One of the more complicated parts of an Elgg website to work on is the public facing, non social side of the site - the index page, and any related pages.
A solution to that maybe to create a group that is then used as the public facing side of the site.
This group will be no different in opperation to any other group and would benefit from the more customiseable functions I talk about in Pages and Widgets. However, the admin would be able to set the website so that the landing page is the front page of this group. In doing so, the group would be removed from the Group Listing and also would have its displayed title removed. Only admins of specially invited members who have an editor role would be able to be members of this group and be able to post in the blog and so on (comments disabled so that it is just a news component).
The group would also get use of a Login Widget if the admins want to place a login on the front page or one of the related pages.
This group would have no discussion component. Since this group is sitewide, maybe it should get special Meta functions that allow the setting of the web site meta tags and how they work.
From that point on it is simply a question of customising the group main page and creating a menu
Now the site admins are able to add sitewide pages and system through this group without compromising the functionality of any community groups.
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