Social Network Mobile Apps for iOS & Android 2016 add-on

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.
• 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.

Major dependencies:

• Some of the Controllers and methods and especially parts of the caching system are taken from Anypic, an open source iOS social networking project showcasing the services from Parse.com. If you want to start from complete scratch with your social network, this project is an excellent starting point.
• The photo editor in this project is based on the CLImageEditor by Sho Yakushiji
• The messenger functionality is based on the JSQMessagesViewController by Jesse Squires and uses some modified parts and ideas (esp. the Firebase.com idea) from NotificationChat from RelatedCode, which gives you a good starting point when you want to adapt the JSQMessagesViewController to work with Parse.com.

Minor dependencies:

• A custom alertview from Diogo Autilio: SCLAlertView
• Custom progress huds from Jonathan George: MBProgressHUD and RelatedCode: ProgressHUD
• A time interval formatter from Matt Thomson: FormatterKit
• An audio message recorder controller from Mohd Iftekhar Qurashi: IQAudioRecorder a SideController by Mutual Mobile: MMDrawerController

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.

This version log does not contain all the updates, only the major ones.

Update v1.1

[iOS]
Added a PhotoDetailsController when tapping on a Photo that has been sent, received (chat) or posted (feed). Now you`re able to zoom in and out and dismiss the photo with a very stylish animation

Update v1.4

[iOS]
Introducing a popular posts feed. This feed can be accessed from within the side controller and shows the most popular posts. Added a popular pointing system, comments currently give 1 point, and likes 3 points. In theConstants.h file is a new defined constant determining how much points a post must have at least (currently 10). Posts that aren`t older than a week and have been updated in the last 24hrs can then be popular (and are ordered by popularity points).
Changed the login to a new form - now logging in with the email address of the user, avoiding the confusion between the name and the username.

Update v1.7

[iOS]
? Introducing tweets - you can now post text posts with a maximal length of 120 characters (easily customizable). This first version of the tweets includes hashtags, links and mentions already.

? Introducing a custom in-app-webbrowser. Every link that is tapped from within the app is now opened in a custom webbrowser inside of the app itself. The user doesn`t have to leave the app anymore.

? Extended settings features in the settings page - you can now control if you want to receive push notifications or send read receipts in the chat.

? Introducing the recent posts feed - this feed shows you the most recent posts, independent from who you follow.

? Fixing several bugs - a video playback bug, opening profiles from within the chat had some weird problems, profiles now open in the right tab, hashtags can now be searched even with the <span class="com">#</span>sign, the chat has been improved in general because it had some weak moments, the caching system has been improved esp. for the use of tweets and other minor design and performance improvements have been included.

Update v2.0

[iOS]
? Introducing a new follower and following view, and fixing several bugs.
? This version introduces a background job you need to run on your parse app. Simply set it to run every day at 00:00 o`clock and Parse will do the rest for you. This background job handles corrupted follow activity objects and is necessary for the follower/following list to work.
? Parse currently has a bug in their javascript sdk, so make sure you don?t use their latest sdk with your cloud code. Instead, make sure you use ?1.4.2? in the global.json file.

? Updating the project to XCode 7 and making it iOS9 ready. Please do not use XCode6 nor iOS8 anymore (if possible).
? Fixing the profile picture swapping bug (be aware that the fix only applies to newly registered users, existing users simply should upload their own profile picture?)
? Fixing a bug with cropping images on the iPad version of the project

Update v2.5

[Android]
Introducing the first Android version of this project. This first version hasn`t all the features of the iOS version, but we will provide more and more features with upcoming updates. Make sure you check it out!

[iOS]
Fixing several bugs in the Chat ViewController and deleting some unused png`s to make the project a bit lighter.

Update v2.8

[Android]
Fixing a few minor bugs as well as e critical bug that caused a terrible image quality when uploading an image.

[iOS]
Adding sponsored posts functionality. The photo class contains a new ?isSponsored? field (boolean) in the Parse Database. For every post that is published on the app, you can decide whether it should be a sponsored post or not, by setting this field to true. Sponsored posts will show in everyone?s newsfeed, whether they follow that user or not! However, sponsored posts appear only in the home feed and in the popular feed (this can be changed easily by copying the code to other feeds).

Sponsored posts will have a sponsored badge in their header.

Update v2.9

[Android v.1.3.2]

This is an Android only update. We had some busy weeks, with the news of Parse shutting down, thus this update is a smaller one. It is fixing some critical bugs in the Android beta project, and enabling Facebook login.

Update v2.10

[Android v.1.3.3]

This is an Android only update. It is fixing some critical bugs and improving the comments page a lot.

Update v2.11

[iOS v.2.9]

This is just a hot fix for the Facebook sharing that recently broke because Facebook changed their policies.

Update v2.12

[Android v.1.4]

This is an Android only update. It is introducing a new PhotoActivity, which should resolve any resolution bug you might have encountered with your specific Android device.

Update v2.13

[Android v.1.4.2]

This is an Android only update. Fixing some minor bugs and adding some new animations. Also improving performance in the PhotoActivity.

Update v2.14

[Android v.1.5] and [iOS v.3.0]

We`re finally migrating this project over to back4app. Back4app installs the open source Parse API for you on their servers, such that you can do a nearly one-click migration. It`s really easy, for details, please refer to the setup guide. You can also still migrate to your own Parse server if you want to. Please note: Pushes are not yet working with back4app because we still need to rewrite our cloud code files. This will be done in the next update!

As always, feel free to report any bug to me, so I can fix them as soon as possible. Cheers, Eric.