Social Blogging: WordPress Mu, Pligg or Elgg?

When it comes to social blogging, there are really three solutions that matter. We’ve got WordPress Mu, which is the multi-user WordPress platform. We’ve got Elgg, which has won the 2008 social networking platform of the year award. Finally, there is Pligg which has been used for many popular sites such as Sphinn

So which one should you use? I think at the end of the day it all comes down to what you have in mind. WordPress Mu is, well, WordPress on steroids. It allows users to sign up for blogs and get their unique URLs on your server. I personally have tried Mu and failed a few times due to not being able to keep people conforming to my rules. Besides, it’s hard to keep spammers away from your blogging platform, so if you are thinking of setting up a WordPress social blogging network, then you may want to start thinking about hiring help. WordPress Mu does have a good community behind it so you are not alone if you get stuck.

Elgg is an elegent, facebook looking, social platform, and it’s a pleasure to work on. However, Elgg does not have as strong a community as WordPress Mu, and the new version which will be released soon promises to be much different than the old version. I am not sure you want to invest time into a technology that will be obsolete in a month. The are not many templates out there for Elgg either. So you don’t get all the benefits that you get with the WordPress platform.

Pligg is an excellent Digg clone social networking platform. It’s highly customizable, and it does have a community behind it. Just like Digg, you get featues such as “Spy”, and you can vote for stories or even bury them. Pligg is a high scalable yet demanding social networking platform. Sphinn, one of the most vertical social networks, runs on Pligg. But don’t expect Pligg to work like a charm with a shared hosting account. Pligg is too demanding not to have its own dedicated server. I have personally owned many Pligg-based websites, and in most cases they haven’t performed well on cheap hosting accounts. So if you are a start-up or afford your own dedicated server, then Pligg is an excellent choice.

When it comes to choosing a social blogging platform, you want your CMS to be highly scalable, flexible, and easy to use. At the end of the day, it all comes down to your taste. I personally like WordPress Mu as it allows me to host others’ blogs for free. At the same time, I can write code for it as I am somewhat familiar with the WordPress architecture. Many Web 2.0 gurus swear by Pligg or Elgg but it’s all a matter of what your want to do and which CMS you feel the most comfortable with.