Elgg 1.8 Social Networking
eBook - ePub

Elgg 1.8 Social Networking

  1. 384 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Elgg 1.8 Social Networking

About this book

In Detail

As an updated version of the first ever Elgg book, this is an excellent resource for those interested in Elgg development due to its attention to detail, clearly written style and knowledgeable author.

- Dave Tosh, Elgg co-founder.

In his book, Cash Costello makes full use of his skills in development and communication to tackle the complex subject of Elgg social networking. This easy-to-read guide gives end users, new developers, and old pros alike a solid base to start their venture into social media with Elgg. I highly recommend it as a useful and enjoyable read.

- Brett Profitt, Elgg Lead Developer

The web is becoming increasingly social as millions of people use it to blog, share, post, 'friend', 'unfriend' (which was made the Oxford word of the year in 2009), comment, and chat. Elgg - your award-winning open source social networking engine - is tailor-made to create any social networking or social media website you can imagine.

If you want to create a social networking website from scratch using Elgg, then this book is exactly what you need.

Elgg 1.8 Social Networking covers everything you need to know about building a social networking site with Elgg. It begins with instructions for installing Elgg, continues with a guided tour of its capabilities, and finishes with practical advice on deploying Elgg on a production server. And in between, it is packed with information on configuring and customizing Elgg through plugins and themes.

This book is a learn-by-doing guide to creating your own social networking site. It includes three sample case studies on how Elgg could be used as an e-learning tool, an intranet application for organizations, and a niche social networking site. Step by step it takes you through the installation, configuration, and customization of Elgg. Valuable advice is sprinkled throughout the book to enable you to build your site like an expert.

For developers, this book provides a multitude of options. First, there is a tutorial-based section that systematically teaches you how to build plugins. Soon you will have ten plugins for use on your site in addition to all the knowledge you have gained. Second, if you prefer a quick overview, this book has an appendix that describes Elgg using the terminology and design patterns common in web development. Third, if you are interested in creating a theme, it also includes a design tutorial and a catalog of Elgg's view templates.

The book then goes on to describe what is involved in running a production website. It has sections on selecting a hosting provider, configuring and tuning the server, backing up the site, and dealing with spammers.

Approach

This book provides more than just a step-by-step guide to installing and using Elgg. It includes practical advice gained through experience on what it takes to deploy and maintain an Elgg-based site. If you are a software developer or are familiar with PHP, it provides both a tutorial-based introduction and a quick reference guide so that you can quickly extend and customize Elgg.

Who this book is for

If you want to create a social networking site using Elgg and do not have a background in software development, this book provides all the information and advice that you need written just for you. If you are a developer, it also contains valuable tutorials and reference material so that you can begin writing code right away.

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Elgg 1.8 Social Networking


Table of Contents

Elgg 1.8 Social Networking
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Author of 1st edition
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more
Why Subscribe?
Free Access for Packt account holders
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the example code
Errata
Piracy
Questions
1. Social Networking and Elgg
Social features
Profiles
Relationships
Content sharing
Activity and notifications
Groups
Communication
What is Elgg?
The Elgg engine
User management
Privacy controls
Theming
Commenting
Tagging
Widgets
Internationalization
Feeds
Web services
The power of plugins
Bundled plugins
Third-party plugins
Themes
Building your own plugins
Case studies
Niche social network
Designing and building the site
Deploying the site
Plugins mentioned
Corporate intranet
Designing and building the site
Deploying the site
Plugins mentioned
Educational collaboration
Designing and building the site
Deploying the site
Plugins mentioned
Elgg resources
Elgg community
Elgg wiki
Developer resources
A few words of advice
Take notes
Save resources
Be methodical
Finding help
Summary
2. Installing Elgg
Preparing the server
Checking requirements
Downloading the latest version
Extracting the files
Moving files to your web server directory
Configuring the server
Create the database
Run Elgg's installer
Loading the database
Configure Elgg
Creating the admin account
All done!
Summary
3. A Tour of Your First Elgg Site
Getting around
Registering users
User profiles and avatars
Profile information
Avatar
Profile widgets
Friends
Activity stream
Tools
Blogs
Bookmarks
Files
Groups
Pages
Messages
The wire
User settings
Your settings
Tools
Notifications
Administration
Activating plugins
Site categories
Custom profile fields
Default widgets
Site pages
Reported content
Customizing your site
User registration and authentication
Widgets
Friendship model
Roles
Help and support
Summary
4. Sharing Content
Blogs
Creating a blog post
Embedding photos and files
Publishing
Finding and viewing
Search
Lists of blog posts
RSS feeds
Widget
Commenting
Use cases
Customizations
Bookmarks
Adding a bookmark
Bookmarklet
Viewing
Use cases
File
Uploading a file
Viewing
Use cases
Customizations
The wire
Posting
Viewing
Twitter integration
Use cases
Customizations
Summary
5. Communities, Collaboration, and Conversation
Groups
Creating a group
Group profile
Membership
Discussion forum
Group tools
Finding groups
Use cases
Customizations
Pages
Creating pages
Viewing
Use cases
Customizations
Messages
Inbox
Composing
Customizations
Message board
Customizations
Summary
6. Finding and Using Plugins
Plugin administration
Filtering and sorting
Plugin dependencies
Plugin settings
Finding plugins
Browsing the repository
Searching
Evaluating before downloading
Look at the plugin overview
Read the comments
Check the history
Custom plugins
Installing plugins
Test server
Copying the code
Activating and configuring
Invalid plugin?
Troubleshooting
Themes
Finding and installing themes
Free themes
Commercial themes
Custom themes
Installing themes
Major community plugins
Tidypics
Plugin profile
Administration
Uploading photos
Viewing photos
Tagging photos
Event calendar
Plugin profile
Administration
Site calendar
Group calendar
Profile Manager
Plugin profile
Adding profile fields
Configuring the profile fields
Plugin settings
Summary
7. Creating Your First Plugin
What you need to know
Elgg developer resources
Setting up your development environment
Editing code
Configuring your site
Hello, World!
Plugin skeleton
Create your plugin directory
Plugin manifest
Start script
Activating the hello world plugin
Register for the init, system event
Adding a new route
Creating a web page
Update routing
Add to the site menu
Extending the page handler
Add a sidebar menu
Language support
Personalizing the content
Organizing your content into views
A greeting view
A stats view
Review
Debugging
Debugging to the log
Debugging to the screen
Debugging PHP through an IDE
Firebug and other browser development tools
Elgg developer tools
Inspect
Theming sandbox
Summary
8. Customization through Plugins
Lesson 1: Changing wording
Problem
Solution
Example
Step 1: Create the plugin structure
Step 2: Find the language strings
Step 3: Override the language string
Exercise
Lesson 2: Modifying a section of a page
Problem
Solution
Example
Step 1: Find the view to override
Step 2: Create the plugin structure
St...

Table of contents

  1. Elgg 1.8 Social Networking

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