If you would like to be a sponsored provider, there will now be a fee that you may "pay" in your ElggX points.

You can earn these points for valuable contributions (we moderate), or you can simply buy them. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Point fees not set yet. Highest 5 bidders will get placement and we will cycle through weekly. 

Feedback appreciated.

According to a report released in April 2009 by The Nielsen Company, “Becoming a mother is a dramatic inflection point and drives women to the Web in search of advice and a desire to connect with others in their shoes.”

Does this mean a social networking site for mothers is the way to go?

I’d urge you to think even more focused. “Mothers” isn’t a niche. Sure being a mother has its challenges, but look for more specific shared challenges.

A great example of a niche within the broader category of “mothers?”

NavyforMoms.com a site developed by the US Navy for mothers who have kids serving in the Navy.

Does this fit my definition of a niche social network?

A group of people passionate about a shared experience, situation, goal, or pastime, but who don’t have an existing venue to easily connect with one another.

Here’s the answer in a post by one happy member that pretty much says the same thing:

“I have been on this site for over a year now. The support and love here is something I can’t get in my personal life. Other then my own family most people just don’t understand what it is like to have children (young men and women) in the Navy or any branch of the military… That’s why I wanted to thank every mom, dad, girlfriend and grandmother on this site. It is such a blessing to have someone to talk to that is going though the same feelings and problems that you are.”

With nearly 33,000 members, the site has found a solid niche where members are facing a shared experience, one that is no doubt filled with confusion, fear, and a real need to connect with others going through the same situation.

Read more: http://www.startasocialnetwork.com/blog/

I love coming across rich and vibrant online social networks that are cultivating niche communities. One favorite I found a while back is Sneakerplay, a social network for people passionate about their sneakers.

These are true sneakerheads who appreciate the art, history, and prestige around their “kix,” and collect special releases and limited edition shoes like other people collect playing cards or fine wine. Members can post photos of their collection, favorites, and create a wish list.

This is a referral-based community, so it’s invite only. Still, it’s thriving, with ongoing “battles” where members challenge other to sneaker-vs-sneaker show-downs, with the pair garnering the most community votes the winner. Profiles proudly display each member’s win average and number of battles waged.

When you think about it, it’s not surprising that a multi-billion dollar industry can fuel so much passion, and that this passion finds a community online. Still, it’s always a pleasure to peak inside a community with so much focus.

So, as you’re considering (or re-considering) your own social network’s focus, keep Sneakerplay in mind. Remember that where there’s passion–no matter how seemingly obscure–there’s community. There’s power in niche markets.

Read more: http://www.startasocialnetwork.com/blog/#ixzz0kSh6OWEb

I am writing here after so long. Actually was busy with new search implementation. Elgg 1.7 really did a great job of full text search. From full text search point of view, there is nothing to do. But what for the high traffic elgg sites. Entity Attribute Database Model could be hell for the search of 1000s of records. We are dealing with high traffic site and that's why i am always digging for the available options.

We have implemented elgg search plugin based on Apache Solr.  And it is asolutely what i was looking for. Great search capabilities. Particularly for high traffice sites. Yet plugin is under development. Almost 70% is done. I will soon release this plugin to the community.

Here you can read more about Elgg + Solr implementation. http://tarunjangra.com

Our video tutorial series is now live: http://www.elggexchange.com/videos 

What would you like us to do next?

Comments welcome!

@izap Yes, quality plugins is our goal - so we can't wait to see what you deliver!

Only the best plugins and themes will hosted here. 

The EX Community will know that anything they download here is guaranteed quality (the general community requires too much time is spent sorting through poorly coded or outdated plugins, which often conflict with each other.

If we are unfamiliar with a plugin (or theme), we always test it out to ensure that our standards are met. 

Furthermore, our plugins  area has improved functionality by allowing the following: 

• users can rate a plugin
   
• filter enhancements: have you ever tried to find a great plugin by sorting it by number of downloads, only to find that the majority of those plugins with the most downloads (most popular) are outdated? We fixed that problem with our filter algorithm -- give it a try. 

• Users can vote for a plugin (heat it up or cool it down) so the highest quality plugins and themes are always on the first page. 

• we count actual downloads as opposed to page views, which will be astronger signal of quality.

• Plugin updates do not create a new page for that plugin version(resulting in 5 pages for 1 plugin, each with its own fixes, updates and comments. Such fragmentation in the documentation for a plugin is more time consuming for both the user and developer and causes confusion among eager downloaders. Everything for a plugin will now be contained on the same page.

We are applying our point system to encourage this activity: users who submit a plugin will get 100 points for uploading a (approved) plugin and 10 points for every positive vote. Therefore users who upload the best plugins are *very* quickly rewarded (1000 downloads @ 100 points each will earn 100,000 points!).

Similarly, users who upload "crap"  plugins and themes can actually lose points for negative votes (if the plugin is even approved by our team). 

While we value the individual, we believe it is more important to provide value to the community as a whole. We hope you feel the same way about our business model but we welcome constructive criticism, which we will take very seriously (we personally respond to all the feedback we receive via our blue feedback button on the left side) and make any logical adjustments that did not occur to us (no one is perfect!) - remember, we are still pre-beta :)

 
We are very close to implementing our point redemption system which, among other things, will require users to maintain a certain level of points to engage in our "premium" activities -  so if you are still below 1000 points, I highly suggest engaging the community for 10 minutes in order to ensure that no limits will be placed on your account when this system is put into place in 2010. Do not misunderstand our reasoning for this - read the following:

WE WANT TO BE VERY CLEAR ON OUR "PREMIUM" CONTENT RESTRICTIONS:

We feel very strongly about preserving the Open Source spirit of elgg, and we do not want our efforts to commercialize elgg to undermine our passion for free knowledge and software. Please keep this in mind when you read the following bullet points:

• Uers who contribute to the elgg community with their comments and other valuable suggestions will soon be able to "purchase" all of our "premium" services with their points.

• We will never ask users to pay for **our** plugins. We do not accept payments of any kind; all we ask is for you to "pay it forward" and help out the people the help you.
   
• On a similar note, we also feel very strongly about the commercial potential of elgg and feel that keeping everything free will only hurt the user in the end with lower quality plugins, themes and less people willing to share their work.
   
• In order for Elgg to succeed in this competitive industry, commercialization is not an option. We allow all our providers to sell their plugins and themes on our marketplace, with one catch: in order to upload a plugin or theme for monetary gain, you must "spend" a proportional value of your points (therefore we are making a compromise - the provider earns money and the community benefits from the help that developers provide in order to earn those points. 
   
• However, we do understand that not every provider has the time or passion for such things, and allow monetary payments for "premium" services (each premium service will have a small fee and the revenue this produces will go towards our "Custom Plugin Development Fund," which will allow users to get the plugin they would like without having to pay for it! 
  
  
• Users will be able to suggest new plugins and vote for other people's plugin ideas. We will allow developers to bid on those plugins and they will be paid for by the developers who choose to share their money rather than intellectual knowledge. 
   

We think this is an elegant solution that will satisfy both "Open Source" fanatics and developers who feel that Elgg needs to embrace a more commercial business model in which developers get paid for their hard work. 

We hope you agree and look forward to your feedback!

All the best,

Shane

We now have the ability to share plugins!

Upload your favorites! Full Feature list will be detailed as soon as we add the ability to buy and sell - just a few more days!

We just noticed that all of you who used the tell-a- friend feature were not rewarded for doing so - the rewards stayed pending since two weeks ago. So if any of you notice a few thousand extra points, you know why :) Thanks for the support!

Got A Question? Ask Us!

http://www.elggexchange.com/pg/faq/ask

Although you should use Elgg's built-in data access methods in your plugins, it is often useful to query the MySQL database to see exactly what is being stored. Unfortunately, Elgg's Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) data model requires complicated queries using a lot of JOINS to get meaningful results. I'll share a few MySQL queries I've written to make this easier. I recommend the MySQL Administrator with its Query Browser for directly querying the database. But the SQLyog Community Edition is also good for running queries.

I frequently need to run an initial query to get the guids for a type of object. Lets say I need to look up the guids for all file objects. The following query eliminates the need for a seperate query on the elggentity_subtypes table.

-- List Elgg file entities
SELECT * FROM elggentities
LEFT JOIN elggentity_subtypes
ON elggentities.subtype = elggentity_subtypes.id
WHERE elggentity_subtypes.subtype = 'file';

After I have the guid for a ElggFile entity, I'll want to query for its metadata. Here is where things get complicated. The names and the values of the metadata are stored as strings in the elggmetastrings table, but first you need to look up their id numbers in the elggmetadata table. Even then you can't match up the name strings with the value strings to figure out the value of an entity attribute. This is the most annoying aspect of this EAV data model. I came up with a subquery to make it easier. You just need to plug in the entity guid from the previous query.

-- List metadata names and values for an ElggObject
SELECT elggmetadata.id,
(SELECT elggmetastrings.string FROM elggmetastrings WHERE elggmetastrings.id = elggmetadata.name_id) AS Name_String,
(SELECT elggmetastrings.string FROM elggmetastrings WHERE elggmetastrings.id = elggmetadata.value_id) AS Value_String
FROM elggmetadata
WHERE elggmetadata.entity_guid = 4;

That covers most of the queries regarding Elgg entities that you'll need. However, you'll probably want to run many queries about Elgg users so I have several queries for that too. The first thing you'll need to do is look up a user's guid:

-- all users
SELECT * FROM elggentities WHERE type = 'user';

To see all the metadata for an user, just use the previous query, except replace the entity guid with the user guid which is actually a type of entity guid. The following query allows you to determine who are the admins on the site:

-- List users with admins. Admin = 1 is the site admin
SELECT DISTINCT elggusers_entity.guid, elggusers_entity.name, elggusers_entity.username, elggusers_entity.email,
(SELECT string FROM elggmetastrings WHERE id =
(SELECT value_id FROM elggmetadata
LEFT JOIN elggmetastrings
ON elggmetadata.name_id = elggmetastrings.id
WHERE elggmetastrings.string = 'admin'
AND elggmetadata.entity_guid = elggusers_entity.guid)) AS Admin
FROM elggusers_entity
LEFT JOIN elggmetadata
ON elggmetadata.entity_guid = elggusers_entity.guid

While you should not use these queries in code, you should find them useful as you troubleshoot your code. Often the database does not contain the data that you expect to be there. You should always do a reality check to maintain your sanity as you struggle with Elgg.