Social Network - Your complete social network app (iOS)

Have you ever wanted to create your own social network like Instagram, Twitter or Facebook? Launching a project that can accumulate thousands of users in one place?

The Social Network Template Complete App is the best solution for iOS that you can find in the market to make your own Social Network. An android version is available here.

Twitter-like social network

It is a Twitter-like social network where you can post tweets, photos and videos, like the posts of your friends and leave comments with hashtags and tags for them. You can even repost text posts from others. With this template, you will never again miss the best moments of your friends’ lives, but always be part of it.

Photo editor feature

You will find every main feature a social network should have in this project, even a photo editor functionality so that your photos always look stunning. You simply follow all your friends, lean back, and observe how your newsfeed fills with valuable moments of your friends’ lives.

Built-in messenger

And in case you have something to say that is not meant for the big public and all your followers, you can user the build-in chat to send text messages, photos, videos and even audio messages. With the new read and delivered receipts you see if you beloved ones have read your message and even get notified when they’re about to answer with a tiny typing indicator.

Push notifications and custom feeds

With the activity system, you don’t miss anything because you get notified of every like and comment on your post. And in case you absolutely want to show a photo to your friend or simply want to answer to a comment, you can mention your friends, just as you’re used to it. And whenever you want to search for a specific theme, simply use the search function of the app, browsing through the different hashtags that have been left on the photos. This project now even has a popular posts feed, showing you the most popular posts and a recent posts feed, showing you the most recent posts.

Admob included

This project includes admob banners in all of the project’s most important places. Simply create your own ads and start earning money instantly!

If you need a sneak preview, test version of the app is here. Note that you won’t be able to actually receive messages on this test version because of the limits of the free plan of Firebase. I had so many requests this month that I needed to cut the server connections in order to keep the app in the free plan. But don’t worry, you will have the full number of connections of the free plan once you switch to your own Firebase app!

The technical part, how does all of this actually work?

The best thing first: maintaining this social network is completely free, you don’t need to host any servers, nor mess around with server-side development or spend money for file storage. This project uses back4app.com (for the users, photos, comments, etc.) and Firebase.com (for the private chat messages) as backend. Both services have an excellent free plan with lots of storage, allowing you to be not depending on revenues. Furthermore, these services allow you to fully concentrate on the frontend, the user interface, so that you can create a stunning and unforgettable experience for your users. We are using the open sourced Parse API on the servers of back4app.

Features and Requirements

With the social network template, you get your hands on a complete social network with the following features.

For the normal user:

• Universal iPhone/iPad app
• Log in with classic username and password or Facebook button
• Post tweets, photos and videos
• Follow your friends and beloved ones
• Like and comment your friends’ posts
• Stay in touch with your friends, be part of their life
• Share photos to other social networks
• Leave hashtags and user mentions (tags)
• Edit and personalise your photos with a vast amount of filters and effects (NO Aviary SDK)
• Popular feed displaying the most popular posts
• Personalise your profile page, set your own profile and header picture, customise the color of your page and leave some personal information for your followers
• Write private messages to your friends or even create messenger groups
• Get notified when something happens by the activity system and push notifications
• Change your password, enable or disable location services and contact the support

For the developer and operator of the project:

• Clean and fully documented code, written in Objective-C/Java with a full documentation file in .html and .pdf and a detailed Setup Guide.
• Admob included: start earning money right away
• Full control over your user- and database via the back4app.com and Firebase.com dashboards, no php files required
• Set links to personal donate and terms of use web pages
• Set a personal support mail

As already mentioned, this project does not require PHP files at all. All your data is stored on back4app.com and Firebase.com, thus you don’t have to spend a single dollar on data storage but still have full control over your user- and database.

This project also uses several third-party libraries.

How to Setup and Reskin

The project comes with a completely documented source code, a full separate documentation explaining every method and variable as well as a Setup Guide, guiding you through the basic setup. Basically, you need to register yourself for free at back4app.com and Firebase.com and create new application. For the Facebook login, you need to create a free application on the Facebook developer page.

In order to reskin the project, you need to change the design of ~150 images, where nearly half of them are simple @2x duplicates. Some of the controllers support .xib files (for example the LaunchScreen.xib) and are really easy to customise. Those not supporting .xib files can be customised by changing the straightforward design code parts . More information is in the Setup Guide document.