Home Page Overview
When you login to your community,
Community Server displays your user home page. The home page provides
you with an overview of your activity within your Web community.
The home page appearance will differ from one Web community
to another based on theme and other site settings. However, the
Community Server user home page below is a typical example of what you
will see when you log in to your community.
You can launch all of your community activity from your home page.
You can also access the community blogs, media, forums, and groups from
the Control Panel at the top of the page.
Control Panel
The Control Panel is located at the top of home page workspace.
You can navigate to any of the main pages of your community by
clicking on the Control Panel item. The Control Panel displays on every
page of your community. It is worth noting that the only item on the
Control Panel that is specific to your data is Dashboard. When you
click on Blogs, however, your community’s main blog page displays. The
same holds true for Media, Forums, and Groups. If you want to access
your blogs, you can do that from your public profile.
Public Profile
Your public profile provides other users in your community with the
personal information about yourself that you want to make public. Your
public profile is editable, so you can update or delete information as
you need to.
In this example, the user has a placeholder where the personal
avatar would normally display. When you download a personal avatar,
which you can do from your profile, it will display instead of the
placeholder.
You can click on View public profile to view your public profile data.
Your biographical information displays in the upper middle of the
page. One of the major distinctions between your public profile page
and your dashboard page is the detailed information about your activity
and any activity by other users that is related to you. For example,
you can see more information about your friends in the community as
well as functionality for adding friends, sending messages and emails,
and adding announcements.
When you click on your friends’ username, their public profile
opens. Although user jbrown Shared Favorites section is empty, you can
indicate to visitors of your public profile sites you want to share
with them.
The Shared Feeds section is similar to the Shared Favorites section.
It displays RSS feeds that you want to share with your visitors.
The Announcements section contains special information you want to
headline or want to stand out. You can add an announcement by clicking Add an Announcement below your avatar or avatar placeholder.
The My Groups section shows the groups to which you belong.
The My Files section allows you to download files to upload and link
files to your profile that you want to share with your friends and
visitors.
Finally, the My Activity section provides you with a summary of your
community activity. It will present the date and time on which you
published a post or comment and when you joined a group or added a
friend.
In the example above, on May 16 jbrown joined a group (My Football
Team), uploaded a file (Sunset.jpg) and created a blog. The My Activity
section even notes when jbrown joined Community Server.
You can update your profile by clicking Edit profile. Click here for more information about editing your profile.
Conversations
One of the features of the Web community is the ability of community
members to converse with each other. The conversations section of the
home page lists your conversations with other members of your
community. You can begin a conversation by clicking Send a Message from your public profile.
When you receive a message from another community member, it displays in the Your Conversations section.
You can click on the conversation title to open a dialog window from which you can reply to the message.
Click here for more information about conversations.
Forums, Blogs, Media, and Groups
The Forums, Blogs, Media, and Groups sections provide you with links
to your most recent discussions, postings, media downloads, and groups
to which you belong. You can also access the main page for each of
these sections. When you go to the main page, you will find a list of
all the activity in the community. For example, the main blog page may
look something like this:
You can read additional information about forums, blogs, media, and groups.
Favorites
The Favorites section displays the list of forums, posts, and media that you have specifically identified as a favorite.
When you find a discussion, post, or media file that you really
like, Community Server allows you to identify it as a favorite simply
by clicking a link. For example, as shown above, you have not selected
any favorites. But suppose that when browsing through the forums you
find a post that you want to add as a favorite.
When you click Favorites, you can specify whether to add the forum
or the post to the favorites list. The item then displays in the
Favorites list on your home page, as shown below.
Click here for more information about how to add favorites.
Your Groups
The Your Groups section lists the groups to which you belong as well
as provides a link so you can view all groups in the community.
A group is a mini-community with its own membership consisting of up
to one blog, media gallery, and forum. All of a group’s content is
accessible by members of the group.
Your Files
The Your Files section lists the files you have uploaded to the
community and provides a link that will take you to a file download
page if you have permissions to download files.
As you can see from the example above, you have not uploaded any
files. If you click View all and upload files, and if you have upload
permission, Community Server takes you to a download page from which
you can download a file. The file will then display in the Your Files
list.
Click here for more information about downloading files.
User Action Links
The user action links always appear in the upper-right corner of every page in the community.
The username link (jjones in the example above) always takes you to your public profile. Edit opens the Edit Your Profile page. Sign out signs you out of the community. Help opens the Support launch page.