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.