Elgg vs Buddypress

These days I am extremely and exhaustively testing 2 open source social networking softwares. This thing is actualy nailing my head. I still cant make a choice between these two. Here are some of the Pros and cons of Buddypress and Elgg I have come across so far

http://galaxiess2.blogspot.com/2012/06/buddypress-vs-elgg-case-study-and-best.html

  • Ok, there is something that bugs me from that blog, which is misleading:

    12. Buddypress has the most powerfull and meaningful add ons though its small in number. Buddyspess wins with quality over quantity. Most plugins you find at the Elgg site are language packs and only a few from the rest stand out from the crowd

    I would like to point out developers like Matt, Ishouvik, Ismayil, Brett, Dhrup, Mike Vazco, Webgalli, Arck, Jeroem, ColdTricks, etc had released very powerful plugins for elgg 1.7 and recently for elgg 1.8 In fact, I've never seem such enthusiasm from developers to release plugins for elgg 1.8

    2. More than 1500 plugins + themes though most are outdated

    Not quite. New themes, better themes are being released for elgg 1.8 as well as plugins.

    That 'review' seems a little bit bias. Elgg is powerful and well supported. Just recently there was a new elgg release to fix several bugs. Developers also release updated plugins.

     

    Rodolfo Hernandez

    Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison

  • Recently, I tried to post a new thread/topic in the forum in my local Elgg installation and found that there is a "Private Access " option for it as well. I thought my self "how stupid, Who want to answer there own questions without igniting a discussion around it?" this thing isnt flexible. Just a point of view

  • Elgg Plugin Developers is Currently Busy no new plugins updates

  • I think you are confusing the concept of "flexible" with "set up exactly to your specifications".

    Is Elgg flexible? Yes, very.

    Is it set up exactly to your specifications? It appears not.

  • Compared to other open source scripts like mybb, Elgg is just like a thin wafer. What they have developed for so many years?

    Am I rumbling around here so laud? No, I am just desperate like the rest

  • "Is it set up exactly to your
    specifications? It appears not"

    this is from an Elgg veteran. The term "You" is used here for a broad and a generic purpose. It can be you, me, or someone else from the rest of us from around the world

  • Thanks for your words.1 thing i've come to realize is that you cant have it all,specially when the package is free.We all have on need or the other to be met on this elgg platform.I want to believe that elgg developers, like some of us here, have their primary jobs/ businesses so they cant devote all their time developing plugins that sooth your needs.e.g the picture viewing plugins have no recent version. 

    I still propose a kind of little voluntary donation to help those who develop so we can have what we want.

  • I can't say about BuddyPress but I love Wordpress. 

    Elgg on the other hand, I took about 1 year to learn the ropes, it was difficult and still is but you get the hang of it when you've worked with it enough. Unfortunately, updates are horrible and do kill most plugins.

    I still come here from time to time because developers here would some times help out which is good. 

    The thing I have to say about elgg is that it does not have SEO titles, combining plugins are difficult because theres just too many plugins that won't work together with others leaving your site dead.

    If you are looking to stay long on a shared-hosting platform then be prepared to be shut down by your host for too many cpu/memory usage. VPS is probably the best to start then move on to dedicated. I mean Elgg probably needs better caching and other things because it can't really be supported on a shared-hosting environment - and people on here know that.

    I'm not sure if it is true with other people but your database size can be huge like over 1GB with like even 10k members. 

    I'll probably try Buddypress to see how it is but that's all the problems I've ran into with Elgg. However, I think SEO is a huge thing because my Wordpress site is tops on Google ranks now while my Elgg site is not even found. And I started elgg 1 year before the Wordpress site so I have confidence in the WP developers.

    Of course I'm not a developer so I'm only speaking from a user's prespective. And what that person says at the end of the post about users either building their own software and stuff is basically true. When I look at top elgg site lists, most are either inactive or completely gone within a couple of years. If you don't have the money and generate enough to hire developers and server support your elgg site won't hold together for the average user. Just my 2 cents.

  • My primary priorities are

    1. A social network
    2. Content

    if Elgg isnt SEO friendly I am out of here. On the other hand buddypress has a dedicated SEO plugin and Wordpress is SEO friendly itself