Why create your own private social network when there are already lots of websites available? People would like to create their own social network when they want to interact only with a certain group of people.
Social networking websites have predominantly occupied the web world and play a vital role in building business networks and new connections.
Social networking websites like Orkut, Facebook, Google Plus, no longer keep us confined within a small circle. We get to interact with a lot of fresh minded people and these social networking websites change the way we perceive things.
But all this happens outside your organization, how about building healthier relationships and bridging communication gaps within your organization? For this you need something called Enterprise Social Networking Software that could help you to build a private social network. This will help you to interact and build bonds with your peers within your company spanning across geographical locations.
Create Your Own Private Social Network Using Elgg
Though there are lot of options available for you to create your own private social network, Elgg is recommended.
Elgg is an award winning, open source, social networking engine which is being used by renowned organizations like NASA, Wiley Publishing, World Bank, UNESCO and many more. Do not forget to take a look at their showcase that displays some of the other cool websites that use Elgg.
Installing Elgg on Windows
- Before we start installing Elgg we need to do some basic environment setup, so let’s first do that.
- Download and install XAMPP (ignore this step if you are already using one)
- Open the C:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf file and ensure if you have uncommented the highlighted line in the below screenshot by removing the # symbol before it.
- Open the C:\xampp\php\php.ini file and ensure the arg_separator.output variable is assigned as shown in the below screenshot
- Download Elgg (3.68 MB)
- My XAMPP installation points to the local path as shown below:
C:\xampp\htdocs\
- Create a folder inside htdocs called Elgg and extract the downloaded zip file contents into the folder.
- Now create another folder called data inside htdocs. Now you should have two folders inside htdocs and your folder structure should look as shown below:
- The data folder is required to store files like photos, profile icons, uploaded files, etc that you use within Elgg.
- The last step is to create a MySQL database. Use your favorite database editor and create an empty database.
- I would recommend MySQL workbench.
- Launch MySQL workbench and click create a new schema in the connected server icon (or) use the below query in a SQL tab to create the database.
create database elggdb
In the above SQL Query elggdb is the database name.
- We have now prepared the environment for installing Elgg, now browse to the below URL from your browser. The port number may vary depending on your XAMPP configuration.
http://localhost:81/elgg/install.php
- You should now see Elgg installation welcome screen. You are just six steps away from setting up your own private social networking engine. Click Next.
- The requirement check screen will check if your server’s PHP, web server and database requirements are suffice to run the installation. Click Next.
- In the database installation screen, provide your MySQL username, password and provide the name of the database that you had created earlier. Leave the Database Host and table prefix values as it is and click Next.
- You should see a message in the Configure site screen that says “Database has been installed.” Enter the Site Name that you desire, email address and enter the data directory URL. Leave rest of the options as it is and click Next.
- In the Create Admin account screen enter the display name, email address, username, password and click Next.
- You should see a message that says “Admin account has been created.” That’s it, you have successfully completed your installation.
- Click the Go to site button and you will be taken to the Administration or back-end page of Elgg.
Features of Elgg
Let’s quickly have a glance at some of the features of this awesome social networking engine,
- You can invite friends or coworkers to join you on this network, provide a list of email addresses and just hit send button to bring them on to your own private social network.
- You can set access level to the content that you post or upload on Elgg.
- You can add files, bookmarks or blog post and share them with your friends or coworkers. If you are running a private project then these features could be really helpful.
- You can send private messages to users within your network.
- You can configure notification settings on per user basis level.
- The administration dashboard quickly shows who is online, list of new users, content statistics, etc.
- You can create groups and invite friends or coworkers within Elgg to that group.
- You can create Group Discussions and debate on a topic.
- You can also allow users to authenticate their Elgg account using Twitter.
New to Elgg? Create your own private social network using Elgg and let us know how it went.
Already using Elgg? What do you like the most?
So, could ELGG be used to create something like Facebook, or a myspace alternative online for anyone to join?
I would like to see a place exist that does not extort peoples private information, or violate their privacy as FB and others do.
A social network that is truly free, and social, and people can disclose as little or as much of their private information as they wish and are not forced to disclose their full names or phone numbers. Being an old timer on the Internet and startups, I have done a lot of what Facebook, google+, and myspace are doing before they did it, and I suspect pretty much most of their patents do not hold on me, since I did it before them and publicly done too, and it actually makes their patents invalid. They got big, the various places I worked with did not, but I own all rights. I am more than happy to make those rights become publicly owned/available and take down the control FB, G+, and myspace and similar type of dominance and abuse of people social privileges. All those social networks are extorting info of people’s private lives and forcing themselves upon people, and now demanding more private information because they think they have power. That was not the original intention.
I will check back for any replies.
Hi,
The original intent of this article was to create a private social network and not for building “Yet another Social Network”.
This article was intended to provide a solution for people like you who do not want to disclose their sensitive information online. When you create a private social network you decide who should be a part of your online network, once you say anyone can join and take it to public, I think that will spoil the whole purpose.
I am curious about one thing, if you wanted to a part of big social network without disclosing your original identity how do you expect people to identify or see you as a genuine user? I perfectly agree that you don’t have to give out your phone numbers but name and email id are basic information that helps to uniquely identify you.
I neither support nor stand against social networks; I just take the best of what is provided and just keep moving. Thanks for bringing up this wonderful question, have a great day.
That’s really interesting Sri but the setting up of the whole things makes me a little nervous.
I’ve been wanting to do something similar to a Facebook type group but I don’t like the way it’s set up. I might have to check this out and see if this would work much better. I think I would have to see it in action before coming to that conclusion though but thank you for sharing this with us. I had no idea you could create your own and in a way that’s really pretty cool.
Have a great weekend and thanks again.
~Adrienne
Hello Adrienne, that’s really cool to know that you were looking out for something like this. Looks like I read your mind
You can try this on your local computer before you can give it a go, all you need is XAMPP.
Simply follow the instructions and you should have your own private social network within minutes. Let me know if you are struck somewhere, would be glad to help you out. Thanks for dropping by, have a wonderful weekend.
Good aricle, Sri, but why would you use Elgg? There are much better (both in terms of design and available tools) free solutions from Bitrix24 and its clones to Mango or even Yammer.
Hi Dand,
The primary reason for picking Elgg is because it is Open Source. Like you rightly pointed out Bitrix24, Mango and Yammer are definitely much better in terms of design and their integration capabilities with other enterprise applications. But either these applications are SAAS (Software as a Service) based or you need buy a commercial license to self-host them.
Even if it is free they have some limitations in terms of storage (Mango only provides 1 GB) or number of users (Bitrix24 free plan allows only 12 users) who can use it. Elgg on the other hand is completely free and is being used by renowned organizations. Thanks for asking, have a wonderful day.