Book Image

Elgg Social Networking

By : Mayank Sharma
Book Image

Elgg Social Networking

By: Mayank Sharma

Overview of this book

<p>Elgg is an open-source social web application licensed under GPL version 2, and runs on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) or WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) platform. It offers a networking platform combining elements of blogging, e-portfolios, news feed aggregation, file sharing, and social networking. Elgg has its own plug-in architecture, and can use plug-ins to provide a calendar and a wiki. It supports a number of open standards including RSS, LDAP for authentication, FOAF, and XML-RPC for integration with most third-party blogging clients. It can be integrated with MediaWiki, Moodle, Drupal, and WebCT.<br /><br />Elgg provides each user with a personal weblog, file repository (with podcasting capabilities), an online profile, and an RSS reader. Additionally, all of a user's content can be tagged with keywords&acirc;&euro;&rdquo;so they can connect with other users with similar interests and create their own personal learning network. However, where Elgg differs from a regular weblog or a commercial social network (such as MySpace) is the degree of control each user is given over who can access their content. Each profile item, blog post, or uploaded file can be assigned its own access restrictions&acirc;&euro;&rdquo;from fully public to readable only by a particular group or individual.<br /><br />Using Elgg is the easiest way to create your own fully customized, hosted social network for your business, organization, or group of friends. Elgg communities can include blogs, discussion groups, media galleries, friends' lists, and much more. Because it's open source, and has many plug-ins, Elgg can be extended in unlimited ways. Elgg lets you host your own Facebook-style social network and retain complete control over how it works. This book shows you all you need to know to create safe, fun social networks.<br />&nbsp;<br />While anybody can use Elgg to create their social network, it is especially useful in education as it has many features making it suitable for e-learning, including groups, communities, and blogs that can be used for online classes where students can communicate in a new way with each other and with students around the world&acirc;&euro;&rdquo;in a managed, protected environment, creating what its authors term a "personal learning landscape". This book also covers using Elgg in teaching/learning.</p>
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Elgg Social Networking
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface

Summary


As we've seen throughout this book, Elgg is a very diverse platform for opening up lines of communication where none exist. In this chapter, we've seen examples of Elgg deployments in very different continents to serve very different purposes.

Elgg's customizability is unique. Not only is it designed to add on new features, but as in the case of non-profits in Colombia, it can scale down its features as well. You can gauge its flexibility from the fact that its deployers in Colombia were able to iron it out for non-technical users—users who had never even blogged before!

Another aspect of Elgg, highlighted by its use in Colombian non-profits and underlined by its implementers in the university in UK, is the strength of its community. Like a true Open Source product, Elgg is developed for the community, by the community. Some of its very important plug-ins have been contributed by its users.

Elgg's third biggest strength, as appreciated by its use in the university, is its ability to co-exist with existing web infrastructure. Be it VLE's in an educational institute or Wiki's and Forums on the intranet or world facing websites, Elgg can fit nicely with the most popular ones.

The main aim of this chapter has been to demonstrate that Elgg can be used in any situation, by the people who've used it themselves. No matter what your constraints or how challenging your objective, Elgg's capable enough to handle it all.