Best Ruby on Rails social networking framework [closed]

Answer 1

I've not worked with these but am aware of this comparison:

"Unlike Insoshi and Lovd By Less, which are full social networking Rails applications, Community Engine is a plugin that can add social networking features to existing Rails applications"

from

http://www.rubyinside.com/community-engine-rails-plugin-that-adds-social-networking-to-your-app-901.html

Answer 2

Regarding RailsSpace, that's a very nicely built Rails 1.2 application, and I think it was updated for compatibility with Rails 2.x. There's even a terrific book that was written about the RailsSpace application (or rather, RailsSpace and the book were written together).

But, RailsSpace became Insoshi, when the authors were so inspired by the amount of interest in a social networking site built in Rails. So while RailsSpace might be an interesting learning exercise, it's dead in terms of development. All of the authors' efforts (for more than a year now, I think) have been going into Insoshi instead, so that's where you should be looking.

Answer 3

Just a quick update, EngineY now supports Rails 2.3.5 and just released this weekend is support for themes. This goes along with existing features including groups, blogs, photos, REST API, status updates, Facebook Connect, forums, private messages, user profiles, activity feeds, wall posts, and more... Check it out at http://www.enginey.com or on GitHub at http://github.com/timothyf/enginey

Answer 4

Use Rails 3 and roll your own. Don't copy and paste code though, look through the source and try to understand the reasoning or motive behind certain design decisions, only then will you learn.

Answer 5

Update: Insoshi's license has changed to the MIT license, which means you're basically free to do with it as you please. But still, review the license for any code you are considering before you get too invested in it.

Something to keep in mind when deciding is the license for the code. Insoshi is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, http://insoshi.com/license. This means that you have to distribute the source code to your Insoshi-based web application to anyone who uses that web application. You might not want to do that, in which case you'll need to pay Insoshi a license fee (they dual license, like MySQL).

LovdByLess is distributed under an MIT license, http://github.com/stevenbristol/lovd-by-less/tree/master/LICENSE. This means you can use the source code however you want to.

Answer 6

i'm currently testing both lovdbyless and insoshi. i was able to install and get insoshi up and running fairly quickly whereas lovdbyless is giving me a harder time. if you're in novice mode, i suggest getting the book from Head First. http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfrails/ it is probably one of the better books out there for beginners. atleast in my opinion because i went through a few that was just way too confusing.