ernestdefoe/social-groups

Social groups for Flarum 2 — members can create, join, and manage groups.

v2.3.65 2026-05-30 16:49 UTC

Requires

• php: ^8.3
• flarum/core: ^2.0

Suggests

• fof/upload: ^2.0 — required for file/image attachments in group posts (the attach button in the post composer calls /api/fof/upload)

MIT

• Ernestdefoe

• social
• community
• groups
• flarum

README

A full-featured social groups extension for Flarum 2. Members can create public or private groups, post to a Facebook-style feed, hold threaded discussions, share media, react to posts, run polls, and more — with optional real-time updates powered by flarum/realtime.

Features

Groups

• Public & private groups — public groups are open to all; private groups require a join request or direct invitation.
• Group image & banner upload — each group has its own avatar and cover banner image.
• Featured groups — administrators can pin groups to a featured row on the group directory.
• Primary group badge — members designate one group as their primary group; the badge is displayed on their Flarum profile.
• Group analytics dashboard — overview of member count, post activity, and growth over time (visible to group admins and moderators).
• RSS feed — each group exposes a per-group RSS 2.0 feed at /groups/{slug}/feed.rss.

Feed

• Facebook-style post cards with full Flarum BBCode/Markdown rendering.
• Emoji reactions — six reaction types: 👍 Like, ❤️ Love, 😂 Haha, 😮 Wow, 😢 Sad, 😡 Angry; one reaction per user, toggleable.
• Polls — create polls directly from the post composer; members vote inline with live percentage bars.
• Link previews — URLs are automatically expanded into rich Open Graph preview cards (title, description, thumbnail).
• Media attachments — attach images and files to posts via fof/upload (optional).
• Pin posts — group admins can pin discussions to the top of the feed.
• Post search — debounced search bar filters discussions by title or content in real time.
• Post sharing — share any discussion into another group you belong to, with an optional comment; shared posts render a quoted card.

Discussions

• Threaded discussion view at /groups/{slug}/d/{discussionId} with nested comment replies.
• Pin discussions to the top of the discussion list.
• Share discussions to the group feed.

Media Gallery

• Dedicated "Media" tab on each group page aggregating all images from posts and discussions into a responsive thumbnail grid with lightbox.

Member Management

• Join requests — group admins approve or reject membership requests; direct invitations bypass the queue.
• Promote / demote — elevate a member to group admin or step them back down.
• Kick — remove a member from the group.
• Member badges on profiles — group membership chips appear on Flarum user profile cards forum-wide.

Notifications

• Alert when a new post is created in a group the user participates in.
• Alert when someone replies directly to a user's post.

Real-time (optional — requires flarum/realtime)

See the flarum/realtime Integration section below.

Requirements

Dependency	Version	Required
Flarum	2.x	Yes
PHP	8.3+	Yes
flarum/realtime	any	No — graceful no-op if absent
fof/upload	^2.0	No — required for file/image attachments in posts

Installation

composer require ernestdefoe/social-groups
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear

Then go to Admin → Extensions and enable Social Groups.

After every update, run the migrate and cache-clear commands to apply any new database migrations:

php flarum migrate && php flarum cache:clear

Configuration

Admin panel settings

Navigate to Admin → Extensions → Social Groups:

Setting	Options	Default
Who can create groups	member — any registered user; admin — forum administrators only	member

Group privacy

Group creators choose privacy at creation time:

Type	Behaviour
Public	Anyone can view the feed, discussions, and gallery. Joining is instant.
Private	Content is hidden from non-members. New members must submit a join request (approved by a group admin) or be invited directly.

flarum/realtime Integration

The real-time features are entirely optional. If flarum/realtime is not installed the extension works normally — the typing endpoint silently returns 204 and the post-broadcast listener exits immediately without any error or warning.

When flarum/realtime is installed and running:

• Live post injection — after a member submits a reply in a group discussion thread, all other members viewing that thread see the new post card appear instantly via the sg-post-created WebSocket event. No page refresh is needed.
• Typing indicator — while a member is composing a reply, an animated "Jane is typing…" indicator with bouncing dots is broadcast via the sg-typing event and displayed above the reply box for all other members viewing the same thread. The indicator disappears automatically when the member stops typing or submits their post.
• Deduplication — the client compares each incoming post's ID against already-rendered posts to prevent duplicates when both the HTTP response and the WebSocket push arrive for the same post.
• No extra configuration — the extension uses the existing public Pusher/Soketi channel that flarum/realtime sets up. Nothing additional needs to be configured.

Updating

composer update ernestdefoe/social-groups
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear

Support

Questions, bug reports, and feature requests:

• Support forum: https://ernestdefoe.online
• Issues: https://github.com/ernestdefoe/social-groups/issues

License

Released under the MIT License. © Ernestdefoe