Should I choose elgg?

Hi,

I want to create a professional looking social network. Whatever if i finish it in some month or years. I found that hiring a developper is extremely expensive. And I don't have developper's skills (i know a bit html and php -i know enough to google php function depending on my needs-).

I also found that oxwall social networks provide very interesting plugins wich will make it looks like almost exactly what I expected it to be. But it will still need some customizations.

I thought that elgg is easier to customize so I wonder wich one should I use. If i paied for oxwall i won't improve my elgg experience so i won't become ellg developper. If I choose oxwall I may loose the avalability to highly customize my social network once it will get bigger. And If I choosed elgg I may never ever release that social network in my life. I don't just want a buddy social network i want a good one, not perfect but well coded, safe with good enough designs.

so I'm waiting for advices. Thanks

ps: jomsocial might also be a solution for me

  • Maybe plugins for Elgg are a bit more difficult to find here on the site but I think there are at least equal plugins (in numbers and functionality) available. When I looked at Oxwall last (a while ago I have to admit) the number of available plugins were much lower (they count some of the plugins also multiple times within different categories) and quite a lot of them were not available for free / under a non-commercial license.

    You shouldn't underestimate the advantage of using plugins that are available under a open-source license like the GPL license. Sometimes you might not get exactly what you need (but in a lot of cases you do). But with a free license you can customize the plugin on your own much better. If you purchased a plugin under a commercial license you can't seek help (as you are not allowed to share the code) and in case the original developer ends his support you have lost as you can't seek help from anyone else who would be allowed to continue the development.

    Oxwall might look better out-of-the-box. But a good theme plugin for Elgg could change this first impression. I don't know how easy it is to customize Oxwall. Maybe it's better pre-configured but then much harder to customize later on. The start of customizing Elgg (if you want to do more than just using existing plugin which is not that difficult at all) might be a bit hard. But in the long run you can achieve basically everything you want with Elgg.

    I had to decide which platform to chose (also between Oxwall and Elgg basically) a couple of years ago. And I'm quite happy that I've chosen Elgg by now.

  • From my experience i started with this framework only 6 months ago, and have created a social media website with this. I have found it does help having CSS and HTML knowledge and some design skills aswell. My advice from what i have learned and where i got started was that i looked at what others had acheived with the ELGG framework in the showcase. Plus look around their websites, my theory then was if someone else has done it then so can i (well give it a go anyway) However i also had 2 years development skills before using this framework. Take it step by step, you can always work things out and the help on here is amazing from the poeople that use it and have miles more experience than myself.

    As for the other framework you mentioned this is the first i have heard of it but Elgg is great to work with. If you wish to see what i acheived with this mysite is www.mygrassroots.co.uk but there are far more advanced sites in the showcase here http://community.elgg.org/showcase