FOSS social networking update for Feb 14

February 13, 2009 in buddypress, Elgg, open source, Social Networking, Technology | 1 comment

This February is a busy month in the world of open source Social Networking software. As mentioned before, BuddyPress is scheduled for release and Curverider is slated to release Elgg Version 1.5.

BuddyPress released BuddyPress RC1 yestereday. Andy Peating decided to go with a release candidate rather than the full planned release because of a new development with WordPressMu.WPMU developers are planning to add site-wide plugin management that will allow admins to enable and disable site-wide plugins within a few weeks. This will also allow automatic plugin updates. BuddyPress aside, this is big improvement for WPMU.

Meanwhile, Curverider is committing revisions of the trunk SVN code at a dizzying pace. The trunk has undergone 235 revisions since the first of the year. A peak of the version.php file now puts the version at 1.4. Having checked the latest Elgg incarnation, I am pleased to see that groups can now be deleted. There is also a new media embed tool.

elggembed

The developers also seem to be working on fixing group access controls. While working with the latest SVN, I saw that group permissions have very recently changed.

elgggrp2

Earlier incarnations allowed group creators to toggle access to membership and content, although it didn’t work properly.

elgggrp3

Now access to group content is controlled item by item when it is created.

elgggrp4

I am not sure whether or not Curverider is done with their changes to group access and membership, but it appears that the controls now in place do indeed work.

At this point, I will hold off on comparisons between the two platforms until Elgg releases 1.5 as it is changing quickly. BuddyPress, on the other hand, will probably experience few changes between the RC1 and final release.

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1 comment

  1. Matt Leifer’s avatar

    Matt Leifer on February 14, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    Great news about Elgg. I *need* group access controls to work properly because closed groups are a key part of my site and I only noticed it was not working when I actually tried to use it with someone. I am toying with updating to the SVN version, but I suppose official release will happen soon.

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