Top Elgg Alternatives

Elgg is a robust open-source social networking software that started in 2004 with the joint genius minds of a web developer and an online education expert.

All about Elgg and its ups and downs

Ben Werdmuller, the web platform expert along with Dave Tosh, a post-graduate in e-learning, founded a company called Curverider Ltd to fund and promote Elgg and its services. Curverider Ltd was later acquired by Thematic Networks at around 2010. Thematic Networks is a company that promotes social publishing, networking and enterprise tools to encourage businesses to efficiently manage web platforms. Dave Tosh left Elgg in skilled hands while he went on to be the CEO of a company called 'Known' a collaborative social publishing engine.

Even after all these social developments and considerable challenges, Elgg nevertheless remains to be a nonprofit organization and is being managed by the Elgg Foundation. Development is headed by Brett Profitt and continues to be free to use and download, with stable and upgraded releases every twice or thrice a year as per operational requirements and changes.

Is it easy to configure and use Elgg software?

The download and installation of Elgg apart from being free is pretty easy and does not need expert guidance. It is lucid at first and easy to configure too but has immense dynamism to build up as a dominant social collaborative platform. After the first few steps of setting up, your role as an administrator is to design and decide on how to build your website and chose plugins to extend its power. Smart application of plugins & themes and configuration of source framework will take your brand and company to the next level.

It has an API reference guide to check out all the cool functions that already exist in Elgg that can be used and extended as well. 'Hello world!' tutorials, a beginner group for budding developers, extensive documentation and a built-in bug tracker by Elgg all assist in the successful implementation of the collaborative platform in any organization of any requirement without much fuss or sweat.

Conclusion

Elgg truly assists diverse industries in rendering solutions concerning collaborating and uniquely designing a social application that is resilient, scalable and easily integrates with the specific needs of independent institutions. It is an award-winning content management system with over 1000 plugins and a vast resource of API that can immensely support and help in developing a solid social networking framework. Ideas can also be grasped from other projects utilizing Elgg for their core framework which is showcased in the Elgg platform.