Creating content for communities

Announcements

These posts display in the Announcements area of the Community page and can be configured to allow replies. They allow Community administrators to broadcast messages to all community subscribers and members.

Currently, you cannot configure the number of Announcements that are displayed on the community home page.

Blogs

Blogs list entries chronologically, typically from newest to oldest. Group blogs contain entries from multiple authors, though many are created by a single author. Entries might offer commentary, news, event announcements, or material such as images or photos or links to other blogs. Blogs can be personal or professional. In a non-profit context, blogs are likely to be used for:

• Communication
• Connections
• Community growth or enhancement
• Marketing
• Customer support
• Public relations purposes

Blogs allow other readers to write comments for individual entries, and readers can subscribe to a blog to receive every blog entry as an email. Community administrators can edit any blog entry.

Recent activity

The Recent activity area offers a view of every content item that has been added or updated in reverse chronological order. It is available in some of the community portal layouts, and subscribing to forum topics, blogs, or communities from the Recent activity area is an easy way to ensure you receive an email notification for every content addition or update across the community.

Discussions contain topics. Subsequent entries on a topic are called posts. When a community member subscribes to a discussion, they receive an email every time that a post is added.

The Resource library stores shared files (such as Word or PDF files), forms, or graphics that you want to make available to everyone in the community to download.

Wikis are collaborative web pages that are grouped together, allowing community members to add articles to the community website or edit existing articles. Wikis allow any member with the appropriate permissions to add and edit articles. However, the following are not available for wiki articles:

• Comments
• Ability to view revision history
• The original author
• Subsequent edits of an article

Subscribing to a wiki means that every time an article is added or edited, you will receive an email message indicating what has changed.

Community administrators can add members based on any number of criteria, such as location or membership type. The Participants list identifies the subscribers of the community.

When new content is created, you can elect to receive those updates. You can subscribe to any discussions, discussion topics, wikis, blogs, and blog entries. You can opt to receive updates from an entire discussion or just from a single, relevant topic. Subscribing means that you will receive all comments that follow from the original post.

Do the following yo subscribe to a new community:

1. Go to Community > Communities.
2. Open the community from the Communities list.
3. Click Follow Community to start receiving Announcements for that community.
4. Browse through the content areas (Blogs, Discussions, Wikis) and click subscribe following each content area to follow updates to the areas that interest you.

When you subscribe to a community, you are signed up to receive email notifications when content updates are posted. You can opt out of these emails by clicking the unsubscribe link or Stop Following button.

Do the following to unsubscribe from content-update notifications:

1. Go to Community > Communities.
2. Go to the My subscriptions tab. A list of the content areas you are following is displayed.

Note: If the subscription list is too long for you to easily find items, click the header labels to sort the columns (each click toggles between ascending/descending order).

3. Click stop following to unsubscribe from communities or content areas.

Depending on permissions, a post can be any of the following:

• Reply
• Comment
• Blog entry
• Discussion topic
• Wiki page

Do the following to add a new post:

1. If you are permitted to create content in a specific area, you will see an Add link:
   • Announcements - Add an announcement
   • Blogs - Add new blog
   • Discussions - Add discussion forum
   • Wikis - Add a wiki
2. Click the appropriate Add link.
3. Enter the correct and appropriate information and click Publish.

Community administrators can fix and even remove objectionable content throughout the community, but only if members alert them to the situation. Whenever you see problems with content in the community, use the report option to help your administrators deal promptly with the problem.

Do the following to report content:

1. While viewing the post or comment, click the report link.
2. Enter an Explanation with reasons for reporting the post or comment.
3. Click Send.
4. Once you see the message that your report has been sent, click Close.

All Community administrators receive the email about the inappropriate content and have the ability to act on the report.

The Participants list is a list of all subscribers to the community. The Position column lists the security role of each member. Most participants will be a Subscriber. Some will be an Administrator, Moderator, or Wiki Author, or some combination thereof.

Do the following to view participants and their positions:

1. Go to Community > Communities.
2. Open the community from the Communities list.
3. Click Participants.



Note: Click a column heading to sort by that column.

Staff members with administrative privileges can select a member’s record then click remove to remove a specific member from the community’s Participants list.

Keeping wiki authorship open to all members is best in terms of maximizing contribution, participation, and inclusion of others. If your organization has concerns about incorrect or inappropriate information making it into a wiki, see if moderation by administrators cannot give you the protection you need, as they have the power to correct and delete such content.

If you choose to use moderators for your wiki, be sure that those individuals subscribe to the specific wikis in question so that they will be notified of all page submissions and can respond promptly.