure so how would I start off?

[Xaleph]

Those are the things indeed. But you need the hardware and setup too. Once you have that, like MAMP or XAMPP, you begin programming. However i advice you to think about it first. Meaning, what is it you want? What do you want your users to do, what are their options and, possibly, limitations?

If you think about that, you can start beginning to create a database. here you can store all your tables you think you need, including the fields that you need.

So a user will have a username and a password, a display name, a first and last name, an age, an email etc. A user should have a profile page, so every user gets a reference to a page row in your page table. A page table could like like this: user_id ( key to the user ) a title, a color maybe?, optional settings).

A user should also be able to write to friends, so you need a message table. Again, you need a user_id, a reveicer_id ( the id from the user where the message is sent to ) a title, a message and a parameter to see if it has been read, if not, you can show it as a new message, else you can mark it as read.

Et cetera, et cetera. Think about this, learn your database, and after your database is done, you can start to program your functionality in a working social network. But hey, creating a _social network_ is hard, don`t think to lightly of it.

[Jackolantern]

Yeah, I really don't know if a social network application would be a diversion project for your main game project. A social network application is potentially a huge, complex application if you want to have anywhere near the features of something like Facebook or MySpace (minus the very complex Facebook Development Platform of course).

If you want to have a non-game diversion project, I would suggest making a blog. It can be made in a couple of days, and is one of the more simple web applications that requires almost all the parts of any other web app out there. Don't worry about Wordpress amounts of features. Just make it so that you can add new posts, posts are displayed in chronological order in an archive, users can sign-up and login, and allow them to make comments. That would be a very good learning experience

[n04h]

I suppose I could do that, another idea I had was making some flash games but im on mac and im not sure what to use?

[Jackolantern]

Errm...Flash Adobe is very Mac-friendly, considering that Photoshop, Adobe's early flagship program, owe's much of its success to Apple.

[SpiritWebb]

From what I understand, Flash will not run on a Mac. One of my employees at work has one and said Flash doesn't work on it. Something about being a memory hog and all kinds of other reasons. I googled it and found it won't run.

[Jackolantern]

Seriously?! That is crazy. I thought everything Adobe made except for Director had Mac versions.

EDIT: If you go to the Adobe site and choose Flash CS5, there is an option there to get the Mac version. Are you referring to using the PC version on a Mac Windows installation?

[SpiritWebb]

No the flash player

EDIT: I guess thats changed. When I looked it up not long ago it was not available. But I did another search and found its there. hmmmm

[Jackolantern]

Flash player has been available on Mac for years. I believe you are thinking of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, which do not have a Flash player.

[n04h]

Can some one post a link to cs3 for mac because im running powerbook g4 and can not use the cs5.