How does one get started on creating a social community web application?

[eluser]shibuya[/eluser]
How does one get started on creating a web application for social network? I want to create a web application that allows registration/registered members to share information with each other. Things like ability to make comments on a blog post, send private messages, track profiles, vote on posts, make blog posts, have image avatars, upload images etc.

Not a huge web application but just something simple but I want to code it from scratch, without using any cms or bloated free software online.

My background is moderate understanding of PHP (procedural programming, still learning OOP/MVC) and very experienced with XHTML/CSS. I always used Wordpress or ExpressionEngine to create my sites prior but they don't really give me the function or satisfaction of creating a online web application with features mentioned previously.

Thanks.

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
First you got the have an authentication and an ACL system to identify users and guests and set the permissions for them.
From there it's up to you to add everything the community needs.

[eluser]shibuya[/eluser]
[quote author="xwero" date="1205600350"]First you got the have an authentication and an ACL system to identify users and guests and set the permissions for them.
From there it's up to you to add everything the community needs.[/quote]

So private messaging, image thumbnail creation, adding users to favorites, etc. need classes and methods created myself?

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
You can create thumbnail with the CI image_lib and uploading can also be done by a CI library but all other things you mentioned you will have to do yourself.

[eluser]mikeyhell[/eluser]
I could be wrong on this but I take a different approach. I start with the actual listings and build all of the non logged in views first adding the appropriate fields to the database as needed. Scaffolding comes in very hand here to create a few test accounts. Once I have the views dialed down I work on the registration and session management. The reason why I do it this way is b/c it's a pain to create your registration/login/session managment and then realize just before you're done, you need to add an additional field - meaning going back to the registration and user management code. I have created 2 sites like this, the first taking ~ 6 days the 2nd I'm finishing up over the next few days. As far as PM goes, I have not implemented this in either sites yet b/c they are both pilot projects.

[eluser]BorisK[/eluser]
Shibuya,

like xwero said, you need to start with users, permissions, ACL and build on top of that. We are doing exactly that in our project. Actually, we've outlined the first two steps in our job posting at http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/75571/

Good luck with your project