The new version of Elgg is the best solution for a closed social network that I have seen so far. It was super easy to install - typical PHP/MySQL install that involved setting up a database and uploading files. I did need to manually enter some info in my apache conf since it tried to write an .htaccess file that my apache configuration was set to ignore. But that was easy to spot and within minutes I was up and running.

At first glance it is clean and simple (in the style of the old one) with a bit more AJAX and the nice large sans serif fonts associated with many web 2.0 apps.

I jumped right to my dashboard where I was able to easily edit the widgets that appeared for me on my front page.

Once populated with some content, it dynamically updates the latest activity at a glance.

Before editing too much I went to the administrative console to manage plugins. The new Elgg architecture is plugin (mod) based. It can ship with the bare minimum or a "full" set of plugins. I chose the "full" set, which in fact actually does not include all of the plugins available on the site. I needed to go to the site to get the "walled garden" plugin so that I could make the site available only to those who I wanted it. By default anyone can register. The walled garden essentially takes all information off of the front page and disables the register link. I found this "full" set a little confusing. I don't know why they can't include the walled garden by default, since you can enable/disable plugins from the administrative console if you don't want to use any of them.

Once that was done I went back to creating content. Creating a blog is easy (particularly with the TinyMCE plugin).

Uploading files is also easy. And when I uploaded pictures it recognized them as such and made an album for me.

Even for a closed site it is nice to have multiple groups and separate areas in a social networking site, and Elgg delivers there. You can create groups, with private messaging areas, forums, etc. very easily.

I found a few things a bit confusing in Elgg. Like the fact that friendship can be asymmetric, that is once you friend someone that doesn't mean that you are their friend. That needs to be done separately. Once you have a friend you can send them messages like in most other systems.

I also found the status updating a little confusing. I thought this would be in my profile by default but you need to add it separately as a widget. Then you need to understand that it is editable via nifty AJAX even though it looks static.

Other things that weren't well in Elggville were the access control methods. There were some confusing things about what "private" means in different contexts. And I would occasionally get some errors posting information when the settings weren't allowed.

In the end Elgg is excellent, but I have a few reservations about where it is going. Is it going to be a bare bones social network that you are supposed to build on? What will the commercial Elgg be?

These questions will likely be answered soon, but I think that Elgg is very promising, and I'd probably even choose it now as my number 1 choice for a closed social network.

Then I wound up checking out Worpress. I was setting up a simple website that I would be using with a few other people and decided I wanted to do a little experimenting. I wanted something that would be super simple and wouldn't take a lot of time to install or manage. I was intrigued by Expression Engine, and read a lot of good things about it online. But when I looked at the set of features that the free version had, it didn't look any better than a lot of other alternatives.

I had also read a lot good things about Wordpress. It had a famous "5 minute install", lots of plugins and styles and an active community. I couldn't resist the 5 minute install, and got the first install it much less than that (though I had to reinstall in a different directory, by which time at least 6 or 7 minutes had passed). It was very easy to set up and run. I did wind up searching for a number of plugins, none of which were really necessary, one of which added nifty ajax features and another added polls. The templates were easy to use and flexible (as were the plugins), and I realized (as have others) that Wordpress can pretty quickly become a capable CMS.

I then spent a lot of time messing with themes, and finally found Brian Gardner's themes, which were better than anything I put together and required absolutely no work.

Some of the terminology around "pages" and "posts" I found to be a little perplexing. And that made the setup of different sections of the blog a little difficult, but I think that was just a little local lingo that I had to get used to.

When I went to make my first test post, I was really impressed by the simplicity of the interface and ease of use.

One thing that I wasn't ready for (which explains the movement of directories upon installation mentioned above) was that by default Wordpress is designed to run a single blog. I later found that there is a multi-blog version known as "Wordpress MU", but there is some pretty strong wording there that MU is only meant for huge installs. There is also a Virtual Multiblog plugin that looks like it will do the trick if I need more blogs running from that install.

All of that got me thinking that maybe it was time to upgrade Movable Type to get a more current UI experience and make blogging more enjoyable. I decided to do a parallel install of Movable Type on my system, using new directories and a new database. That way I could slowly upgrade my system. I was pretty sure that my templates (mostly for another site) were going to take a fair bit of work to get working correctly, and configuring plugins might also take some time.

That was the right move. Installing Movable Type was easy, and I quickly found that the user interface was close to that of Wordpress.

I also found that upgrading templates was a nightmare. One of my sites uses a pretty complex system of style sheets and templates. Getting that working took several nights of small adjustments. That said, the new system of templates in MT 4 makes them much easier to manage in the long run because templates are broken out into reusable parts. I finally got the templates working and then it came time for the plugins. I narrowed it down to two that I needed MT-Privacy and Better File Uploader.

Privacy has been in a long beta for the current version of Movable Type, and in the end I had to give up on it, as it didn't work with the version of Movable Type I installed. I found many other generic privacy solutions that I was able to get working so it wasn't a huge deal. Better File Uploader is essential though, and on first pass I ran into some small difficulties with it. But within hours after filing a trouble ticket, I had a working version sent to me by the author and all was well again.

Then I found that there were no more notification options in Movable Type. Fortunately there is a plugin for this too, but that meant additional cost. The plugin seems to be doing the job just fine.

I wound up just importing the entries from my old blog into the new database, which went pretty well. And same went for this blog. The old template here wasn't worth saving so I went with one of the stock styles for this blog. Movable Type seems to have much more limited availability of up-to-date styles than did Wordpress. In time I'll come up with a better solution.

If I had to do it all over again, I may choose Wordpress over Movable Type, but the new version holds its own pretty well, and is definitely a marked improvement over the last version.

Other news in the works. Opengoo has a slick looking new interface that I'm trying to get working. And I've put Redmine into production. Next up are some forums for use with Drupal.