Features & Capabilities
Like most white-label social networking apps, SocialEngine is feature-rich. Unlike other products, however, SocialEngine is uniquely designed to support almost any social networking concept you might have. This means that you won't end up with cookie-cutter results. Instead of throwing in as many end-user features as we could, we focused on building a stable, customizable platform upon which you can implement your own unique features and ideas. Of course, we've included all of the staples that end-users have come to expect: Blogs, albums, groups, messages, and everything else you see listed below. To avoid bombarding your users with an overkill of information, we've kept these as simple as possible and made them easy for you to modify (with fully commented code and HTML templates).
User Profiles
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Multi-part profiles
The user profile page is perhaps the most important part of your social network. Along with the user's profile data, all of the user's photos, blog entries, comments, groups, friends, statistics, and other items can be displayed here. This page is often used as a point of contact between users, so various options are available to viewers (such as "Send Message", "Add Friend", "Block User", and so forth). As the admin, you decide what goes on your users' profiles.
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Customizable profile fields
The information that your users will provide about themselves will define your social network. Thusly, you should create profile fields that make users provide information that is relavant to your social network's unique theme. For example, if you are building a social network for businesspeople, you might create fields like "Current Employer", "Position", "References", etc. Similarly, if you are creating a dating network, you might create fields like "Height", "Weight", "Eye Color", and so forth. Profile fields can be one of several types: Text fields, pull-down boxes, multi-line text areas, radio buttons, dates, etc.
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Dependent profile fields
If you create a pull-down box or radio button profile field, you can give it one or more dependent profile fields. For example, if your pull-down box profile field is named "Marital Status", it might have possible values such as "Single" and "Married". By creating a dependent field named "To" for the "Married" value, users that select "Married" can specify who they are married to.
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Regex field validation
Each profile field that you create can be given its own regular expression. If the data provided by the user does not match this expression, you can choose to display an error message of your choice. This ensures that users are inputting their profile data in the exact format you want.
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Keyword links
If enabled, some profile fields will be "linked, separated by commas." This means that whatever data the user provides in these fields will be separated by commas and linked to browse pages. For example, if you create a field called "My Favorite Music" and a user enters "classical, jazz, soul", each of those words will be linked on the user's profile page. Then, when a viewer clicks "jazz", they are taken to a page that lists all other users that have listed "jazz" in their "My Favorite Music" field.
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Birthday fields
Date fields on your users' profiles can be set to "birthday mode", which allows you to calculate the user's age. With some minor modifications, you could use this to notify users of upcoming birthdays.
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Personal photos (avatars)
If allowed, users can easily upload a photo of themselves, which is automatically sized down and used as their personal photo (also known as an avatar). This is displayed on their profile, in search results, when they send a message, and on many other areas of your social network.
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Profile privacy
If allowed, users can select from several privacy levels when managing their profile. This limits who can view and write comments on their profile. You, the admin, can decide what privacy options are available to your users.
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Comments
If allowed, users can post comments on each other's profiles. This is an excellent way to encourage user interaction. If an inappropriate or unwanted content is posted, the receiving user can delete it from his or her profile. Users also have the ability to choose who can post comments on their profile (if allowed by you, the admin).
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Custom CSS styles
If allowed, users can insert their own custom CSS styles to give their profiles a more personalized appearance.
Network Structure & Customizability
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Subnetworks
Your social network has the ability to organize users into "subnetworks" based on profile information they have in common with each other. You can use this to limit access and privacy between subnetworks, display subnetwork-specific content in your templates, or to simply organize your users. For example, you might want your social network to be comprised of two subnetworks: "Males" and "Females". Or, perhaps you might want to split these up into "Males In California", "Males Outside California", "Females In California", "Females Outside California". This is particularly useful because you can show different content (or advertisements) to users based on what subnetwork they are in. This allows you to serve them information or ads that are specifically relevant to their interests or personal characteristics.
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Several friendship structures
You can select from four distinct friendship structures: 1) Nobody can invite anyone to become friends, 2) Anybody can invite anyone to become friends, 3) Only people within the same subnetwork can become friends, and 4) Users can only invite their friends' friends (second-level friends) to become their friends. With some minor customization, other structures can be implemented quite easily.
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One-way or two-way friendships
As the admin, you can decide if users have one-way or two-way friendships. Example: User A adds User B to his friend list. With a one-way friendship framework, User B is User A's friend, but User A is not User B's friend. With a two-way friendship framework, User B is User A's friend and User A is User B's friend.
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Verified or unverified friendships
As the admin, you can choose whether or not users will have to confirm friendship requests. Example: User A requests to become friends with User B. With a verified friendships framework, the two users will not become friends until User B confirms the friendship. With an unverified friendship framework, the two users will become friends immediately.
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Friendship types (titles)
As the admin, you can create a list of friendship types for users to pick when describing their relationships with their friends. Example: Your friendship type list may be something like "Co-worker", "Significant Other", "Acquaintance", "Close Friend", "Family", and so forth. Users can pick from these when they add new friends or edit the details of their relationships with their friends. If you wish, you can also allow users to enter in their own friendship type instead of picking from your list.
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Friendship explanations
As the admin, you can allow users to type in a detailed explaination of their relationships with each of their friends.
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Public/private sections
As the admin, you can easily make portions of the social network available to the public or registered users only.
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Custom privacy levels
As the admin, you can decide what privacy levels your users can choose from when they decide who can view (or post comments on) their profiles, blogs, groups, albums, and so forth.
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Signup by admin invitation
As the admin, you can choose to allow users to signup only if you have invited them. This is an effective way to build a small, exclusive social network.
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Signup by user invitation
As the admin, you can choose to allow users to signup only if they have been invited by an existing user or an admin. You can even give each user a limited number of invitations to send out. By limiting signups in this way, invitations can become "valuable," which is a known method of achieving viral growth.
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Customizable signup process
As the admin, you can decide what will take place during the new user signup process. You decide what fields they must fill out (and which are required), whether they are asked to upload a photo, whether they are prompted to invite other people, and so forth.
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Email messages
Your social network sends emails to your users when they do different things, like signup, receive friend requests, request their lost password, etc. These email messages are all customizable - you can easily replace the default messages with your own.
Frontend, Look & Feel
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Template engine
Other social networking apps give you little in the way of customizing the look and feel of your social network. Conversely, every aspect of SocialEngine's visual appearance is customizble. SocialEngine utilizes the popular
Smarty template engine. Every single page of your social network has an HTML template that you (or your developer) can modify. Using special tags, you can display virtually any information from your database on any part of your social network.
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Global CSS styles
A single CSS stylesheet is used to set the colors, fonts, and other styles of your entire social network. This makes global changes to the look and feel of your social network easy!
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No copyright notice
There are no copyright or "powered by" notices placed on your social network. Our copyright notices are hidden in the PHP source code, so they are never viewable to your users. Other social networking apps charge you a fee to remove their "powered by" notice - we would never punish you this way! We want your social network to reflect your idea, not our product.
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Portal page example included
If you're not integrating SocialEngine into your existing website, you can use the included portal page as the homepage of your social network. Like every other part of your social network, this page can be easily customized to fit your design goals.
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Multi-language support
All of the text on your social network is stored in a single language file, which makes translation simple.
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Search engine friendly URLs
As the admin, you can switch between standard (dynamic) or search engine friendly (static) URLs. This applies to the URLs of your users' profile pages, albums, blogs, groups, etc.
Anti-spam Features
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Email address verification
As the admin, you can choose to force users to verify their email address (by clicking a link that arrives in an email after they signup) before they can login to their account. This is an effective way of reducing fake (automated) account signups and spam on your social network.
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Random password generation
As the admin, you can choose to have a random password emailed to each user that signs up, enhancing the security of their account, verifying their email address, and increasing the probability that they are human and not an automated program.
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Automatic "CAPTCHA" images
When your users signup, you can force them to visually read the alphanumeric code from an automatically generated image and enter it into a field. This feature reduces spam and automated signups. It can be used on several areas of your social network, including signup and comments.
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Inappropriate content reports
Users can submit an inappropriate content report if they consider an image (or any other content) to be offensive or spam-related. These reports can be managed by you (or other admins if you've created multiple admin accounts) via the control panel.
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Simple user management
Your admin panel includes an easy-to-use interface for managing (and deleting) your users, albums, blog entries, groups, etc., allowing you to easily delete unwanted content.
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User banning
As the admin, you can specify usernames, email address, or IP addresses that are not allowed. This will help you block out abusive users and spammers.
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Word censors
As the admin, you can specify words that are not allowed on profiles, blogs, and albums. If a user posts any of your censored words, they are automatically replaced with asterisks (*).
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Blocklist
If allowed, users can choose to block other users. This prevents the blocked user from contacting the first user or viewing his content, and is an effective way to deter abusive behavior.
Photo Albums (Plugin)
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All file types accepted
As the admin, you can choose to allow users to upload files of any type (such as mp3, zip, etc.). This can be limited by the filename extension as well as the actual MIME type. This effectively allows you to use the album feature as a file sharing feature if you wish.
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Automatic thumbnails
Thumbnails for common image file types are generated on the fly and stored on the server. Custom icons for non-image files can be specified.
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Multiple albums per user
You, the admin, can specify how many albums each user is allowed to have.
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Storage space limit per user
You, the admin, can specify how much disk space to give each user.
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File size and dimensions limit
You, the admin, can specify the maximum file size and dimensions (for images) allowed.
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Automatic image resizing
If an uploaded image's dimensions are larger than the limit you have set, the image will be automatically sized down (for most image file types). Images keep their aspect ratio after resizing.
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Custom CSS styles
If allowed, users can insert their own custom CSS styles to give their albums a more personalized look.
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Browse friends' albums
Users can browse their friends' recently updated albums. This encourages content sharing and user interactivity.
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Comments
If allowed, users can post comments on each other's photos and files. Comments can be moderated by the person that received the comment. Users can receive notifications by email when they receive new comments.
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Multiple simultaneous uploads
Users can upload several files from their desktop at once.
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Album privacy
If allowed, users can select from several privacy levels when managing their albums. This limits who can view their albums. You, the admin, can decide what privacy options are available to your users.
Blogs (Plugin)
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WYSIWYG entry composer
Users compose their blog entries with ease using an embedded, rich text MS-Word styled editor. With one click, users can view the HTML source of their entry and make changes if necessary.
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Seamless image upload
Users can upload images and insert them directly into their entries, all through the embedded WYSIWYG entry composer.
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Custom CSS styles
If allowed, users can insert their own custom CSS styles to give their blogs a more personalized appearance.
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Blog entry categories
As the admin, you can create an unlimited number of blog entry categories. When writing their blog entries, your users can specify what category they belong to. This is a useful feature, particularly if you want to create a page that displays all of the blog entries on your social network that are about a common topic.
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Blog entry privacy
If allowed, users can select from several levels of privacy when deciding who can view and comment on their blog entries. As the admin, you can specify which of these privacy levels are available to your users.
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Comments
If allowed, users can post comments on each other's blog entries. This is an excellent way to encourage user interaction. If an inappropriate or unwanted content is posted, the receiving user can delete it from his or her blog entry. Users also have the ability to choose who can post comments on their blog entries (if allowed by you, the admin). Each entry can be given a different privacy level if desired.
Groups (Plugin)
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Customizable group fields
When users create a group, they are asked to provide some information about it. This information is entered into fields that you, the admin, can create in the control panel. These fields can be any of several types, including text fields, pull-down boxes, multi-line text areas, radio buttons, dates, and so forth. These fields can be made required, and special error messages can be specified.
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Group categories
You may want to allow your users to categorize their groups by subject, location, etc. Categorized groups make it easier for users to find and join groups that interest them. As the admin, you can create an unlimited number of group categories and subcategories.
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Browse groups
Users can browse groups by category or search for groups by keyword. This makes it easy for them to find and join groups that interest them.
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Group photo album
If allowed, each group is given its own photo album. Like normal albums, limits can be placed on the allowed file types and image dimensions. If allowed by the group leader, comments can be posted on these photos.
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Membership rankings
Groups can contain three levels of membership: Leaders, officers, and members. When someone creates a group, they are automatically made the leader of that group. Leadership can be transferred to another user if desired. Leaders can also appoint officers, who have limited administration abilities such as approving/rejecting new members, changing the group settings, and so forth. Members can view the group's content, but cannot alter its settings.
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Membership approval/rejection
Groups can optionally be set to "allow new members by approval only." This means that when a prospective new member requests to join the group, they must first be approved by the group leader or officers.
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Membership invitations
Group leaders and officers can send invitations to other users to become members of their group. If they so choose, members are notified by email when they receive an invitation.
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Custom CSS styles
If allowed, leaders or officers can insert their own custom CSS styles to give their groups a more personalized appearance.
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Comments
If allowed, group memebers can post comments on their group. This is an effective way to allow group members to communicate in an open way.
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Group Discussion Board
Each group includes a built-in discussion board, allowing group members to post threaded discussion topics.
Classifieds (Plugin)
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Privacy Settings
As the admin, you can decide whether or not to allow public viewers (visitors that are not logged in) to view the classified listings on your social network.
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Customizable Categories and Fields
As the admin, you can categorize the classified listings for your users. For example, you can create categories such as "For Sale" and "Wanted" each with subcategories such as "Furniture" and "Electronics."
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New Classifieds Email Notification
As the admin, you can customize the email that is sent to the user when a new comment is posted on one of their classified listings.
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Classifieds Listings
As the admin, you can see all the classified listings posted by your users. You can monitor and search these classifieds to delete offensive material if necessary. As the user, you can view your own listings, upload photos, as well as browse the marketplace.
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Listing Settings
The user can choose to be notified by email when someone posts a comment on any of their listings.
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Comments
The user can comment on other classified listings or send a private message to the seller.
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Classified Listing Photos
Users can upload a photos and post them alongside their classified listings.
Events (Plugin)
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Event Calendar
Users can manage events on their own full-size event calendar. A mini-calendar is also shown on their profiles, allowing them to share their events with others.
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Invitations and RSVPs
Users can create events and invite others to join. When another user receives an invitation, they can RSVP as "attending", "maybe attending" or "not attending".
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Event Photos
Users can upload photos to the events they have attended.
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Privacy Settings
As the admin, you can decide whether or not to allow public viewers (visitors that are not logged in) to view event listings on your social network. When creating a new event, the user can decide who views the event, who can join, and if comments are allowed.
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Customizable Event Categories
As the admin, you can allow your users to categorize their events by subject, location, etc. Categorized events make it easier for users to find and attend events that interest them.
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Event Email Notifications
As the admin, you can edit the emails sent out to the user when an invitation is made, a new comment is posted about the event, or when a new comment is posted on one of the files/photos of the event.
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Event Listings
As the admin, you can see all the event listings posted by your users. You can monitor and search these classifieds to delete offensive material if necessary. As the user, you can view your own events, upload photos, as well as browse the marketplace.
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Event Browser
Users can browse events by searching or simply browsing by category.
Chat (Plugin)
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Effecient AJAX Chat System
Our chatroom utilizes an effecient AJAX backend to avoid annoying page-refreshing and heavy server loads.
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Smilies, Sounds, and Timestamps
Users can post chat messages with smilies and stylized fonts. They can also enable or disable sound notifications and timestamps.
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Privacy Settings
As the admin, you can allow users to chat, kick users out of a current chatroom, and decide whether or not the user’s photo is shown next to their username. You can also ban specific users from logging into the chat.
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Update Frequency
As the admin, you can change the frequency with which the server gets new data. A shorter amount of time will make the chat slightly faster but will also consume more server resources.
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Who's Online
Users can view who else is currently chatting in the chatroom. As the admin, you choose if the who's online list should appear as a series of user photos or a simple list of usernames.
Private Messages
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Message inbox/outbox
Users are given a familiar email-style message manager where they can view both incoming and outgoing private messages.
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Message limits
As the admin, you can decide how many messages each user is able to store in their inbox/outbox. You can also decide who your users can send messages to - nobody, all registered users, or just their friends.
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Conversation history
When two users send multiple messages back and forth, the conversation history is displayed below the messages. This allows users to keep track of the conversation and reply accordingly.
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New message notifications
Users can choose to receive email notifications each time they receive a private message. This encourages interactivity and return visits to your social network.
Browse/Search
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Separate MySQL database
The integrated search engine stores its data in a separate MySQL database. If your social networks grows to be very large, you can move this database to another server to save resources and reduce server load.
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Immediate indexing
Every time a user updates their profile, uploads something to their album, writes a blog entry, etc., the search engine's cache of the page they modified is updated. This means that pages indexed by the search engine will be searchable on a "near realtime" basis.
Other Tools
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Email announcements
Through the admin panel, you can compose and send an email to every user on your system. This is an effective way to encourage inactive users to return to your social network.
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News announcements
Through the admin panel, you can post news announcements which users can read from the portal page, their welcome page (where they go after being logged in), or any other part of your social network. This keeps your users appraised about what is going on in the social network, and will encourage them that your service is active and lively.
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Comprehensive statistics
The admin panel includes a social network statistics area. This area features automatically-generated graphs that show you the levels of activity on your social network over various time periods. SocialEngine also keeps track of the most common referring URLs to your social network, which illustrates where most of your traffic is coming from.
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Access log
The admin panel includes a list of the last 300 login attempts to your social network. This gives you an effective way of identifying and banning abusive users.
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Bundled "PHP/Flash charts" class
The popular PHP/Flash Charts class is bundled with SocialEngine. With some minor customization, you can display graphical stats about your social network to your users.
