Keetup Development

I am sure you have asked yourself some of the following questions:

• where can I find a good elgg demo?
• how much can I change my elgg network?
• can I really adapt elgg to my project?

We did those questions and we decided to create a elgg demo and we added some features that any project would love to have.

To try our elgg demo you just have to go to http://demo.keetup.com/ and click the "Try Elgg Demo" button.

Once you are inside you are going to see a tour that will show some of the features we have added, for example:

• Search with ajax
• Circle of friends
• To create an element with ajax
• Questions and answers
• Meetups
• To load more items like twitter.

The following image shows the dashboard (activity) section.

We are going to add new features to the elgg demo so you all can see its potential and how nice an elgg social network can be.

I hope you like it.

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Some time ago in Keetup we have a dedicated person to do the full test of the social networks that we develop. Whether testing of programming different functionality, as well as the CSS layout of the site. I will to tell you the different ways we went by testing our developments as we conclude that a dedicated person is the best option.

At first, this task is performed by the same person in charge of development, whether a developer or web designer.

Disadvantages:

• A person tends not to destroy what he does, is not going to try to break that data has been developed.
• As the person knows the operation, you will always test with correct data.
• Not usually take much time to experiment with different data sets or different browsers.

Then we performed a cross-testing, in terms of programming. A person develops a certain functionality and someone else test it.

Disadvantages:

• Take the test with a small range of data to verify proper operation.
• Do not conduct tests in different browsers.
• It is a task that a programmer does not devote much time.

Now we have one person dedicated entirely to this task. Who is responsible for testing each of the different functionality in different browsers, checking the compatibility of the site with them. Besides performing a comprehensive test after finishing the stage of development.

This person also suggests corrections or different ways to implement some features.

The advantages are many, I will detail a few:

• In our case, being a person who does not develop, tend to see other problems than a developer does not see.
• Sometimes the developers perform a task and not put in place of the user in terms of ease of use and disposition of data, this issues will be able to identify this person.
• It will educate developers, so each time they commit fewer errors, thus lowering the error rate.
• Social networks that are developed have many interactions between different users, being a person responsible for the testing, one person will have more control over these interactions and the detection of potential problems.

In conclusion, we are now less likely to commit over and over again the same mistakes. We delivers a higher quality product, through the comprehensive testing of all functionality in different browsers.

Diego Gallardo

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The standarization ISO 9001:2008 is a document that specifies the requirements that the quality system management of an organization must comply. This standard has been created by the International Organization for Standardization and is commonly known as ISO 9001.

We have been preparing 11 months for the audit that will occur in March. The external audit shall be conducted and held by the prestigious german company TÜV.

Many of you will wonder why Keetup needs to certify this well known standard, and although I could talk a lot about it, the answer is simple, we want to be better and we try hard to make that happen. The main objective is that our customers get a great product that goes through all the processes where each intermediate product is controlled, tested, and validated. This results in a final product that meets the requirements that the client has demanded.

We believe that we must continually improve and each day be better than the day before learning from our successes and failures and for this reason we have created a quality Policy that is the emblem that the Company follows.

• In Keetup we provide customized social network development, putting our efforts on providing a product with the best quality as possible which meets the requirements of our customers.
• We are committed to meet the requirements of ISO 9001, ensuring the quality of our processes.
• We organize meetings with the staff and the directive, seeking to overcome adversity to contribute to continuous improvement.
• We care about having a communication with our customers during all the necessary processes - from first contact to final delivery - to understand and meet their requirements.
• This we could not do without our main value which is Human Resources. Thus we want and try that the relationship with them to be durable, promoting good internal communication and providing a warm  and dignified work environment.
• Keetup strives to develop and maintain a transparent image to reach potential markets and insert their services and products.

We believe that being a better business is a process that may never end but the important thing is to keep the goal and never give up.

"Stay hungry, stay foolish". Steve Jobs.

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In this post I will talk about how to block unwanted user registration (spammers) to a Social Networking Elgg.

We recently, some intrusions of spammers to one of our sites in Elgg. The first thing we did was upgrade to the latest version of Elgg, after seeing the problem persists, look if there was any solution in the community and we found the plugin "Log Spam Filter".

This plugin allows us to block registrations using external services or ip block emails as " stopforumspam "or" fassim ". You can also use an internal blacklist social network: domains or emails, which are checked when the user registers. You can configure some of these solutions individually or all at once.

We will install and explain some of these features.

You can download this plugin from the community of the following location: http://bit.ly/pUdIc2

This plugin requires:

• plugin " plugin IP address tracker , "which captures the ip registered user.
• be enabled CURL
• CRON be enabled, for cleaning the cache of ip.

After downloading and decompressing both mod plugins folder, we must activate the 2 plugins.

1. Let the administration section of Elgg:

2. After the administration section of tools:

3. We will activate the plugins:

4. After enabling both plugins, plugin must set the login spam filter.

5. You can enable and Fassim Stopforumspam, the latter requires an API key, you get it from: http://www.fassim.com/get-api-key/ . As we can see have many locking options. Both ip and email support, but has other options Fassim lock code as countries or regions.

6. The last settings are blacklisted domains or emails specific emails. You can configure to send us an email if there is a blockage of a user when it is recorded.

The 5 validations can be enabled or disabled, the order of checks is as follows:

• Check the user's IP against a blacklist of IP that is cached. (The cache is cleaned 1 time a week).
• If false, it checks the user's email domain to the blacklist of domain emails.
• If false, the email is checked against the blacklist of emails.
• If false, is checked against the external service stopforumspam.com
• If false, is checked against the external service fassim.com

As a last step, we can do to a spammer already registered user on the network. We go to the profile of the deletion and report you as spammer.

I hope you liked this post.

Elgg Happy Coding.

Diego Gallardo

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According to wikipedia "social networks are social structures composed of groups of people, which are connected by one or more types of relationships such as friendship, kinship, common interests or shared knowledge." If these people also connect to a computer system where they find a number of features that used in common, we are witnessing a digital social network. But now everyone calls the latter merely "social networks".

Today social networks are an everyday tool in the daily lives of people and, increasingly, set the trend of the masses. While there is a huge number of parameters and points to consider to build a social network (and having an established business model) can be noted that the first and perhaps most important to define are:

• A theme, this will enable the sector to guide and set of users who use the social network;
• Functional differences, it will mark the users why they should use social networking and what makes it different from other existing social networks, and;
• A defined scope, this will allow the creator (both intellectual and material author) draw the lines necessary to carry out the project, such as phases, covering each and their release dates.

In my view, although there are other points to start, I think these are what we drive on the most appropriate and practical way to achieve the ultimate goal: build a social network:)

Once these points have been established (at least in general) is needed the most difficult task: "the transfer of information from ideas to paper" for social network just begins to be a longer project a mere "idea".

Tip: To turn the thoughts on paper and not die trying to make a brainstorming writing ideas on slips of paper so that they can manipulate, moving them to mark their priority and what is not, define the limits of the different phases.

I hope this has helped and if you have any questions and would like to know more about issue do not hesitate to contact us .

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