Creating online communities

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: Victor.teo@hisocial.com.au

Web: www.hisocial.com.au

FB: www.facebook.com/hisocialaus