I discuss the history of Elgg, where it is, and where it's going.

1. Elgg: Then, Now, and The
Future
November 19th, 2009
Brett Profitt – Curverider Lead Developer
brett@elgg.com | @brettprofitt

2. THANKS!
:)

3. Who is this guy?
● Brett Profitt.
● Gahanna (Columbus), Ohio, USA.
● Lead Developer at Curverider.
● BME in Music Education, BA in Japanese from
Ohio State University.
● Music teacher, pre-K teacher, web developer,
linux guy, OSS supporter.
● Eye color: Green.
● Astrological Sign: Aquarius.

4. What is an Elgg?
● A city in Switzerland. ● An elk.
The leading OSS social
networking platform!!

5. Elgg Then...
● Dave Tosh's Master's Project.
● “Spontaneous learning without traditional roles.”
● Partnered with Ben Werdmuller.
● 0.6-0.9 released in 2004 – 2007.
● Eduspaces, Brighton, Rucku.

6. Elgg Classic

7. Blah, blah, blah.
So what?

8. Elgg Goes To School!
● Lessons learned in 0.x.
● BIG DEAL in education.
● Elgg used everywhere.
● Needs better code organization.
● Needs better a plugin API.
● Needs a complete rewrite.

9. Elgg 1.0 (Still Then)
● Elgg 1.0 released August 2008.
● Rewritten from the ground up.
● Incompatible with 0.X
● No upgrade path.
● (Sorry...won't happen again.)
– (Really! I promise.)
– (Don't hate.)
● Some old pros.
● Some new faces.

10. Elgg 1.0

12. FF Facts
● Elgg 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.5.
● Speed improvements.
● Bug fixes.
● Changing developers.

14. Elgg: The Next Generation
Dave Pete
Steve
Nick Brett

15. Elgg Now
● New core license (GPL2/MIT).
● More open core development process.
● Community interaction and collaboration.
● Pedro Prez (holla!), Cash Costello, Justin Richer.

16. Changes in Elgg 1.7
● Coming out soon!
● Please help test!
● Entity functions standardized and rewritten.
● UTF8 support in database.
● Users' file storage GUID-based.
● Services API improved and bugs fixed.
● New fulltext search (Joint dev with MITRE).

17. Elgg in the Future!
● Speed improvements.
● Better caching for views, entities, metadata.
– Memcache, APC.
● More efficient SQL.
● Denormalize metadata/metastrings tables.
● Query Class.
$entities = new ElggRecordset('entities');
foreach ($entities as $entity) {
var_dump($entity->getType());
// No out of memory errors!!
}

18. Let's be social
● Questions?
● Comments?
● Can I take a video?

19. Elgg: Then, Now, and The
Future
November 19th, 2009
Brett Profitt – Curverider Lead Developer
brett@elgg.com | @brettprofitt