Features

The member profile page gives each member a home for their content, activity, and personal info.

Multi-part profiles

Profiles contain multiple content sections which show profile information along with a member's photos, blog entries, comments, groups, friends, statistics, and other items you decide to enable.

Various actions are available to members when viewing someone else's profile such as "Send Message", "Add Friend", "Block User", and more.
Profile types
While most communities have just one profile type (i.e. "member"), you may want to have more than one.

For example, if you are building a community for musicians and their fans, you can create a separate profile type for each. Musicians will get one set of profile questions (e.g. "Band Name", "Genre", "Instruments") and fans will get a different set of profile questions (e.g. "Name", "Favorite Musicians", "Favorite Genres"). There is no limit to the number of profile types you can create.
Member levels & moderators

As the admin, you can create multiple membership levels on your social network. Member levels are useful for giving some members more privileges or more access than others.
Grant or restrict access to features and specific sections of the community, or even give a membership level moderation or administrative capabilities to help you maintain your social network.
Customizable Profile Questions
You control what questions people have to answer when they sign up and create their profile. SocialEngine comes with many common questions like "City", "Age", and "Relationship Status" for you to insert easily, with the option to create your own custom questions too.
Conditional Questions
If you create a question with multiple options, you can give it one or more "conditional" profile questions. For example, if your pull-down box is named "Relationship Status", it might have possible options like "Single" and "Married". You could create a conditional profile question labeled "Anniversary Date" that only appears when the "Married" option is selected.
Keyword-enabled Questions
You can choose to make a profile question keyword-enabled. This means that your members can enter in several answers to your question on one text field by separating them with commas. Each keyword will be linked to individually on their profile which allows viewers to click them and find out which other members have entered the same keywords.
Personal Photos (avatars)
Members can easily upload a photo when joining or editing their profile to be used as their avatar. This is displayed on their profile, in search results, when they send a message, when they post something in the feed, and wherever else they have a presence in your community.
Profile Privacy Options
You can allow members to select from several privacy levels when managing their profile. This limits who can view and write comments on their profile.
Profile Posts
You can allow members to post comments on each other's profiles. The receiving user chooses who can post comments on their profile and has the ability to delete unwanted content when they wish.
Custom profile layouts
If allowed, members can pick from various profile themes or even insert their own custom CSS styles to give their profiles a more personalized look.

Activity feeds are streams of posts made by members mixed with notifications about what's happening in your community. Your members can comment, share, and "like" all types of content.

Multiple feeds
The main activity feed typically appears on the community home page, and each member gets their own activity feed on their profile. Feeds also appear in some of our plugins, such as Events and Groups.
In-line links, photos, music, and videos
Your members can attach links, photos, music, and videos to their posts in the activity feed.
In-line comments & "likes"
- Each item in the feed can have its own comment thread, which appears right in the feed.
- Long comment threads are abbreviated, which can be expanded in the feed.
- Members can "like" a post. Likes are displayed on each post in the feed.
Share Feature
Members can "share" other members' posts; this is sometimes referred to as re-posting or re-tweeting.
Customizable feed content
As the admin, you have full control over what can appear in the activity feed, who's feed items appear to whom, whether or not members can further filter the feed, and more.
Feed Filtering
You can choose whether members see feed items about everyone, just people in their networks, just their friends, or a combination of options.
Publishing Privacy
You decide how much control your members have over what things are published about them in the feed.
Auto-updating timestamps
Timestamps in the feed will update automatically, without refreshing the page.
Admin announcements
As the admin, you can insert announcements (important news, sponsor advertisements, etc.) directly into the main feed at any time.

Private Messaging

Members can send each other private messages right on your community.

Thread-style Conversation History
Messages can become thread-like discussions. A complete conversation history is shown when your members open messages.
New Message Notifications
When members receive new messages, they are notified both by email and directly in your community.
Message attachments
Your members can attach links, photos, music, and video to their messages.
Multiple Recipients, Mass-Messages
Messages can be sent to multiple recipients. Whenever someone replies to the conversation, each recipient will be notified (until they delete the message thread). Some plugins, like Groups and Events, can send mass messages.

Network Structure

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. Existing members are given a certain number of invites (that you specify) which they can use to invite others via a built-in form.
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).

Advertising

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.

Browse & Search

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.

Content Management

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.

Anti-spam Features

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.

Other Admin Tools

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.