Malaga Jack's Blog

Elgg based site breaks the 100,000 registered users site

2010-06-07T17:58:00.000-07:00

FBFKids.com formerly facebookforkids our kind of myspace for kids, social networking site, has just broken the magic 100,000 registered users barrier. FBFKids is Now undoubtedly and unquestionably the largest elgg based social networking site on the planet

The Largest Elgg Powered Sites

2010-02-24T11:58:00.000-08:00

Recent discussions on what are the largest Elgg powered sites got me wonder just what criteria should be used when analyzing a sites size.

First it would seem obvious that the largest sites would be the ones with the most members This however is just too easy to be fudged with phantom registrations. There are even plug-ins(code) to produce test (phantom registrations) that this simple analysis of site size needs to embellished upon.

So if we then add online users into the mix we will get a better feel of the largest elgg powered sites. This however produced another flaw.Lets look at Brighton University as an elggample

When I started studying the figures from Brighton University, mostly presumed by all and sundry to be the biggest elgg powered site (66,000+ registered users and quite often with over 300+ logged in, something strange came to my attention. These 300+ so called logged-in users took well over 24hrs to fill one page on the activity river. WHAT ?????????????????? clearly something is not right. So we now also have to take site activity into the mix.

So we now have our criteria for analyzing elgg powered web sites is
Registrations, users online, and site activity
as far as these criteria are concerned, site activity is clearly the most important.
Why ?
It is the only criteria that denotes that the site is working and being used. Again when studying Brighton's stats our best guess to explain the large number of online users compared to the extremely low site activity suggests that anyone wanting to use a computer at the university must sign in which also counts them as being logged-in to the elgg powered part of their web site even though they never even visit or utilise that part of website (Brighton is not just an elgg powered site but has many other areas as well.

Some interesting stats on the sites that where analyzed

*See Notes*

Brighton
66,000+ registered users (*1)
Average daily registration increase 1.9
Ave online users (Peak times) 300+
Ave site river time (peak) >19hrs+

fbfteens.com
3300+ registered users
Average daily registration increase 27
Ave online users (Peak times) 12
Ave site river time (peak) 2.5hrs

Elgg.org
27505+ registered users
Average daily registration increase 42 (*2)
Ave online users (Peak times) 15
Ave siteriver time (peak) 2hrs

FBFKids.com
70,000+ registered users
Average daily registration increase 300+
Ave online users (Peak times) 120+
Ave site river time (peak) 2minutes

Notes*

1* Brighton's registrations appear to be force as well as there logged on count
What does this mean Well at an ave of 2 new registration/day how did they acquire 66000+ members Quite simply anyone who registers at the university itself must clearly be given automatically a community registration also It appears that to utilise any part of the universities computer system (google the net etc) will automatically log you into the community even if you never go to the elgg part of there site (Expect a sudden increase of 20,000 new user Aug Sept time 2010)

2* Elgg.org
Registrations at the the elgg powered community part of elgg.org have been falling drastically over the past 8 months and the community itself is shrinking.
In Aug 2009 elgg's average increase of new registered users was approaching the 75+/day mark, by Nov 2009 this figure had dropped to 55/day, and as of late February 2010 this figure had dropped again to 42/day, almost a 50% decrease. This maybe a response to the shrinking of the elgg.orgs site itself. Over the past 10 months elgg has been systematically amputating parts of their site. They have removed "the wire, "twitter", blogs, the "about me" text area in the profiles, etc.. Quite simply the only things they have left are groups and pages.
Why is Elgg.org doing this ? Well their are many possible answers and I may write a further Blog post on this, however it would be purely speculation.

Elgg versus Dolphin

2009-05-02T03:13:00.000-07:00

I've tried dolphin, it's a very mature software package, but with limitations. The free version has adds, and it is not open source. Changing the script to fit your needs is impossible with the free version. This kind of goes against the grain of community software.
Buying the source code cost well over $1000 last time I checked. On the plus side there is a very healthy amount of plug ins and themes available. and if your will to fork out the cash, you can have the source code and no adds.
The smart money these days is on elgg. Elgg is a no cost fully customisable open source community social networking package. It is released under the GNU licencing system. In the core elgg package you receive a fully functional social networking software package. It is then up to you to customise this to your own requirements by installing modular plugins.
Elgg is not as mature as dolphin, but my bet is it will surpass boonex (dolphin) sometime later this year. Already there are well over 500 plugins, and a huge community dedicated to building and improving this project. The growth rate of this community social net working package is huge you can see a sample at our children's site http://fbfkids.com/
and or visit Elgg here http://elgg.org/
or visit boonex dolphin here http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/

This is an update
As the comments below state Dolphin has now released their source code. They have also dropped their price to $299.00 Probably in a responce to the competition of Elgg.
Be aware that open source doe not mean free or GNU.
The comment below about stripping out the adds would be tantamount to theft. Most hosting accounts will delete your website if they become aware of this practice without warning.

2009-01-22T04:49:00.001-08:00

Hello

2009-01-21T12:41:00.001-08:00

This is mostly a testy blog for things I create on the internet