When it comes to the word “social network”, Facebook and Twitter are probably the first ones that come to the mind. And, creating a new one can sounds like “creating an alternative to them (which is kinda crazy)”.

However, there are lots of niche social networks out there which are used by millions of people. And, creating a new one is not something crazy, actually, something not that hard.

Dolphin, a professional PHP web application, is the most popular self-hosted solution for building such communities.

The application has all the core features (and more) that can be expected from social networks like connecting with friends, status updates, messaging, chats, image/video sharing, groups or events.

Members can discuss on forums, have personal pages or blogs and there are even e-commerce features where the site owner and/or members can create stores and sell stuff.

Visitors can register with their e-mails or sign-up with Facebook Connect to see which other Facebook friends are there (also invite them).

Considering audio/video is shared too much on social networks and handling audio/video streaming +processing can be expensive, Dolphin has a custom media server that takes care of this.
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Koken is a free and self-hosted CMS (PHP-MySQL) that is focused on building websites where portfolio/gallery is in the core (like designer or photographer sites).

The application has a powerful media manager for the images and videos. It allows organizing items as categories, date captured, license and more.

It has a simple and flexible content editor that allows editing with live previews. Also, inserting media, slideshows or social content (like tweets, Flickr, Instagram and Vimeo) is possible.

Koken has a templating engine for building new themes. And, it is currently in beta but will soon have plugins for extending further.

Also, for Adobe Lightroom users, there is a free “publish services” plugin for easily updating, editing and replacing content.

BugKick is an open source bug tracking and task management application (source is hosted on GitHub) that is “light” in means of features (which i sometimes nice).

It is built with PHP-MySQL and allows teams to define projects, add tasks to them (which can be tagged with anything like “bug” or “feature request”) and assign to teammates.

Discussions under each task is possible, status updates about each of them are delivered via e-mail and closed ones are not deleted but kept.

There is an API for integrating it into our own apps and a JavaScript snippet + a contact form helps users to submit bugs too.

LemonStand is a professional PHP shopping cart application that allows anyone to create a fully-functional store.

It has support for featuring any number of products within an unlimited category structure.

Actually, customizability is baked into LemonStand’s DNA, it starts with the theming where any HTML-CSS_JS can be used and goes with the features integrated.

The app can be used to sell physical or digital products, services and even subscriptions. A solid product management system exists to control everything from inventory to product details and importing/exporting bulk items.

Built-in marketing tools exist to help self-promote the store like the ability to create custom landing pages for products and categories, product bundling, coupon system, newsletters and more.

Also, a content management module enables creating a blog or content for any page and also maintaining the comments, galleries or testimonials. Read the rest of this entry »

Git, Subversion and other version control systems are great for managing projects within a team and making sure that everyone in the team gets the latest versions of each file.

However, versioning databases is not a built-in feature in such systems and they should definitely be synchronized too.

DBV is an open source and PHP-powered application that can help us include databases in to the version control system we are using.

Once installed, it tracks each schema/record change (tables, rows, columns, views, functions, etc.) and allows us to export a SQL file reflecting the change (to a folder we want).

As this SQL file will also be committed with th version control system we are using, it’ll be received with other team members.

DBV supports MySQL by default and has a simple interface to implement connectors for any other databases.

Parsimony is an open source application which functions similar to content management systems but offers more and allows us to create any type of apps.

It brings the design, development and content creation/editing to the same interface.

Using its web-based database designer, we can create custom tables and even create custom modules (that can be inserted into web pages) using the data in these tables.

Whether it is a blog, an HR app or anything, Parsimony is capable of creating it only with drag ‘n’ drops.

There is a permission-based user management system which eases granting the necessary rights to each user.

The application is built with PHP-MySQL,  has a multilanguage interface and supports theming.

DbNinja is a fresh, web-based MySQL database management application that is built with PHP.

The application has a desktop-like, slick interface and can connect to multiple local + remote databases.

DbNinja allows working on multiple tasks at the same time with the ability to run each task on a different tab.

It is possible to create/edit/delete databases, tables, rows, procedures, triggers and much more.

There is syntax-highlighting support when creating queries (it is also possible to save them for future use) and a context-menu exists for browsing quickly.

Besides a specific database, we can also manage users, their privileges and edit values of system variables.

P.S. DbNinja is free for personal use.

Infinite-Social-Wall is an open source PHP-MySQL application for presenting any social activity in a Pinterest-like interface.

The application can actually grab the content from any number of given RSS feeds but it has built-in styles and icons for social networking sites like Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Github and more.

It makes use the awesome Isotope plugin for the layout and can scroll infinitely by loading new items while scrolling.

Infinite-Social-Wall uses the database for storing the parsed content from the feeds in our not to parse them each time.

For anyone willing to create such a self-updating website, the application is a very handy resource.

Movim is an open source social network application which follow the decentralised approach like Diaspora.

The application is built with PHP-MySQL and includes features like a wall, an instant messaging system, a contacts list, photo gallery, news feed etc.

It gives users the maximum control over their own data and allows them to import/export all the data from one Movim-powered network to another.

There is a special focus on privacy where all user setting are set to the max-private by default and they can customize them later on.

Movim is multilingual and doesn't require anything complicated to setup an instance.

P.S. You may also want to check out other open source social networking applications.

Around 2 years ago, Microsoft had announced the first version of WebMatrix and it was shared at WRD.

Lately, they have made the release-candidate of WebMatrix 2 available and it has become an exciting product for many.

The tool now has support for the most recent web-dev technologies including HTML5-CSS3, Node.js or jQuery Mobile.

It has a one-click installer for many popular apps including WordPress, Joomla, DotNetNuke and more. Also it can instantly install IIS, MSSQL, MySQL, PHP, Python and many others.

There is built-in support for Windows Azure cloud and the project scan be pushed to the remote environment to any FTP address or to the Azure.

Although WebMatrix 2 is a Microsoft product, it is well-integrated with PHP, any PHP functions hovered bring the docs from PHP.net and there is code completion.

Users can share extensions written for the platform and there are already good ones like iPhone/iPad simulator or a color theme manager.