Today, the world is connected with social media. The giant facebook ensures the huge community moving forward in a new direction towards the technology-driven world. Here the location is no barrage anymore and you can make your friend from anywhere and anyone. Have you ever feel like, that you have an amazing idea for solidifying your network and the same can be very useful for others as well. Have you ever thought of creating a powerful social media network like Facebook? Facebook is a large network and billion of users are making use of that network for their social, business or personal needs every day. Competing for facebook is a task which can be considered tougher than shifting a rock. How people respond to any application and how long they stick to one application is always the foggy assumption, but technically going for website development like Facebook is not a huge task. It just needs the right combination of technology, ideas and an expert .
In this article, we will discuss the important features, and the recommended technical requirements for PHP development company to make a website like Facebook.
As per a survey conducted over social media, around 68 percent of US adults use facebook. Around 65 million business owners have facebook pages. A single network cannot satisfy the needs of every type of users hence there are many social media networks which people make use of as per their choices. The famous platform Twitter was used by 88 percent of businesses, whereas Youtube is the largest cable network in the US for adults. Instagram was liked by more than 32 percent of teenage users.
Facebook is not a single day investment. It was launched in the nano form of what we see today. When it was launched, Facebook was a small social media application with a basic idea of the features, being used today. With the expectation and demand of users, the entrant in the social media market with its unique approach to unifying the world became a trendsetter with its long list of competitive features. Here are some features, where you have to pay attention and the business owners must engage developers for the chatting website development.
Knowing your idea:
For social media website development, you must analyze the key factors. Knowing the idea before starting the project is essential. Are deciding the goals and analyzing that if your system will convey the value to users. The main task is to make your product unique and better than your potential rivals.
1: Acquiring a web host: Next step for website development is to acquire a web host which is powerful enough to leverage you to transfer the data file and make a swift action. The huge amount of information over social media profiles often requires great storage. Where security is also an important issue along with space.
2: Analyze the technical requirements: The third and one of the most effective steps is to analyze the technical requirements of the project for starting. Developing the huge social media platform like Facebook requires a great fund and the technical expert’s interference. A social media website must incorporate profiles for individuals, content channels and content uploading, messaging features, various approaches to connect and befriend, admin panel and database encryption technique for safe messaging. A proficient PHP development company always stay cautious that these features are designed to stay steady and reasonable. Here, the UX design becomes vital for engaging the users and incorporated with the frameworks to create distinctive web apps.
3: Choosing the frameworks: The frameworks are made to accelerate the coding and enable the app to stay rich with a number of features which would otherwise take a long time. They ensure great security, high speed and amazing versatility. There are many well-known components such as CakePHP, Symfony, Zend, Laravel etc. Choosing any framework is entirely the discretion of developers and their comfortability to the code.
Features for the website like Facebook:
Social media applications or website runs over three components. These can also be called as the fundamental features of website like facebook.
1: Profile Management: Task associated with chatting website development is to make the profiles. The social media profile means a database filled with user details. The popular use of social media networks has negated the need of development of social media profiles from scratch. The basic profile of a user can be taken from other social media platforms like Google Plus, Twitter and LinkedIn with the use of REST API. The alternative is also there to register using password but this takes a long time to get the profile so not preferably recommended. People do make social media profiles to show their current status, therefore leveraging the personalization can be a great advantage for your website. Alongside, a social media website allows users to create groups and communicate with people of similar interests.
- Photo effects help in editing the picture and uploading them.
- With background colours and themes, the user can make their profile look more engaging and impressive.
- The customizability in user’s profile lets users display their interest, status, and updates to friends.
While social media website development you must keep in mind that the actual use of social media platform is to share the content and discover. The famous platform YouTube is built for sharing videos while Instagram is highly used for sharing photos and associated content. On the other hand medium is highly known background for sharing the content.
2: Feed: Feeds are the real motivation of social media profiles. Feeds are generally shared by users a full form of their videos photos or status content. These feeds can also be edited and curated by an administrator. Fields are generally shared for the following reasons:
3: Current status: This is the most common way of giving the content. Where are user tells about what is current location and what he is up to. API is used to retrieve the location which can also give some extra revenue. GPS data is highly used for advertising purposes by third-party tools but alongside there is a security concern also with these tools, therefore, it is always recommended to use credible third-party tools for securing the user’s personal information.
4: Self Expression: Uploading photos videos and status updates are the great enticements for users to use social media profiles. This way social media website not only makes unique user-generated content but also supply by the process of content sharing to the target audience. The popular social media Twitter is highly used to tweet over the content given by another user which also catalyse the growth chart of the social network. The great contents require a large community and number of users.
5: Reputation building: Some users also create a profile and share content to increase your reputation, because they are professional or artist or from the profession which demands a constant representation of the skills. Higher the likes are, the more their business flourish.
6: Connections: Following, making groups and befriending other users is an essential part of chatting website development. There are multiple ways users get connected to each other:
7: Connection over content: It is the core puller of the audiences and brings the relationships between users. Users share content and interact with other users. Few users are explorer users who love to discover the content while others are talker, who loves to communicate with others through commenting over content posted by others. Few users come into the category of admirers, these users love to like the content and posts of other users. A developer must keep in mind the type of users and their ways on making connections, for fueling the website with the required features.
8: Events: The digital connectivity of the website sometimes go beyond the boundaries. The network can also be used to create an event, send invitation and start a live video from friends.
9: SMS: The app must be enabled to notify user with the invitation to download.
Profile, groups, feeds and connection are the essential features of every social media website development and a developer can develop other features surrounding these features.
10: Messages: Messages are not only restricted to facebook, In fact it has become an integral part of many apps. Without messaging, any platform can be called less equipped. For integrating chats and messaging into your website, you can explore some third-party tools.
11: Backend: Here comes the most important part for PHP development company to handle the whole network. You website could be large as well and there could be a number of users there, therefore we do recommend using Ruby on Rails for speed up the development and meeting the requirements of large infrastructure. Setting up a linux server is a great option along with the load balancing system to manage the server load. Node.js is highly popular server-side environment used in social networking projects.
11: Database: Talk to the developer to know his choice of database and you can choose any of database suiting your requirements. However, it is highly recommended to use SQLite, MySQL and PostgreSQL. NoSQL database does not support many one to many and one to one entity.
12: Admin Panel: The main purpose of the admin panel is to support users. The admin panel let website owner to gain insights, look deeply and trespass the permission rights. Additionally, the admin panel also offers a great level of control over user generated content. The statistics provide integrated analytics as per user behaviour pattern.
How Matellio can help?
A social media website development like facebook can be expanded as much as possible. Above components are just the overview of facebook like website and can be spread as much as possible. The large social media development project demands comprehensive knowledge by the developer. Matellio has a large team of developers and innovative IT professionals, who can help in the development of large social media websites. Always start with MVP and gradually develop as per the demand of users.
