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SocialEngine 4 powers on – download a free trial
Jul 21st
This July has seen the long awaited Production release of SocialEngine version 4 and the v4 versions of the official plugins. The SocialEngine team worked on SE4 for over a year to completely redesign the platform from scratch. SocialEngine4 is built on the popular (and open source) Zend Framework to make customizations and further development straightforward.
You can download your Free Trial copy from socialengine.net/free-trial
The trial contains SocialEngine v4 as well as all of Webligo’s v4 plugins.
To get all the same features when you buy, you’ll have to purchase the plugins you want to use. The trial expires after 30 days and once it’s expired, the site won’t work.
The trial’s PHP source code is encrypted. The full version is NOT.
Even after the Trial expires your database will stay intact, so you can use all your member data with the full version after you purchase it, no need to start over. That’s user friendly 
The SE3 to SE4 upgrade package is not yet available but is expected within a week or so.
Version 4.0.1, with further tweaks and bug fixes is coming very soon.
Several Third Party Developers have already begun releasing their Plugins and Templates for SocialEngine v4, and others are hard at work upgrading their v3 plugins to v4.
Latest listings for v4 can be found on the SocialEngineMechanic v4 Plugin and Template Listings RSS
You can experience and discuss SocialEngine v4 at SE4.me as well as finding tips, tricks, mods and bug fixes posted by SE4me Community members.
SocialEngine Speed-Up Tips
Jun 4th
After numerous projects targeted at the optimization of SocialEngine we have gathered some generic methods that might be interesting to you if you are looking to speed up your community.
Although the following tips were tested on SocialEngine version 3, they are valuable for all versions.
In this article I want to put emphasis on html/css optimization rather than on php/mysql. But some of these tips will reduce server load as well.
- Choose plugins carefully. Less plugins you have -> faster your website works.
- Unite all css files in one. That will reduce total number of separate requests to server. I’ve seen more than 25 separate css files for a single page. Minimization of css is a good idea as well.
- Unite javascript files and move them to the bottom where it’s possible. Pages will load up faster because all html/css will load at first.
- Unite small images, for example icons, in bigger images and output them using css sprites, the way it is done in a lot of WordPress themes. Again this will reduce number of separate http requests to server.
- Try to use a static page for home. Since it will be the most popular page of your website it should load up as fast as possible.
A good workaround for dynamic home pages is to make a page that will be updated once every 20 minutes. - Minimize what you load from outside servers. Place widgets and gadgets from outside sources (eg twitter widgets) lower in the page or in the right-hand column, so that most of the page can load before the widget. Use images from your own server for ads where possible.
If you are seriously working on speed-up best practices from Yahoo is a good starting point.
Thanks to Clare for proof-reading.
Original article – http://webhive.com.ua/blog/socialengine-speed-up-tips/
