News : Weblog

Upcoming Elgg Meets

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:28:06 GMT

We're having a couple of events in various places over the coming months, where we'll get together to talk about Elgg. In all cases, look for us dressed in the black tees you see pictured to the right. Come say hi; we'd love to talk to you.

San Francisco Elgg Meet: Wednesday, May 7 3pm - 8pm Thirsty Bear Brewing Co., 661 Howard Street (at 3rd) http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/473595/

Marcus Povey will also say a little about the forthcoming Open Data Definition at the Oxford Geek Night on April 22nd: Jericho Tavern, 56 Walton St, Oxford http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/432766/

Update: Vancouver cancelled.

Elgg Social Networking is now available from Packt Publishing

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:50:20 GMT

We're excited to announce that Packt Publishing's Elgg Social Networking by Mayank Sharma is now available to purchase. The book takes you through Elgg's features, setting up an Elgg site, and more advanced activities like podcasting, customising your theme and setting up moderated communities. This is a great way to introduce yourself to Elgg and harnessing its power for your own needs.

You can purchase from a number of sites, including Amazon and the Packt Publishing website.

Elgg is a social application platform

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:39:09 GMT

To date, Elgg has been a great tool for creating a web-based social network. It was the first social networking platform to include OpenID support, and through its support of standards like RSS, FOAF and XML-RPC, as well as its highly extensible architecture, provides functionality unique to the market. If you want MySpace in a box, you can do it with Elgg; if you want a customised network with functionality specific to your niche requirements, you can do that too.

Elgg 1.0 takes this flexibility as a starting point and supercharges it.

The Internet is changing in a number of important ways. It's no longer enough to throw up an interactive website; people access their information through a variety of tools in a variety of ways. Since Elgg was first released we've seen smartphones come on in leaps and bounds, and then entirely redefined by the iPhone. Web services have become vastly more important, and users expect to be able to access their data in the way that's most convenient to them. Data portability has become a hot button issue in the technology sector.

We've talked about all of these things since the beginning, and because we knew they were coming, we were ready for them.

Sure, you can do the things you've always done with Elgg; you can still have a web-based social network in a box that's easy to set up and configure. But now there's more. Elgg 1.0 acts as a social application engine; a way to power any socially-aware application, whether it's on the web or not.

Of course, Elgg now has a full external API, and because it's Elgg, it's fully extensible. Out of the box, it provides results in XML, JSON or serialised PHP. Plugins can add new output formats and new API calls, exposing any functionality you require. This means that you can have a mobile Java application and applications running on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, the Web, or any other platform, using the same single application infrastructure under the hood. You don't even need to have a web interface if you don't want to - or you can have any number you want, for different browsers or audiences.

Elgg 1.0 is future-proof, easier to build for than ever, and reorganised to provide a simple way to create any socially-aware site or application. We can't wait to introduce it to you.

It's not just the software that's extensible: our business is too. In the coming months, we'll be setting up a network of affiliates who will provide Elgg related services. If you offer (or want to offer) Elgg customisation, support, hosting or consultancy, drop us a line and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

UK Elgg User Group

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:18:29 GMT

One of the biggest groups currently using Elgg, are those in Education. Therefore, we are delighted that Stan Stanier, from the University of Brighton, has managed to get a new UK Elgg User Group up and running.

The core team behind Elgg are going to sponsor this group as we feel everyone will benefit from the discussion and subsequent dissemination that will occur. It is groups such as this that allow us to keep in close contact with those using Elgg at their institution, this can only be a good thing in the context of product development and support.

We look forward to seeing how the group develops.

ElggJam 08 registration now open

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:17:53 GMT

We have now opened registration for this year's ElggJam. It is a free event with limited places, attendance will work on a first come, first served basis so if you fancy it, book early!

To register and find out more, head over to the ElggJam site: http://elggjam.com

Sidenote: there are opportunities to be a sponsor at this year's event, if interested, get in touch.

Elgg discussion on ElggVoices

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:25:15 GMT

We've set up an ElggVoices channel for general Elgg discussion. This is not a replacement for the forums, but if you're out and about and have a quick question, or would like to talk to the community in a more instant way, we think you'll find it very useful.

To sign up, visit the Elgg Discussion ElggVoices channel. If you like, you can then opt to receive updates via email or SMS - or you can interact using the standard web interface.

ElggVoices is an exciting new service, based on the upcoming Elgg 1.0 codebase.

ElggJam date confirmation

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:48:51 GMT

The date for this years ElggJam is June 18th. It will be held in central London at a venue to be confirmed.

Shortly, we shall put up the registration page. If you want to present at the event, let us know as we will be putting together the schedule soon(ish). Looking forward to seeing many of you there. Cheers.

Elgg Developers Wanted

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:44:16 GMT

Hi All,

We are currently looking for php developers to join our team in order to help build out the next generation of Elgg and Elgg tools. If you are based in the UK and fancy joining a dynamic start up to work on Elgg, please drop us a line.

Cheers.

Elgg 0.9.1

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:13:44 GMT

Today version 0.9.1 of classic Elgg has been released. This release fixes a number of issues, see trac for an overview of resolved tickets. Get it at the usual place while it's hot.

Elgg powered: Paraglidingpilot.net

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:23:37 GMT

We've been posting about some Elgg use cases recently, Community@Brighton being the latest. One other interesting and well designed Elgg site is paraglidingpilot.net, run by Sean Thompson. We caught up with him and asked him why he built the site, why he choose Elgg and about any future plans.

Why a site for paragliders? I am an avid paraglider and an active promoter of the sport. I wanted to give paragliders, hang gliders and other aerial sports enthusiasts a place on the web to call home, a highly accessible and much needed base from which to promote their sport/s, and the ability to have an audible voice in both online and offline communities.... But most importantly to show off your pilot stats, photos, videos and fantasmagoric knowledge of everything that ever flew ;)

What made you choose Elgg? Elgg seemed to have not only the social networking aspect which was my primary focus when looking for a social networking platform, but also the "information sociology" structure that I was looking for.

What was the most challenging and rewarding thing about Elgg? The most challenging aspect developing with Elgg was by far the task of deconstructing the script so I could work with and manipulate it. You must learn the "Elgg way" of doing things before making too many changes otherwise you get lost very quickly. So naturally the most rewarding thing about developing with Elgg for me was finding out the core works like a charm and does everything it's supposed to if you take the time to learn it and familiarize yourself with its operations/functions. The minor bugs I came across seemed to be just that, minor.

What about future plans? In relation to ParaglidingPilot.net, I am currently working on incorporating Google Earth which will allow pilots to upload and share their GPS trip logs/files via path-mapped GoogleEarth satelite photos. The Elgg system will be modified to link pilots with others who have recently flown in the same area or crossed one anothers flight paths at some point in time. This will add a unique element to our communities social networking algorithm.

I have another Elgg community which is still in development stages, it will be used to test and possibly release some very unique mods and plugins not seen in any social system before. Enough said... ;)