Best Ruby on Rails social networking framework [closed]

Question

I'm planning on creating a social networking + MP3 lecture downloading / browsing / commenting / discovery website using Ruby on Rails. Partially for fun and also as a means to learn some Ruby on Rails. I'm looking for a social networking framework that I can use as a basis for my site. I don't want to re-invent the wheel.

Searching the web I found three such frameworks. Which of these three would you recommend using and why?

http://portal.insoshi.com/

http://www.communityengine.org/

http://lovdbyless.com/

Answer 1

It depends what your priorities are.

If you really want to learn RoR, do it all from scratch. Seriously. Roll your own. It's the best way to learn, far better than hacking through someone else's code. If you do that, sometimes you'll be learning Rails, but sometimes you'll just be learning that specific social network framework. And you won't know which is which...

The type of site you're suggesting sounds perfect for a Rails project. If you get stuck, then go browse the repositories of these frameworks. Who cares if you're reinventing the wheel? It's your site, your vision, your rules.

If you just want a site up and running, then I would pick Insoshi or LovdbyLess simply because they're out of the box apps so you'll have to do less to do get running. I suggest trying to install them both, and introducing yourself in the Google Groups. That'll give you a good indication of wether you're going to get along.