Special Social Networking Sites That Are Not Facbook or MySpace

Facebook and MySpace may be the hottest social networking sites around but there’re so many other online social networks that are also very popular and cater to some special interests. Let’s take a look:

Muxlim - It is like MySpace for Muslims but family-friendly and free of any nudity or adult content that may offend the Islamic community.

MyChurch - This is online community of Christian Churches. Each Church on MyChurch has a profile page that allows its followers to join and then the church members can also inter-connect with each other. Ministers can also post sermons as audio podcasts on MyChurch.

Eons - Eons is a social community for people who have crossed the age of 50. One of the most active groups on Eons is ‘50+ Singles Group’. From the founder of Moster.com.

CafeMom - This is a hugely popular social networking site but just for moms - you won’t even find a gender column on the sign-up page.

Dogster - A social network for pet dogs and dog owners. Like Facebook gifts, you can "leave a bone’ when you are on any dog’s page to show your appreciation. Doggy Space and My Dog Space are other social communities for dog lovers. Cat owners can flock to Catster and My Cat Space.

Geni - This is more than just another family tree builder. You begin by adding your own name to the tree, followed by relations who are then invited to complete their details and also join own your private ‘family’ network.

First Wives World - This is a social network for anyone who has been affected by divorce, directly or indirectly. Members include divorced women, children of divorced parents, family members of divorcing women and so on.

Totspot - This is a social network for new born babies and kids maintained by their parents. If you are expecting a child, you can also join but keep the birth date same as the expected date given by your doctor. Totspot will also keep a record of other members who have recently viewed the profile page of your child.

Resources for further reading:

• Start Your Own Social Network with Ning
• Map of Popular Social Networking Websites
• More Internet World Maps

Video: Social Networks in Simple English

Free Website Building Tools That Are Good Replacements for Google Page Creator

Google Page Creator is awesome - anyone can build a good looking website in minutes using the built-in templates or they can write pages externally (say in Dreamweaver) and upload them to Creator.

And everything is free - there are no ads on your pages and Google takes care of all the web hosting bills. But as they say, all good things come to an end, and so is Google Page Creator getting replaced by Google Sites.

Compare Google Sites with Google Page Creator

While Google Sites and Google Pages have common feature (like the WYSIWYG AJAX editor), they are still quite different. For instance, you can’t upload HTML pages to Google Sites and are therefore limited to using one of the built-in themes for your site design.

The second issue is that if you make a Google Site public, the associated ’site activity log’ also becomes public - most website publisher will have reservations sharing this data with unknown visitors. Lastly, all external hyperlinks are ‘nofollow’ if that means anything to you.

Free Alternatives to Google Page Creator

Here’s a roundup of some website building services that are free and non-technical.

1. Office Live Small Business - While the name may suggest that the service is only for small business owners, just about anyone can create their website here.

Website Builder inside Office Live Small Business

Office Live is easy and filled with goodies - you have tons of professional web templates and color themes to choose from, there’re ready-made modules for common tasks like web forms, photo galleries, live maps, email newsletters, etc. plus you can also upload office documents to the website.

Everything is free including web hosting and server space.

2. Weebly - This is powerful but very user friendly and easy web page builder where you start with a blank canvas and build the page by dragging elements that include text, videos, pictures, maps and more.

Geeks can write their own HTML and add them to Weebly pages. There’s support for Google ads as well so you can even monetize sites created inside Weebly. Another advantage - site publishers download their full site with pictures and CSS as a zip file. Free users gets 100 MB of free storage space and there’re no bandwidth limitations

3. Snap Pages - This is Flash based website editor that is very beautiful and may be a perfect place if you looking to create a small website for sharing some photos and your calendar. The options are slightly limited for non-premium users as they can’t create new pages.

4. Edicy Pages - It’s a new website creation tool that is just perfect for the techie crowd who wants more control over their site layout.

Start by picking a design from the template gallery and then you may completely change the look and feel of your site by editing the blog template similar to WordPress themes or Blogger template. It also supports JavaScript code and like Google Sites, Edicy tracks all changes made to a site.

5. Synthasite - This is again an easy yet very powerful tool for building websites but unlike competition, Syntasite is completely free. Images uploaded to Synthasite can be diretly edited in Picnik just like you have in Flickr. The tool also lets you embed Google AdSense ads in web pages much like Weebly.

Some more site builders worth checking out are WebOn, WebSketch, Viviti, Wix and Webs.

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