Any Elgg development books?

Hello all,

I am totally new to Elgg, although I am not really new to PHP/MySQL.

Is there a book out there that explains everything about Elgg, how it works, how to customize it, how to actually be in real control of every detail of it?

I know there is great documentation on this site, but I am trying to get a book that covers it all in one shot.

Thanks.

  • There is one Elgg book available from Packt Publishing:

    http://www.packtpub.com/elgg-social-networking/book

    It was published in 2008.

    Doug Ward

  • This book deals with Elgg 0.9 and will not be useful for 1.XX.

  • Hello all,

    First, thanks for taking the time to reply.

    Well, I know of this book, but I don't see you will even one line of php in it... I mean, it's not a book that will teach you how Elgg works, how to modify things, how to customize it and take control of every detail going on behind the scenes.

    Since my plan is to create a social networking site that should resemble facebook, I believe I will first need to learn the underpinnings of Elgg and only than will I be able to actually administrate such a site.

    Do you agree? Will one need to know all about Elgg to run a big networking site?

    Thanks.

  • Generally, any large software undertaking should start with a good knowledge of the software.  Just like Wordpress or Moodle or any other "ready to deploy" web app, Elgg will give you a great way to start quickly, but if you want your site to stand out from the thousands of other Elgg (or Wordpress or Moodle) sites, you'll have to do some work.

    There is some documentation at http://docs.elgg.org/ and the code reference at http://reference.elgg.org/ but the best way to learn is usually digging into the source code for Elgg itself, or for some of the better plugins out there.  Tidypics is an especially well-constructed plugin.

    And of course, this community is a great resource for help too!

  • Thanks for providing the links. You made it easy for me.