I joined the Elgg team full time back in 2008 (after having worked for them as a technology consultant). I was there at the birth of the Elgg 1.0 codebase (which I helped design) and was delighted to see Elgg grow from strength to strength.

By the time of the Elgg 1.5 release earlier in the year, Elgg had achieved widespread support and adoption and had cemented itself as the leading open source social networking framework. Now with the Elgg 1.6 release out of the door and the continued growth of the vibrant Elgg community, I have no doubt that Elgg’s success will continue into the future.

However, I have decided that it is time to move on and explore other projects.

So, as of the 27th October I will no longer be part of Curverider or Elgg’s core development team (although I dare say I will still end up doing a bit of Elgg coding here and there).

I really enjoyed helping build Elgg and being part of the Elgg community, and I am excited to see where the community takes the platform next.

As for me, I will be busily working on my next project (more on that to come) as well as continuing to provide expert consultancy services.

Essentially this is because I and the rest of the Curverider team have been working flat out to get Elgg 1.5 released – which I am very pleased to say has finally happened!

Both the Curverider team and the open source community have all pulled together and as a result I can honestly say that Elgg 1.5 is the best Elgg yet!

Elgg 1.5 has loads of new functionality – both visible and under the hood. There’s a brand new theme and dashboard, groups are more powerful, and the whole core has been made much much much faster.

Almost 800 commits have gone into the core, not to mention numerous commits to plugins – making Elgg 1.5 a lean mean social networking machine.

More details of what is in this new version can be found here.

Of course, Elgg 1.5 is a milestone not the final destination… just wait until you see what we have planned for the next version!