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Matchpoint + eROI - Building a Social Networking Site from Scratch
April 10, 2007
Our lead programmer, Tore Gustafson, is going to talk about the challenges of building this site from scratch from a programming (not design) perspective:
Social networking sites at their core are really a collection of a lot of common and architecturally simple applications. What is a blog from a development standpoint? Really it's just a few database columns including things like a date, an article and a title. Then all you need is the application framework to edit and display that information. A social networking site takes applications like a blog, like email, like adding a person to your personal network and builds a cohesive framework for all the pieces to play together.
Building matchpointcorp.com from scratch, however, is by no means a small task. Mapping the database architecture for a site that offers so many different capabilities was probably the most time-consuming task, not to mention building interfaces for both delivering content to the end user as well as an administration portal for Matchpoint managers to administer their users, companies and service provider and ultimately connect them.
Probably the most enjoyable aspect of developing sites like this is getting cool flash-like (and much more) effects working with plain old javascript. Javascript frameworks like prototype and the ensuing add-ons like mootools have made javascript not only more consistent across browsers, but actually fun to code in. If your a developer and still ignoring javascript, grab a copy of prototype and dig in!
Posted by ryan at April 10, 2007 8:34 AM
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