creating online communities
TRANSCRIPT
Creating online
communities
Victor Teo
Social Publisher
HiSocial.com.au
So what is an online community
It is a virtual community that exists online and is a social network of
individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing
geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests
or goals.
One of the most pervasive types of virtual community include social
networking services, which consist of various online communities.
Source: Wikipedia
So who participate in an online community?
Browsers
Free members
Users
Contributors
Paid members
Community Manager
Community Architect
How is an online community created?
The common use of Content Management System (CMS) plays a major
role in supporting the rise of the online communities.
CMS is used to manage work flow needed to collaboratively create, edit,
review, index, search, publish and archive various kinds of digital media
and electronic text
In short CMS
helps to manage complexity.
provides a easy to use user interface (UI) for adding, editing and
publishing content.
enables collaboration among many to perform the above tasks.
Content Management System (CMS)
• Allows website to be easily updated
• Various parts of the website can only be updated by authorised user.
• Multiple users can update it simultaneously.
• User interface is easily understood.
• Web page layout and design control is easy to modify.
• Text, audio, video and other content are easily inserted.
• Content can be ranked or weighted to enable fresh content to appear in front.
• Most important of all it allows for interaction with community members.
Do you know this was built using Drupal
This is how the
Prime Minister
of Australia
keep in touch
with her
community
(the citizens)
• Open Source
• Content Management System
• Community Collaboration Tools
• Installed on Organization’s Computer
• Accessed through Internet Interface
• Community Supported
• International Translations
• Powering 75,000+ sites in 2006
What is Drupal CMS?
Drupal is open source
What does it mean?
• There is no software licensing fee
• Staff Time Commitment - Self-support and training of managers and users - Using community-based technical support vs. dedicated vendor-based/paid support - Self-evaluation of “modules” that extend the tools capabilities
See www.opensource.org
Drupal CMS is powerful but …
Drupal is powerful because it
• Has rules, constraints and processes
• Can be modified in a variety of ways
• Contains “core” functions: Drupal Core Functionality expanded through Modules
That means it requires more corporate commitment for
• Time to understand, test and configure
• Customization requires PHP programmer
• Community helps you configure and support
What can you do with Drupal?
• Blog to connect with your members
• Forum to give voice to your members
• Online Newspaper, Portal / Directory
• Portfolio to showcase your work
• Social community site to keep in touch with your members
• Video showcase of your product
• Project management site
• Wiki page of various specialised topics
• Shopping Cart complete with Payment gateway
• E-learning site for training your employee
• Dating site
• The list is limited by your imagination …
Drupal web design starts with this …
• Pieces of content = nodes Can be a picture, a block of text, a blog, audio, video, etc.
• Content is placed onto page sections, Nodes are placed into Blocks
Navigation
& Search
Top Story:
75th Anniversary
Latest
Publication
Program
Information
Youth
Outreach
Calendar of Events
Current News Headlines
Source: www.johnkenyon.org
Drupal website once content(nodes) are
loaded into their respective blocks
Navigation & Search
Top Story:
75th Anniversary
Latest Publication
Program Information
Youth Outreach
Calendar of Events
Current News
Source: www.johnkenyon.org
Effective Web Presence using Drupal Consider what content to use to reach out to your members
News
Seasonal Appeals
Stories
Events
Documents Fundraising
Featured
Video
eNews
Civicrm is an example of an open source
community application build on top of Drupal.
What’s next
• Identify a particular area of community you want to grow
• Work with a Drupal vendor
• Be clear in what you expect out of the website
– Open to public or close only to registered members
– How do you want to interact with your members
• Blog
• Forum
• Wiki etc
• Create a taxonomy of key terms to manage the content
• Create and test user profile for access control
• Verify workflow is working according to plan
• Start small and go live
THANK YOU
Victor Teo
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.hisocial.com.au
FB: www.facebook.com/hisocialaus