The document describes the development of Anahita, an open source social web platform. It was created to lower the costs of experimenting with different social web ideas and applications by providing a modular, customizable, scalable and extensible framework. The platform includes features like profiles, social graphing, activity feeds and can run social applications. It is built on top of the Nooku framework and installs on Joomla to provide a powerful CMS and user management system. The goal is to allow anyone to easily create various types of social websites and networks.

1. Social Engine & Development Framework
www.Anahitapolis.com

2. We had some social web
business ideas
Tazzu.com
Distributed Online Learning
Citizen's Journalism
...
and some project ideas
Social Intranet
Social Project Management
...

3. A social web business model requires lots of experimentation
and try and errors.
So we need to reduce the cost of experimenting by
developing a platform that is
Modular such that changing some parts would not affect the other parts
Scalable to accommodate for large number of users
Extendible through third party extensions
Customizable third party developers should be able to change the behavior, look and feel and
even the data structure without hacking the core code
Open Source because we want to share the building blocks with people and tap into the
world of collective innovations.
or else our resources would be drained

4. We need a reusable container that provided all the basic
characteristics commong amongst all the Social Website
Profiles
Social Graphing
Activity Feed
Privacy Management
Messaging (Public, Private, System)
Ability to run Social Apps
Useful APIs for
extending the system
tagging
commenting
bookmarking
etc
This container is called a Social Engine

5. In search for the Holy Grail of Social Web Platforms

6. Studied a whole list of existing web applications and frameworks!

7. Didn't quite like any of them!
You want to know why?

8. Absence of a MVC software development
framework
Didn't like the way they were coded (all top
down or functional programing)
or Spaghetti Coding !!!!!!!
We did however get ideas from the Drupal's node base
architecture and Wordpress's usability. Nice Work!

9. So we decided to build an Open Source Social
Engine for ourselves and for all the people out there
who'd like to experiment with social web projects
without having to break the bank.

10. We named her Anahita after the Persian Goddess of Water, Wisdom,
Fertility, and Love who seeds planet with life and grows communities.
In ancient Persia, water symbolizes knowledge because it is necessary
for life and it flows freely and finds it's way out through even smallest
openings.

11. Not to mention that she looks hot!

12. Anahita Social Engine ™
The Social Engine and Social Applications are
available as installable extensions for Joomla!

13. Anahita Social Engine ™ provides
Profiles & Profile Gadgets
Social Graphing (Lead, Follow, Mutual)
Activity Feed: to publish activity stories
Messaging: public, private, notifications and email
Organic Privacy Management
Ability to run Social Applications (Blogs, Wikis, photos, discussion boards, etc.)
Sub-Containers: Groups, Events, Organization Pages, etc.
APIs for Privacy, Folksonomy, Commenting, and Social Applications development

16. Uses Nooku ™ Framework:
Which provides a Rapid Application Development framework so Anahita ™ extensions
and social applications can be developed.
Nooku ™ Framework implements complete set of software design patterns such as MVC,
Mixins, Proxy, Decorators, Table Gateways and many more
http://www.Nooku.org/en/framework.html

17. Installs on Joomla! ™ which provides:
A powerful template engine
Extensions manager (components, modules, plugins, language packs)
Menu manager
Basic user management and authentication.
a quite powerful CMS
That means we can turn any Joomla powered website into a
social website of some sort.
Social Intranets anyone?

18. Here is the big picture
Ash Sanieyan & Rastin Mehr
developed Anahita
Johan Janssens (co-founder, former
lead developer of Joomla) & Mathias
Verraes developed Nooku

19. Anahita is fully customizable
Almost every part of Anahita is re-rewritable by third party extensions, Thanks to
Nooku
All Requests and Database Transactions are interceptable by third party extensions
Provides many point of integrations or hooks for third party applications
Joomla provides one of the finest template engines available today
HTML/CSS/javascript output of all of the extensions can be overwritten by
developers

20. Lead, Follow, Mutual Social Graphing
Similar to Twitter, Digg, Flickr
more flexible than the enforced mutual
friendships that facebook provides
Terms Lead, Follow, and Mutual can be
changed to work for an appropriate context.
For example:
Teacher, Student, Colleague (Social
Learning website)
Idol, Fan, Friend (photo sharing website)

21. Anahita Social ™ Applications
Are installed as Joomla components. In the future we'd like to deliver some of them
via the web.
Can have multiple gadgets on the user profiles
They can publish stories, notifications and requests on behalf of the user. All of which
that can be localized to the viewer's preferred language setting

22. Some Scalability Examples
Distributed Memory Caching System
Faster Sessions
Database Query Caching
Storage Virtualization
Configurable by site owners
Non Disruptive data migration
Distributed File Systems

23. Container & Sub-Container
Social Engine is the main container
Groups, Events, Organization Pages are Sub-Containers

24. What we have accomplished!

25. An Open Source Platform That is
Modular
Customizable
Scalable
Exendible

26. Lowered Costs
We have also lowered the cost of development and experimentation with social web
projects
Early access to the source code is available via the Partner's Program:
500 USD for one year
http://www.anahitapolis.com/become-a-partner
After the public release Anahita Social Engine ™ will be available for free on the Joomla
extensions directory.
Anahita Social Extensions and Applications will be available on the www.
Anahitapolis.com support and distribution website via paid membership (300$ annual
fee) where we host recent updates, documentation, tutorials, the community, and social
website kits.

27. Social Web != Social Networks
Facebook and Twitter are only two examples of the many
different variations that a social website can be!

28. Software Support & Distribution Website

29. Social Intranet

30. Social Project Management

31. Citizens Journalism

32. Do you want Anahita?
Wait until the public release
Become a partner right now
http://www.anahitapolis.com/become-a-partner
Hire us to build your social web project

33. Thank you!
Special Thanks to Our Partners
Bingo.com
Dioscouri.com
Elund Christensen
Fidus.se
Jentekk.com
Nooku.org
Tazzu.com
www.Anahitapolis.com
@anahitapolis