Speaking for myself, before today I definitely would not know where to start if you asked me to create a social networking site like Facebook from scratch.   The whole concept is way too complicated for me.  So today I decided to look into something I stumbled across a few days ago called BuddyPress.   This is what I found.

BuddyPress is free open source and was created to add the powers of social networking to a Wordpress website.  From there it has transformed into it’s own platform with plugins, themes, control panel, and even it’s own installation.  It encompasses all features and functions of a social networking site like updating your profile, adding friends, friends need to know friends status, messaging, update statuses, post status, update pictures, discussion forums, blogs, messages groups and more.  You can easily make a social network for your university, school or college, an internal communication tool for your company, or social networking group for your hobbies or interest group.

BuddyPress integrates well with Wordpress and you will find some Wordpress Themes now have BuddyPress integrated.  I think this is one of the hot community building features of BuddyPress.   I know Joomla has JomSocial, but it’s so many different Components that you need to install to make it work and some Components you need to pay for them.  Hey BuddyPress has it all, it’s all free, and it’s all straight out of the box.  All the plugins were created by the user community trying to make BuddyPress better and with more features.

I think this is the best way to build your own user community and make a social networking website like Facebook.  For more info you can check out buddypress.org.  Now I can say I can create a Facebook Clone.  I’ll post some buddypress integrated themes for WordPress later.  I saw some that were really nice.