Social network implementation has become a necessity for successful websites. Joomla!, the popular Open-Source CMS, has some great and affordable ways to bring your site to the social networking level. Let's review how.

This article will walk through the beginnings of setting up a social site using Joomla. Some of the end goals and solutions will vary depending on your needs.

Joomla! shouldn't just be looked at as a CMS but a framework from which to build your applications and accomplish your dreams. Before you jump in and start lacing together extensions to build your site, proper planning and a roadmap is essential.

Article sources: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/other/build-a-social-network-using-joomla/

Step 1: Set up the Load Module plugin

The first thing you need to do is navigate to the plugin manager in your Joomla! Administrator panel. In Joomla! 1.5, you can access the plugin manager by clicking Extensions->Plugin Manager in theadministrator main menu. In the plugin manager, locate the "Content - Load Moudle" plugin. If you have a lot of plugins, it might help to filter the list to only show content plugins. The filter is in the top right hand corner above the page just above the list of plugins. Under "Select Type", select "content."

Once you have located the Load Module plugin, click on it to open it in the plugin editor. First, make sure the plugin is enabled. Then set its style however you choose. The style is the way in which modules will be loaded via this plugin. I prefer to choose "Wrapped by Divs", "Wrapped by Multiple Divs" or "No wrapping (raw output)" because those offer cleaner, more semantic output. Once you have set the parameters how you want them, save the changes you have made to the plugin.

Step 2: Create module you wish to display

You can display any type of module you want to display through this plugin. To display an RSS feed, you need to create a Feed Display module.

First, navigate to the module manager by clicking Extensions->Module Manager in the administratormenu. Then, click new in the toolbar to create a new module. A list of module types will be displayed. In that list, select "Feed Display" to create a module that displays an RSS feed.
Module position

You can choose any module position to display this module because the Load Module plugin lets you specify any module position. A good idea is to choose some name that will not interfere with the othermodule positions on the site because you do not want to display this module anywhere but in an article. For my article, I chose "tjx", but you could use anything. For the "position" parameter, simply delete the position that is currently selected and type the position name you wish to use.
Module parameters

Under the module's parameters, be sure and set the feed URL. Otherwise, the module won't work properly. The rest of the parameters can be set however you want according to how you want themodule to display.

Step 3: Embedding the module into an article

Now that the Load Module plugin and Feed Display module are set the way you want them, you are ready to embed the module into an article. To embed the module, you simply need to add the followingplugin tag to your article:

{loadposition position_name}

Make sure you set position_name to the name of the module position you chose in Step 2. In my case, the tag looked like this:

{loadposition tjx}

That's all there is to it. The module position is now loaded into your article with the Feed Displaymodule that you set up, so you now have an RSS feed embedded in an article.

Joomla! 1.5.12 Changes were made to the framework PHPMailer class in order to allow secure connections (SSL/TLS) to SMTP servers. Given these changes, Joomla is now able to use services such as Gmail to handle e-mail from the application. If you have access to a Gmail account, consider testing this new functionality.

In the Administrator Panel, navigate to Global Configuration > Server and set the following options:

* Mailer: SMTP Server
* SMTP Security: SSL
* SMTP Port: 465
* SMTP Authentication: Yes
* SMTP Username: Your Gmail username
* SMTP Password: Your Gmail password
* SMTP Host: smtp.gmail.com

Then retest to ensure e-mail services continue to work.

Mimbo Pro is a Wordpress template designed for magazine style sites. With a colorful design and customisable layout it’s perfect for users of all skill levels.

Mimbo Pro is compatible with WordPress 2.5 and above!

Mimbo Pro is a full-featured magazine/ news theme for Wordpress. Already familiar with the original Mimbo? Imagine no more manual template editing, no more Photoshop, no more image-cropping or FTP’ing. Plus a built-in contact form, image gallery, custom archive pages, breadcrumbs, ad management, Feedburner and Google Analytics options, and more. Enjoy using Wordpress like a CMS, now more than ever.

FolioBlogger is a WordPress Portfolio theme with full Blogging capabilities and is ideal forphotographers, artists or designers. It was created to be VERY easy to maintain using simple WordPress posting and writing capabilities and has numerouse php and jquery enhancements.

Folio Blogger has many features that are seen and unseen that make using your new theme easy to set-up and manage. Some of the features Include:

* Two Widget Sidebars ( one for the home page and portfolio & one for the blog)
* Different Excerpt lengths for the slider, Blog and Archives to keep things neat
* Automatic Image Sizing using best fit and zoom scale – PHP (No Plugin Required)
* Automatic Thumbnails and image handling
* Gravatars for comments
* Ad Management (turn On or Off with a click)
* Google Analytics
* Six Color Options (simply select in the options menu)
* Adjust How many blog post you want on the home page in the admin (You can have a different number for the interior blog pages AND the portfolio will show ALL post from the selected category… Flexibility!
* Custom Theme Options Panel
* Slider for all portfolio categories
* Blog section (select a post to go in the blog or it will go to the portfolio – automatic!)
* Jquery enhanced
* Jquery slide down Category menu – supports 2nd level items!
* valid css and xhtml
* and More…