Features

SocialEngine gives you lots of options for deciding how people will join, interact, and use your community.

• Networks

  Create networks to organize your members based on profile information they have in common.

  • Networks can be universities, organizations, workplaces, countries, cities, age groups...essentially anything you want. By default, member's network associations are shown on their profile.
  • The main activity feed can be set to only show items from member's peers in their networks.
  • Networks can be used to keep groups of members and their content separate from one another.
• Two-way Friendships & One-way Followers

  You decide if your community will have "two-way friendships", or a "one-way followers" setup.

  With two-way friendships, members that are friends appear on both of their friend lists, which is the standard for most popular social communities (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn).

  With one-way followers, members can choose to "follow" other members (i.e. Twitter, Livejournal).

• Verified or Unverified Friendships
  You can choose whether or not friendships must be verified by the recipient of the friendship request.
• Custom Privacy Levels

  You decide exactly what privacy options your members will have. This can be set on a per-plugin basis.

  For example, if you want to ensure that your member's photos are publicly viewable, but their blogs can be made private, you can assign different settings for each.

• Join by Member Invitation
  If you want to make your community more private, or have a promotional invite-only "beta", you can choose to allow new members by invitation only.
• Join by Admin Invitation
  This option can be enabled if you want to build a very private social network in which only you can invite new members.
• Customizable Signup Process

  Your members join by completing a brief step-by-step signup form. You can rearrange the steps in this process and configure each one.

  Some third-party plugins also insert additional steps into the signup process, which is useful if you want to accept payments from new members, show disclaimers and agreements, and more.

• Email Message Templates
  Various notification emails are sent to your members as they interact with your community. You can customize the content of these emails (and even provide multilingual translations).

Displaying advertisements is an excellent way to monetize your social network. SocialEngine lets you show ads anywhere on your site.

• Ad campaign manager
  • You can determine exactly where your ads will appear, how long they will be displayed, and who they will be shown to.
  • Show ads to users based on their interests or personal characteristics by creating campaigns for specific member levels and networks.
• Google Adsense compatible
  Create campaigns with your own banners or use Google Adsense code (or any other advertising network's code).
• Drag-and-drop advertisement blocks
  Easily drop advertisements into your site design using the site designer.
• Performance monitors and safeguards
  Set CTR (click-through-rate) limits to automatically pause ineffective campaigns.
• Advanced targeting and filtering capabilities
  You can optionally set individual ad campaigns to display only to specific member levels, profile types, or networks. This is useful if you want to turn off ads for premium members, or if you want to show targeted ads to specific groups of members.

Create subscription plans for different member levels and charge for access to certain parts of the community.

• Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, or One-Time Payment Options
  You can bill your members on a recurring schedule or just charge them a one-time fee for access to additional features.
• Transaction / Subscription Tracking
  Track your subscriptions and all of the payments you receive easily through your SocialEngine admin panel.
• Subscribe During Signup
  You can give your users the option of signing up for a subscription plan during their signup process. Alternately, payment plans may also be hidden from new members upon signup.
• International Currencies
  No matter what country you're from, SocialEngine has a currency option for you.
• 2Checkout or PayPal Payment Gateways
  Hook your 2Checkout or PayPal account up to SocialEngine and start accepting payments from your users in minutes.

Your site's layout, style, and content can be fully customized by SocialEngine's easy to use CMS.

• Drag-and-drop Site Designer
  • You can completely rearrange most areas of the site without having to write any code.
  • Choose a one, two, or three-column layout for each page and drop widgets into each column. This determines what content appears on your community and where it appears in the members' view.
• Easily Create New Pages
  Create whole new pages and drop in widgets, third-party content, or any HTML you want.
• Public/private Sections
  Choose which areas of your community are available to the public, and which require an account.
• Theme Editor
  Giving your community a whole new look takes just two clicks with our theme chooser. Give your community an even more unique look by making custom CSS changes to your theme right in the control panel—no FTP necessary.
• File & Media Manager
  Use the built-in media manager to upload and store files for use in your design, in announcements, or other content.
• Custom Meta data
  You can quickly change what the title, URL, meta keywords and descriptions will be for each page, making search optimization easier.
• Search engine friendly URLs
  By default, page URLs are in "subdirectory" format and are SEO-friendly.
• Announcements
  Compose announcements and post them anywhere in your site layout, or even directly in the main activity feed.
• No Copyright or "Powered by" Notice
  We will never put a "powered by" link on your community. There is absolutely no SocialEngine branding visible to your members.
• Multi-language Support
  Import non-English language packs, or create your own translations.

Keeping your community free of spam helps to keep your members' social experience enjoyable and clutter-free.

• Email address verification
  Deter spammers by requiring new members to verify their email address before activating their accounts.
• Random password generation
  Optionally generate passwords for new members randomly to enhance their security.
• Automatic "CAPTCHA" images
  You decide if members must fill in CAPTCHA forms when signing up and interacting with the community in other ways. This protects your social network from automated form submissions (spam bots).
• Inappropriate content and abuse reports
  Optionally allow your members to report inappropriate content, abusive language, and other unwanted content in the community. You can assign moderators to deal with these reports and remove the reported content.
• Content Deletion
  Mass-delete members, networks, abuse reports, and most content posted on the social network by members
• Banning features
  • Ban visitors by IP range to block abusive users
  • Block entire countries from accessing your community
• Word censors
  Optionally have unwanted words automatically replaced to keep your network free of profanity.
• Member blocking
  Members can block other members from viewing or interacting with them if they are being annoying or abusive.
• Moderator accounts
  Assign moderators to handle abuse reports, remove unwanted content, and encourage interactivity in your community.

• Plugin manager
  It's easy to install SocialEngine plugins or other plugins made by third-party developers. The plugin system automatically checks for updates and will indicate when updates become available. Plugins can be disabled at any time.
• Site-wide statistics & analytics
  Use SocialEngine's built-in analytics and traffic statistics to track the growth of your community. Get precise data about what pages are popular and how often people visit your site.
• Referring URLs and recent sign-in log
  View a list of other websites that are referring traffic to you, ordered by volume. You can also review a log of recent sign-in attempts, complete with IP address and resolved hostname, to help prevent spam and track where your members are coming from.
• Server resources monitor
  SocialEngine actively monitors your server's resource usage and will attempt to warn you if additional resources are needed.

SocialEngine allows members to easily navigate your site, discover new content, and find specific posts.

• Browse members
  Members (and optionally visitors) can browse through your entire member list. Results can be filtered by profile information, like location, age, gender, height, occupation, etc. You can also choose to show only members that have a photo and members that are currently online.
• Browse plugin content
  Most of our plugins come with their own dedicated browse pages. For example, if you install our Photo Albums plugin, your members can easily browse all the latest photos posted by other members. Some content can be sorted by popularity as well. These pages can be altered or removed using the CMS site designer.
• Site-wide search
  We've included a global search box in the top-right corner of the layout by default. Your members can search through all of the content in your community.