How to Select the Best Social Networking Script For Your Website - Setting Requirements

Time:2010-02-11 17:52:20 Source:Ezinearticles Author:Joe O Farrel

Looking back at previous articles, I noticed I frequently write about the worth of highlighting you website needs prior to buying a social networking website script package like dolphin or dzoic.

A lot of the bad reviews a number of of these social site scripts are getting are due to clients not clearly comprehending what they required in the first place. As a result, what they purchase can never live up to their expectations, as they are not really certain of what is they are meant to expect!

To assist you out in selecting the best social website software, I've put together the below to help you comprehend what it is you really require. It could appear obvious, but for someone with no IT or software development experience, it can really be quite difficult.

I will take as an example the setting of requirements to set up a specialized community network website for backoffice banking employees (we will call the site "BBE" in the below). Simply apply the logic to whichever social networking site project you are working on.

Identifying the goal:

The goal of BBE is to build a site where backoffice banking employees (bbes) can get together,associate and share knowledge.

Identifying the visitor community:

The visitors are either bbes or individuals working in the financial recruitment business. The visitors speak English and come from banks all over the globe. Visitor community requirements

The bbes have the following community needs:

- Associating with others in the same business
- receiving career offers from recruitment agencies
- easy access to common backoffice banking documentation which apply to all financial institutions

The recruitment agencies have the following requirements:

- easy access to profiles from banking employees
- way of contacting the banking employees

Website needs:

So, in order for the BBE website to be doing well, the below is required:

- distinct types of profiles for bbes and recruitment agencies
- opportunity to invite and propose associates
- opportunity to send mails and instant messages
- message job board with opportunity to apply
- A wiki for widespread banking documentation
- video and audio upload capacities to support the wiki
- Membership management: Membership for bbes is without charge, recruiters require to pay a monthly fee
- advertising modules for books and business meetings
- RSS to support the wiki
- and so on...

You get the point. What I'm doing here is identifying needs for my site based on the requirements of the visitors. What you shouldn't do, is acquire a social networking website script and then see how you can push its functionality down onto your visitors. It sounds obvious, but you'll be surprised how many people make this horrible misstep.

As a webmaster, you could find it really cool that your site enables visitors to "poke" one another, but my backoffice banking employees will not be so impressed.

The visitors describe the community needs. Once you have your list of needs, you can begin comparing it to the features each of the script packages has to offer and acquire the best social networking website script for your site!

Looking for social networking software to get you started?

Below software review site will help you on your way:

http://www.TopCommunitySoftware.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joe_O_Farrel

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