New to Elgg Want Help

I am a memeber of an application development group who is planning about using Elgg  for developing an online academic network as a part of out final year college network.

 

We want to introduce some restrictions in the present scenario available in Elgg 1.8.1 and further.

For example we want to completely remove the concept of friends.

We want something users can only interact over groups and the same are allowed to be created by few people.

Similiarly we have few more restrictions..

 

Can anyone help how we can go about it as we are all new to PHP programming.

If we well get assistance then only we can move further and get our project passed.