Friended.com Social Network the beginning

May 18, 2012. The Facebook Social Network is open for public trade starting at $38 per shares. The CEO Mark Zuckerberg become one of the young billionaire, and his company worth $100+ billion as of writing this article.

You're now thinking of creating your own next facebook social network. Well, you're in the right website. Here are the steps on how you can start your own social network. This is the official guide I've used to start Friended.com Social Network, maybe one day it will be one of the top social network out there. That's a possibility because  Friended.com Social Network  is powered by open source programs e.g. WordPress, BuddyPress, and BBPress, it is stable, secure and your privacy is protected! I didn't say that your Facebook privacy is not protected, it is now public (hypothetically speaking).

Let's go dig deep!

Assuming you have a web hosting service already in place, and WordPress CMS/Blog is already pre-installed. Then you have to add the following plug-ins and activate them. You need to tweak the plugin settings, not too much of work to accomplish.

Through your WordPress control panel, add the following plugins and activate.

BuddyPress, if you are installing multi-site BuddyPress you also need to activate BP Multi Network.
Activating BuddyPress is easy, follow five default settings, save it. If your .htaccess file is not writable (chmod 644), you need to copy and paste the small code provided to your during the install to complete the install of BuddyPress.

bbPress for the forum, activate and configure settings

Go to Settings/General to update basic information about your social network.
Go to Settings/Writing, in Front page displays, select A Static page, in Front page select Activity. Save changes.
Go to Settings/Discussion, make sure that you put check on "Users must be registered and logged in to comment". Save changes.
Other settings should be fine to start your own social network.

CubePoints for giving incentives to your social network members. This is optional but I recommend. Go to CubePoints, Configure to change your points. I suggest start using default setting, you can come back here to make an adjustment.
Go to CubePoints, Modules, and activate the modules you want included to your social network e.g. Comment Spam Control, Custom Points, Daily Points, Donate points, etc. After you activated the modules, you need to re-visit Configure to verify your settings. Again default setting should be OK to start.

CubePoints BuddyPress Integration, activate manually?

BuddyPress Activity Plus, where user can upload photo, youtube, and links.
BuddyPress Activity Stream Hashtags, hash tags is well known in Twitter world


To make your social network closely similar to Facebook and Twitter. Yes, we can hit two birds (Facebook and Twitter) in one stone. Install the following plugins.

BP Disable Activation, where user can join right away.
BuddyPress Share It, a simple button to share using other social media e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, or using email.
BuddyPress Album, for photo album

BuddyPress Follow, to follow and unfollow other members
BuddyPress Mobile, so you can use your smart phones to browse your social network.
BuddyPress Verified

Easy Privacy Policy, for a simple privacy policy for your social network.

After tweaking the settings, I have build my own Friended.com Social Network, come see for yourself, and join us for a test run. Please don't hesitate to follow me @Friended.

Thank you.