Neighbors is also underpinned with Core. While retaining all the basic community functions like the ability to have discussions, Neighbors adds a cornucopia of social networking features. Customizable profiles with granular privacy controls, the ability to track first-, second-, and third-degree friends, the capability to create and join topic groups, an enhanced live chat and IM feature, even the concepts of networks.
There are three fundamental "places" you might go in a Neighbors site:
- Your own space. You can create a blog, photos albums, and more. You'll see a display of the most recent activity in your space and what all your friends and groups are up to, making it a sort of Grand Central Dashboard of what is going on with the people and groups you are interested in.
- Someone else's space. Here, you see how you are connected, who their friends are, what groups they are members of, and a display of the most recent activity there.
- A topic group. Here you'll usually find discussions and other interactive tools like file sharing and blogs, although the exact tools available within each group are determined by the group administrator.
Compared with Community, Neighbors is more organized initially, giving site owners a chance to dive right in and start using the site without having to make decisions about how to organize things. This, of course, means Neighbors is less flexible than Community. Neighbors hides a lot of under-the-hood features which most system administrators don't need (although there are dozens of switches to turn various features on and off). Sites which don't need the extreme flexibility of Community will appreciate getting a working, out-of-the-box social network with a smaller learning curve.
And, of course, like everything Webcrossing, it is scriptable if it doesn't meet all your needs as it is.
If you need social networking with all the bells and whistles and you like the idea of a pre-existing structure, Neighbors is for you.
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