Social networking site, Joomla vs codeigniter for social networking [closed]

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Closed 9 years ago.

I have been building a Social networking site and I am stuck between whether I should use joomla or build it from the ground up using code-igniter?. I have some experience with joomla as a CMS and while it is pretty good for making a normal site, it seems like it would be harder to implement a full fledged Social network. For the social network, I am talking something like Facebook but with even more connectivity between all the parts of the site including the normal part of the site that displays content and such. Also I know some PHP and have a little experience with code igniter, just it will take longer to implement everything vs just extending Joomla to suit my needs. Also I have tried Community builder but it just doesn't do what I want and thus would need even more additions and modifying.

Well if you have any ideas on what might be better or you would do, then thanks for your input.

NOTE: Is there way to get codeigniter templates to work like joomlas templates system since I really like joomlas template system where you can just input where a module goes?

Answer 1

Well, it depends on what scale you want to build your application, IF you are planning for millions of users, then Codeigniter is a better choice, as it gives you more control over your code. (Provided you have made proper sense with View, Controller and Model).

With codeigniter you will be able to customize your site better, with every nook and corner, also it will take up less server resources as compared to Jhoomla.

Answer 2

Codeigniter and Joomla are two different things. Both designed to cater for different levels of programming proficiency.

I wouldn't try to force a CMS to do something it was never designed to do. Plus, there are some good libraries out there that make integrating Codeigniter with Facebook, Twitter etc reasonably easy. But you really need to know what you're doing. If you're not familiar with a MVC approach you'll have a steep learning curve ahead. Saying that, it's well worth it. Once you master MVC your productivity just about sky-rockets (compared to eg standard PHP scripting approaches).

Personally, I'd use Zend for something like this. But there you really have a steep learning curve ahead. :/