Can I add a few Elgg features into my existing web design or is it all or nothing?

I have a design already done for my website and just discovered Elgg and wanted to add a few of its features into my website.  Looking at the documentation, it looks like it kind of does everything for you, including the design.  I was hoping to use my existing design and just have a div I place a blog in or a friends list in.  Is this possible or do I have to design the entire site in Elgg with views, plugins, and themes.  I'm also a little confused as to which I should be looking at to create my own site design: views, plugins, or themes?

  • Elgg likes to take over your whole web application stack. That is the preferred way of using it. In order to get a friends list or something you would have to let Elgg manage your user authentication and database.

    I don't know exactly what your web design is, but you could write a plugin for Elgg that includes your existing pages.

    Every Elgg theme is a plugin. Themes are just plugins that focus on changing the look-and-feel, rather than adding a new content type. It is only by convention that we call certain plugins "themes." This is different than some other platforms that actually have distinct ways of defining themes and plugins (e.g. Wordpress).

    Plugins can contain "views" that modify or override Elgg's default output. A theme typically overrides the css views.

Beginning Developers

Beginning Developers

This space is for newcomers, who wish to build a new plugin or to customize an existing one to their liking