Hi there guys!
I'm in the process of replying to both of your private messages. Thanks for getting in touch!
Here are some answers to the questions posted by CRB on here.
The designs are from a few different systems.
I worked full time at Faceparty years back - it's built in it's own code from the ground up. I would work on the UX, Wireframing, Design and Implementation Documentation - it was a rather large company so while being able to code It was passed on to a dedicated team of developers. Then the live test would come back to me to make sure it worked as intended or if modifications were required.
The Sparkcrush profile page is from my own project first starting out with PHPFox. Which I did actually code up myself into a live theme. And customised quite heavily but found the functionality I wanted for the site falling short. Even with additional plugins (Primarily features related to search - such as tagging within actual user profiles rather than just uploaded content and better location features). As well as finding the entire thing an admin and UI mess.
After a lot of testing and research with various off the shelf and commercial similar products (BoonEx, Skadate, Ning, Elgg, SocialEngine etc). None of which seemed to be the real deal. Either heavily outdated code / standards / ux wise (and sheesh! definitely theme wise! If I see another facebook clone template I'll pop!). The closest is SocialEngine - they have their heads screwed on. But have been focusing much more on mirroring services like Pinterest and Twitter and microblogging platforms hosted by them in the cloud. Rather than concentrating on their original social client server neworking product.
I've been looking to for an open source code to be able to heavily customise into something that's minimal, responsive, powerful, slick but extremely user friendly not just for the users but from a site management and implementation perspective.
Basically working towards the Wordpress of social networking/dating. That can be hosted by the client or in the cloud. It should be that easy/quick to install, add plugins, find beautiful customisable themes and build for.
Which is what has led me to Oxwall, as it seems like a good base.
I have also been thinking about perhaps looking for a ruby/rails/bootstrap developer and making something from scratch as that's the kind of code I think will be shaping the web going forwards.
Taking in both of your input. Perhaps a collaborative team is what might be a good direction.