Warning About Facebook Style Themes for Elgg 1.8

Written by Rodolfo Hernandez Friday, 3 August 2012

There are available at least 3 Facebook styles themes for Elgg 1.8 Such themes give a different look to your Elgg network, however it has some issues. In this article I will discuss about the issues with the Facebook style themes in Elgg 1.8

I’ve been testing three of the Facebook themes:

-Facebook Theme

-Cool Theme

-My Ultimate Cool Theme

During my test I found several bugs or errors that made the Elgg installation behave in a bad way.

Commenting

Commenting on posts was impossible. Every time I tried to post a comment while using the theme, a server error was generated. I had to disable the theme manually to regain access to the Elgg network again.

Another error that I found is that comments made on blog post cannot be deleted. The delete icon is completely gone and only by disabling the themes you can delete the comment.

The Wire

The wire has a new feature now in which you can comment on someone else’s wire post. Using the themes mentioned, I was not able to do that. In fact it appeared like the comment was successfully posted, however after refreshing the page again, the comment was gone. It was a strange behavior that only happened while those themes were enabled.

Mobile

On a previous post, I discussed how to make your Elgg network mobile friendly. However the Facebook style themes interferes with the mobile version of your site. It won’t let you post a comment or upload a picture. It is odd since the Facebook themes do not provide a mobile version, and none of the developers of those themes provided a fix for that.

Plugins Compatibility

The Facebook style themes have conflicts with useful plugins like Widget Manager, Likes and profile manager. There’s no workaround to make them work, the Facebook style themes cannot work with some plugins for unknown reasons

Due to such problems with those themes, we strongly recommend you to not to use them in our servers. Those themes might produce errors that will make your Elgg network unrecoverable.

This now Concludes Warning about Facebook Style Themes for Elgg 1.8

For more info about Elgg hosting solutions, visit Arvixe Elgg Hosting.

Happy Hosting!

2 Comments

1. small kitchen design   |  Wednesday, 06 February 2013 at 10:04 pm

   I’m also found bugs/errors that made the Elgg installation behave not properly.

   
2. Rodolfo Hernandez   |  Wednesday, 20 February 2013 at 7:50 pm

   Yes, we do not recommend any version of those themes. Please use another theme.