Elgg

Is Elgg actively maintained?

Over the last 11 months the project absorbed 366 commits, of which 120 arrived in the most recent quarter — roughly 40 commits a month.

The most recent tagged release, 7.1.0, shipped within the last month — a current, installable version exists today.

Elgg ranks #14 of 40 in Communication - Social Networks and Forums, placing it mid-table for maintenance activity.

What Elgg actually does

Elgg is an open-source social networking engine that provides the core infrastructure for building custom online communities and collaborative platforms. It allows developers to deploy user profiles, activity streams, and messaging systems on their own infrastructure. The project is written in PHP and distributed under the GPL-2.0 licence.

Best fit: It is a suitable choice for organisations or developers wanting to self-host a dedicated, closed social network or community portal rather than relying on commercial platforms.

Worth knowing: Customising and maintaining a PHP-based social network requires ongoing administrative effort, and Elgg may overlap heavily with more modern or widely adopted forum and community alternatives.

Deployment notes

Deployment typically requires a standard PHP runtime environment, a relational database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, and a reverse proxy like Nginx or Apache to handle TLS termination and persistent file storage.

Links

• Official website
• Source code