Plugins can extend Elgg to do almost anything you can imagine, The beauty of Elgg is that you can create you own plugins to do the exact job you want to have on your Social Netwrork, and if you don’t know how to do it then the ideal thing to do is to keep watching the Elgg community as it brings out new plugins everyday , but be a ware to use them a way from your running Elgg version so you can be sure it’s working well, I have to say that because the Elgg community have lots of crap plugins that do nothing but giving you a headache by error messages as they are not working, this was enough reason for me to collect a lost of the best plugins and linked to where you can download them in the community, I personally have tested them and I am running them on My Life Thinking community.
Here is a list of the best Elgg plugins that you should run on your community:
- Mass mail outs: Send email to all users from admin panel.
- Custom index: Overwrite the default index page on your Elgg install.
- Default widgets: Allows you to specify defaults widgets on all new users profile and/or dashboard.
- User contact list: Adds an option on the administrator page to view all registered Elgg users by Nickname, Username, and Email.
- Group contact list: A simple group management plugin with “delete group” functionality and possibility to manage group members.
- Be tom: it’s a simple plugin that will catch the register event of a user and then make the user you specify their friend.
- Friend feed: Allows users to add a FriendFeed widget to their profiles.
- Twitter: Display your latest tweets on your profile with this twitter widget.
- Google analytics easy: This adds in a section to the admin interface for setting up Google Analytics.
- Auto subscribe group: Allow admin to define default groups for new registering people by just giving groups id in the admin panel.
- Everybody: This plugin add a link to the Elgg Menu to lists all the elgg users in a site, so that members can navigate the full list of members.
Interesting on Making Money from Elgg?
Read this also if you would like to show AdSense or 125×125 banner ads on your Elgg social network, this is an update for the Custom-Index plugin that you will like to have on your social network Application: How to Add Google AdSense and Advertising Banners to your Elgg Powered Social Network!
Hope this is useful for you.
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m not that familiar with plug-ins, but that’s for sharing with me. {:-Deb
Thank you for your comment
I was confused about which plugins I should use on my site. In fact, you can plugin your site to death. Your list provides much needed guidance.
As there are many new plugins each month, it would be useful to re-publish this list every month. That would be a great service to the community. Especially for us not-so-tech-savy users
BTW: The greatest challenge I face is to customize the default look and dashboard of my site. There is no structured guidance about this topic. Maybe you like to post more about this topic
?
@Tester Boy, hi Tester Boy, if you know some CSS and HTML, you can easily alter your site designs- take a look at my website! It was a headache getting it figured out at first but finally I got it,
The landing page for the website is located in [local website folder]\mod\custom_index\index.php
be careful what you change, you need the php elements to remain, but you can put your own background image in the CSS at the top of the page.
@Tester Boy – Thank you for your idea, this is on my list already, but what do you mean by “default look”?
Do you mean the template or theme you are using? or using the default widget plugin?
Thanks for the list! This is very useful. The plugin directory is kind of confusing, even after they made all the changes I suggested.
Looks like you have a nice site. I will definitely be checking it out for more Elgg stuff!
BTW, you should consider the custom 404 plugin for Elgg. I installed it yesterday and it works great. This functionality should be included in the core files.
http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/buggedcom/read/8422/404-error-pages-100
@ Jonathan Kemp – This is a nice add, I haven’t use it myself. thanks for sharing.
Thanks. New to elgg, I wasn’t sure which one to use. I’ve installed most of those above. Thanks for the jumpstart into elgg.
.-= Joe Bailey´s last blog ..Jahbs.com =-.
@Joe Bailey, no problem!
.-= Hesham´s last blog ..The Famous Blogger Who Sold his furniture to Pay his Taxes =-.
Thanks for this.
My friend just installed the site for me:
http://www.ppsz.com
I am going to start reading the elgg docs and learn html now.
We used ver 1.6.1
We are looking for a way to
1) get notified whenever a member joins.
2) send a welcome message to every member that joins
3) upload ads on pages
4) create new pages for external websites
5) Find a good background and logo
Do you know of any resources and plugins for these on Elgg?
The plugins you mentioned are they for 1.6.1 ?
@Amit Mahajan,
Are there some tutorials for elgg?
@Amit Mahajan, I have been a way from Elgg for a few months, I am not sure if these plugins will work for Elgg 1.6.1 or not, but plz check on the plugins section on Elgg website!
I don’t think there is too much tutorials about Elgg, all the good stuff you will find it on Elgg website and groups.
Good luck!
.-= Hesham´s last blog ..The Famous Blogger Who Sold his furniture to Pay his Taxes =-.
Thank you for that list. I need to get my hands on some of those plugins.
.-= Jijo Joy´s last blog ..Car Zone =-.
I have never heard of Elgg before.
-Kai
Doing some browsing and noticed your blog appears a bit confusedin my Safariinternet browser. But fortunately hardly anyone uses it any longer but you may want to look into it.
Thanks.
just what i needed.
Thank you so much for this plugins. They are a great tool and ease my mind into this new world. Its a wonderful plugins by Elgg.
the group plug-in is in alpha, not yet even beta. do you know of any other group management plug-in for elgg? or is that the best? (i *did* try looking around the community plug-in site and the plug-in market, but couldn’t find anything…)
the default group management needs a lot of help!
Elgg has many lack of function, so it’s hard to build a website like Twitter
.-= Jennifer R´s last blog ..Create Your Social Networking Website with Elgg =-.
, I am not sure I will ever get all this right, but will keep trying, I am further along wiht your help
Thank you for sharing! Great post!
.-= mobsguy´s last blog ..My Online Business Strategy System =-.
Still struggling with elgg. It is simple but not yet able to make it looks as I want.
Nice it has also its own plugins..I should try this…
I will go for Mass mail out and google analytics easy plugins.