Nikz

I agree with all of this apart from LESS, it's pretty much dead and buried now

To be a front end developer you need to make sure that you've mastered the basics first before pursuing further into front end development.
 
Strong understanding of HTML5 Strong understanding of CSS Strong understanding of Javascript ( not jQuery, that comes later ) Once you have a strong understanding of those then you might want to look at css pre-processors like SASS / LESS, and some Javascript libraries.
 
Thats just to start with, I'm sure other more seasoned FED's will be able to suggest other options.

Wordpress is not build for the purpose that you want and you would have to customize it a lot to make it work. The idea of building it yourself while learning is good training and you might be able to piece something together that works but in order to build a scalable and secure system you need much more knowledge and experience than what you can pick up from youtube tutorials.
Social media sites are very vulnerable to database injections because the users creates and manages the content and will need access to much more form inputs than on a blog or corporate site. So you would really need to know what you are doing.
Maybe you could start on a small scale with a some simple forum software (which I think is more in line with what you need than a CMS like WP). You try https://www.phpbb.com/ or http://www.mybb.com/. They are both free and have been around for ages. Or maybe you can find on that suits your needs in this article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software

Hey Nikz,
 
Welcome to WDF,
 
Just wanted to get this in "That is a behemoth of a task".
 
But you're certainly trying to climb Everest before you can crawl, both @@BrowserBugs and @@rbrtsmith have hit the nail on the head. For a project like that you don't want to be using any kind of pre built CMS. Learning PHP/MySQL is a good start (both back end technologies). TreeHouse is a great place to start, I'm currently working my way through their lessons.
 
As has already been said start off with smaller projects, and build up to what you are trying to achieve.
 
Good luck.

I wouldn't take on a project like that at such an early stage. Time spent learning the theory is paramount, I find a huge percentage of those who claim to know HTML and CSS have only really scratched the surface so you may want to consider spending more time with that. There's also JavaScript which is also crucial to learn if you intend to develop on the web.
 
Learning to become a developer takes many, many hours, it's not something that can be learnt on a whim, and many senior developers would struggle to make a social media platform without external help / or as part of a team with experts in various areas.
 
I recommend you sign upto a coding school like TreeHouse and/ or CodeSchool and work on your theory. I also recommend you choose a path, be it front-end or backend. you can get pretty good at both, but you're massivley increasing the list of stuff you need to learn. I just live in the front-end and despite spending thousands of hours working professionally in this and studying in my spare time there's still tonnes of stuff I don't know.
 
Building your own stuff is great too, and very rewarding but you must know the theory behind what you are trying to create first. The application you propose covers many areas, when you're getitng better try scaling down and making just individual compontents, or more simple applications.
 
Building a monolith from the outset as a beginner will just be a massive headache.

Hi,
 
Sounds like a beast of a project. If it was me I would learn PHP / MySQL as these are the foundation of most sites and it's what most pre-built cms are built on. WordPress or scratch built, PHP and MySQL will be involved and knowing them will benefit with pretty much any route you take.
 
A project like this I would really lean towards a scratch built system. WordPress etc already have a bloated table structure and for things like geo-searching and table relations it's probably best to plan it all in from the start.
 
Just my 2 pence.