If you are unaware of Elgg, you are missing out on a great CMS. Elgg allows you to develop your own social networking website. This is great for anything from a business needing a way for its employees to stay in contact each other effectively to social networking website that focus on a particular interest or hobby. I have even used it to set up a website for my family so we can better stay up to date with what everyone is up too.

One of the nice features of Elgg is it allows plugins to add features to your social networking website. You are able to create your own plugins or you can take advantage of plugins others have already developed. I am going to focus this article on plugins that others have already developed and have added to the community area on Elgg website. The list below is in no particular order.

1. Friend Request – This plugin sets the friend request process similar to that of MySpace or Facebook. When I user requests an individual as a friend, that individual receives a friend request from that user. If both people request to be friends with each other, this plugin will automatically accept both friends request and these two individuals will be friends on your social networking website.
2. Event Calendar – Event Calendar allows you to add a calendar to your social networking website. This plugin allows you to be able to set who can enter information onto the calendar (all users or just the administrator). It is also capable of creating individual calendars for groups. You can set the controls for group calendars to any member of the group or just the group administrator.
3. TidyPics – TidyPics allows users to create photo galleries on your social networking website. Each user can set up multiple photo albums to better organize their pictures. If you are going to use this plugin, I would strongly recommend you write a policy that expresses what type of images will be allowed on your website and stick to your policy.
4. Riverdashboard (Alternative replacement) – This plugin allows you to change the way the user dashboard looks. I prefer this one over the others available because it just changes the way the dashboard looks, it doesn’t modify any other parts of your website such as the profile view. This is not the riverdashboard that included with the standard settings, but an enhanced version.
5. Custom Profile Fields – This is a nice plugin that allows you to customize your profile fields. This plugin has the ability to create dropdown boxes, text, longtext, radio buttons, and a few other options. One nice feature of this plugin is the ability to drag and drop the profile fields you create in any order you want them to be in.

All these plugins for Elgg are very easy to install and use. If there are any others that you feel are of value to you that are not listed above, please add a comment below and let other readers of my blog know what they are.