Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello there SuNers,

I want to create a site for the brazilian market (I am brazilian living in the US) in the molds of classmates.com, but my main idea is to provide a site to the brazilian population where they can find lost old friends based on some criterias such as city of residence (when they were friends), school they attended together, etc.

Although this is a very long shot, I would like to know if you guys are aware of a solution that would allow me to create such a site with minimum investment (I am bootstrapping)? Or if you know of any design company that would work in exchange for a slice of the profits (if they ever happen, of course)?

Thanks,



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Andre Costa DaCosta Chocolates, LLC www.DaCostaChocolates.com

Maybe this service could be an option for you?  Purports to be a turnkey solution with some of the functionality you describe (not sure if it completely fits the bill, but worth investigating).

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chuck fuller

I would use Drupal, a free, open source content management system. It`s modular, so you start with a pretty lean core code and can add modules as you need to get the functionality you want. If the functionality you want doesn`t exist, it`s going to be cheaper and easier to write a module for Drupal to do that functionality than to write a solution from the ground up. I`m not sure you would need a custom module, though. You might be able to create what you want without programming using Drupal`s Content Construction Kit capability plus judicious use of the Views module.

If forums are your focus (and it didn`t sound like they were), and you are going to buy forum software, I wouldn`t go with the service suggested. The industrial strength forum of choice is vBulletin, which is frequently updated and has the further advantage of being widely used by a lot of savvy webmasters. There are a lot of hacks to vBulletin to get it to do tricks, and there might or might not be one that adds to vBulletin what you want. The problem with the vBulletin hacks versus the Drupal modules is that Drupal is built with an API to accept modules, and you are much less likely to need to rewrite your additions when the core platform gets updated.

The dDrupal site is at drupal.org.

Thank you, guys. I will check both services.


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Andre Costa DaCosta Chocolates, LLC www.DaCostaChocolates.com

I like Drupal. I will download it and give it a try. Thanks for the suggestion.


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Andre Costa DaCosta Chocolates, LLC www.DaCostaChocolates.com

You may want to try http://www.ourclassonline.com/  it`s the same as classmate.com

Musebay, thank you for the information, but I am not looking for this type of site. I am looking for a solution that I can use to implement something similar in another country/language.

Thanks again,


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Andre Costa DaCosta Chocolates, LLC www.DaCostaChocolates.com

Andre - if possible, please come back here and let us know how your experience goes with whatever solution you choose!

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chuck fuller

Hi Chuck,

I surely will. I started reading the set up info for Drupal. It seems like a nice solution, but only after installing and running some scenarions I will be able to feel how reliable it really is.


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Andre Costa DaCosta Chocolates, LLC www.DaCostaChocolates.com

Hi Chuck.

Community Server is a really cool application, but in my opinion it isn`t fully "cooked" yet and required some advanced troubleshooting to get it to do what I wanted it to do.  However, the community around the application at communityserver.org is very helpful and working hard to take it to the next level.

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_____________________________________________ Mike