Starting to evaluate SocialEngine I was positively surprised how technically open and well programmed it was. It’s expandable with plug-ins and uses Smarty to customize its look and feel.

After the trial download I had Groups, Blog and Photo Album plug-ins included and their website says that Events plug-in is currently available which I was able to look from their website. Social Engine was developed by innovative Californian software company Webligo whose business mission is to brainstorm new innovative ideas to be profitable at early stage and sell those to larger companies who can fully realize their potential. Webligo previous project BlogHoster was sold UK based Splashpress media in 2007 and since 2006 they have worked with SocialEngine (www.socialengine.net). Webligo was founded by Alex Benzer and Charlotte Genevier, who met as Pasadena Polytechnic high school in 2000.

Installation

The installation comes as downloadable compressed file which you should decompress to your server. Files will be extracted starting “files” subdirectory which was little bit odd as I would expect to run my program from the virtual root I created for it.
You will get an email which contains your installation key and attached license.txt file. You should copy this file also to your server application files directory before starting files/admin/install.php otherwise it complains and does not start. That was an odd thing to do but I assume that when purchasing you will get just new license file and not an installation key. The license file was encrypted anyway so I assume they will send me a new license.txt file after a purchase.

After your installation was successful you should delete the install.php and installsql.php for security reasons files otherwise the admin module will start complain each time you log in to that module.
You should setup full rights (777) for uploads directories listed in installation instructions.
URL’s can be specified as normal filenames or subdirectory URL’s. The server requirements are php 4.3 or higher, My Sql 4.1 or higher and when image thumbnail creation feature is necessary the GD 2.0 support. Their professional installation service will cost $30.

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