Symphony.

Perhaps this falls into the category of using your favorite hammer to screw in a door hinge but I'm wondering if something along the following lines would work or even be worth implementing in Symphony -

I have in mind a site that would probably like to be one of those fashionable social networking sites with user accounts, buddy lists, messaging, etc. in the long run.

But after looking the rounds at both software and hosted options I'm thinking that maybe the core needs could be addressed with a Symphony site per basic front-end events. Core needs in this case = being able to post images, text, goods (for sale or trade), etc. around a common interest group.

I'm assuming that 90% of the 'create your own profile' and build a network of who-knows-who isn't possible yet but could the basic posting and perhaps categorizing / tagging of content be done via forms and events analogous to the current Post Comments functionality? (I.e. create a new section for each type of content - photos, stories, how-to articles, classified listings, etc. - and then have an input form on the front end that creates entries.)

The biggest immediate drawback that comes to mind is the current lack of any sort of member management for people to either manage their entries or be limited in when / what they can post (depending upon login.)

I've been combing through the forum archives trying to wrap my head around front-end events and it seems like there may be enough potential to warrant building this within Symphony to meet current needs particularly if the forthcoming features in the final v2 release afford even more social networking functionality.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

It would certainly be interesting to see if it can be done, but it does seem like you would need a lot of plugins and events to get it working. I'm all for using symphony wherever possible but I think it's good to acknowledge it's limits since it is geared more towards the web publishing side of things than social networking, in my eyes at least.

Something like that would be perfect as a rails/merb application but I'm obviously biased since that's what I've been working with when I've not been using symphony.

Thanks Dru.

Would most of the need for plugins come from trying to wrangle member management?

It seems like the basic posting of content would be the same as the current 'post comments' functionality, but with categorized / sectioned content entries and separate, similar events, no?

This definitely might be a case of using the wrong tool but if the final release of v2 is meant to afford applications more akin to this it might be a fine start for what is needed now.*

So I guess that's the bonus, follow-up, forgot-to-ask directly question: will the forthcoming RC1 release with said improvements and member management be well suited to building sites akin to social networks?

Thanks again - Clayton

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*Amidst researching tools for this project I had to remind myself of the importance of reducing it to something that could just get done and improved upon from there - a comment Paul Graham fit kind of nicely:

"My design approach is to find -

• (a) simple solutions
• (b) to overlooked problems
• (c) that actually need to be solved, and
• (d) deliver them as informally as possible,
• (e) starting with a very crude version one, then
• (f) iterating rapidly"

Member management will be possible in the final release, but you still may need to extend it for a social networking site.

I have thought quite a bit about creating a social network with Symphony as the foundation. I think it's very well in the range of possibilities.