Saturday, April 2, 2011

Elgg - A Gentle Introduction (with GSoC 2011)

Well, i started the hunt for GSoC in 2007, and atlast found myself comfortable to participate this year. I've hardly 3 days left to submit the proposal, which i've not started working on. Before i continue, I would to introduce my new friend. Elgg, an OpenSource Social networking platform.

I was introduced to Elgg, last month by Google (Search), and wow, i found it on GSoC, and i started digging into it, its source code, made a couple of patches (didn't submit it though). This post is for getting comments regarding the proposal, that i'm going to make.

Elgg has a large and vibrant community online, many ppl contributing towards it, developing it, etc. Things going on good no problem at all. So, I thought, if Eucalyptus (Cloud OS - like in Ubuntu Server editions) is insipred by non-standard Amazon's Features for its S3, etc. Y not get inspired by Facebook for Elgg?

So, my proposal is going to be on making a solid platform for users to develop apps for Elgg powered community websites around the globe.

Imagine: A single app made can be used on any number of websites, round the globe and target more number of users (than Facebook.. may be?!).

It can be further extended (I would to work on this too), if multiple Elgg installs (on the internet) can communicate with each other, then a global presence for a user can be achieved. May be, Facebook wants to buy over Elgg some time in future, or may be start an Online Social N/W war?

I just love the code base of Elgg so much, I've decided to work towards this at any cost. Be it, getting selected for GSoC or not, I'm working on it, and the work has already begun. If i dont make into GSoC, you can see my Elgg (sense of freedom), evolving into iBlue Social soon.

Actual details, work tasks, designs, etc. coming soon.

Update: I've asked the Elgg Dev. community for their comments. If you happen to read the post, plz post your comments here too; I'll be following both. ;)

- Ashwanth Kumar

No comments:

Post a Comment