Social Networking

Elgg developers recently rolled out a new test installation of Elgg 1.0 with the new Friends features. Yesterday, they added the Groups. Between these features much has been added to controls over access to content.

Now friends includes the ability to create collections of friends from your list of friends. This allows you incredible flexibility in configuring access to any specific content that a user may create. These collections of friends then appear on the access control options when creating new content. For example, I created a collection of friends called “Elgg Developers” consists of Ben, Dave, and Pete. Now when I set access to a file I uploaded, for example, my access options include not only private, logged in users, and public, but also “Elgg Developers” or any other collection that I may have created.

Groups can also be created easily. Once created, a group has it’s own “Profile” page along with a forum and the option of creating additional pages for the group. Membership can be controlled just like access to a given file upload.

It looks like the features are coming together quickly now as we approach the August 18 release date. I see a robust, top-notch, open source, social network platform coming soon! I will post more details including screen shots shortly!

Elgg just posted an August 18 release date for Elgg 1.0. Elgg core developers have been beleaguered by requests for releases and release dates for several days. I know some of the developers that have worked with Elgg in the past have had the code about a week and are making progress squashing bugs. Hopefully this will help clear the air.

Click to enlarge

There are also indications that some new features will appear when they update their test site in the near future. Core developer Ben Werdmuller stated that the site would soon feature groups and friends collections with an upcoming upgrade. Currently on the test installations users can set access to their content to:

• Public
• Logged in users
• Private

This upgrade will give users the ability to add various friends collections and groups to these options giving incredible flexibility with access control. Once we see these features, we should have much more insight into the workings of Elgg 1.0. Here’s a link to what Ben says about access control.

I’ll have screenshots and an overview of the features as possible.

The Elgg Blog is also a great source of information about this upcoming release.

Elgg 1.0 features a great set of navigation features. They are both practical and elegant.

First, elgg has an attractive navigation bar across the top of each page similar to that of the admin side of WordPress 2.5.(Click to enlarge)

It features links to the user’s profile, dashboard, message and settings. It also has a search and log out function.

The left side bar gives access to a variety of areas on the site including public areas. A simple click on any item expands to reveal a number of options.

The final, and most interesting navigation may be found by mousing over any individual’s avatar. When you guide your cursor over an avatar, and small triangle appears. Click on the triangle and a number of options appear regarding an individual user as seen below:

From there, you can add/remove an individual as a friend and view their blogs, profiles, friends, files, etc. You can also send them a message.

In future posts, we will view the forums, blogs and other areas in Elgg 1.0.

Developer Dave Tosh just contacted me to let me know that I could start publishing screen shots of the Elgg 1.0 user interface. Pete Harris, the Elgg design guru has done a great job! While it is still a work in progress, I’ve seen an evolution of design in the past week as the Elgg team drive the code toward release.

In an earlier post I discussed a drag and drop widget user interface through which the profile (public view) and the dashboard (private) can be customized. Here is a view of my profile:

The main body and side bar can be configured in any number of ways using widgets. The only fixed features are the actual profile on the top of the main body and the left side navigation menu. The private side, the dashboard, has the same options without the profile section. The widgets may be accessed by clicking “Customise Layout” on the top of the right side bar.

To install a widget simply go to the widget gallery on the right side, click on the four direction arrow on any of the widgets and drag it to the main contnet area widgets or the sidebar widgets. If you are unsure of the function of an individual widget, simply click on the “i” icon. The widgets can be added, removed, and reordered by a simple drag and drop.

Once the widgets are in place, you can further customize them by clicking the edit button on the top right side of each widget. When clicked, aconfiguration menu drops done from the widget header bar with your options. Options vary depending upon the widget, but here is an example:

All widgets can be configured to be private or to various degrees of public giving the user fine tune to access.

That’s a first look at the Elgg 1.0 interface. More will be coming soon.

One of the new user features in Elgg 1.0 is greater flexibility with widgets. They can be accessed from either a user’s dashboard or profile page by clicking the “Customize Layout” link on either. Each widget has a link to a small pop-up that briefly describes the function. They work similarly to WordPress Widgets. Users have a “Widget Gallery” from which they can now drag, drop, and rearrange into either the main body or sidebar rather than just the main body as in elgg 0.9.1. In earlier version of elgg widgets were arranged by clicking arrows at the footer of each widget.

Users can arrange the widgets as desired for their dashboard and profile pages. Once they save changes, users are redirected to the page they edited. Widgets can be further customized by clicking the edit but on the right side of the widget’s header. You can configure it to display a certain number of items, and you can set access/privacy.

Keep in mind that this is an in-house development installation. Things are changing quickly as the developers working diligently toward the imminent code release.