During my work for the FP7 Network of Excellence STELLAR, I have been working on the social networking platform TELeurope. TELeurope is based on the open source software Elgg.
Some of the highlights of TELeurope are:
Complete new landing page
The landing page got a complete face lift. We added a FlashVlog, which will update you with information from the leading members of STELLARNET. We especiall addressed five stakeholder groups and will provide information bundles for quick access to relevant information. The podcast widget on the front page shows you the latests podcasts from the TEL experts.
The “What is hot in TEL” area surves the purpose to show all members on the first page what the most important contents, opportunities, events, etc. are.
Help is at your hand: The topbar contains now a link to a help page. This will give you quick access to all relevant pages and groups to find support on TELeurope.
Login/Register page: The login and register form is now included into a drop down menu on top of every page of TELeurope. The landing page can now include Elgg native widgets and the widgets coming from the Wookie Widget server, enabling a high degree of customization.
Spam Security: To prevent spammers we implemented now a promising solution, which will minimize the acitity of spammers. As with the old version, every new user will be approved by a TELeurope admin. To make it easier for the admins to judge about the credibility of a user, the users have to fill out a shot description about themselves.
Latest Elgg version: This release uses the latest version of Elgg (1.7.7). It includes several bug fixes and security enhancements.
New Features:
Enhanced permission system: The write and read access level can now be set tailored to groups. This means that you can write a blog post, which will only be seen by members of the group. An interesting use case could be the following. A user let call him STELLAR can pre-structure pages for the TELeurope members and grant write access to a group called “STELLAR faciliators”. This means that all members of the group can help to bootstrap pages for example for the Alpine-Rendes-Vouz, the help pages, the benefits of TELeurope page, etc.
Enhanced Profiles: Now it is possible to add further fields to the profile page. More to come soon on how to make the most out of your profile.
Messaging protection: By now every member of TELeurope could write an email to every other user. Now it is possible to restrict the messaging capability only to members, which are friends of you.
Like feature of the river activity: Activities on the river include now a facebook-like Like feature.
Rating of content: Content can now be rated by the members on a 5 scale rating skala.
Enhanced Groups: Groups have now a group blog and you can share bookmarks with the group members. Additionally you can now integrate your RSS feeds into groups. See the VisiTELf plugin description below. And finally you can see all members of the group.
Wookiewidgets: The wookie widget plugin was completely redesigned. You can now scroll through the availalbe widgets or simple use the mouse wheel. It will show the description of the widget. It uses also now the latest features of the wookie connector framework. With this our widget server was updated to the latest version.
Eventspace: The eventspace takes the widget idea a bit further and allows now to show the widgets on a larger space. This will allow the members of TELeurope to personalize a space for their needs for exampe to write collaboratively a paper or to follow a video conference.
VisiTELf: The latest version of the VisiTELf plugin comes with enhanced RSS feed options and visualizations of you feeds. More about this will be introduced by the developer later.
Meet new people: The meet new people page let you explore what you have in common with your friends and serves as starting point to find new interesting people Better
Add this: Sharing on facebook and twitter an Co made easy. Check out the social sharing features on the the left.
Branding: For a strong corporate design of all our STELLAR products, the branding uses now the STELLARNET look and feel. It has now the “Funded by the European Comission” and the the “powerd by STELLARNET” images on every page.
And some more…