Final Post – Community Building

Before I started this blog I had no experience with any blog or something like it. I knew how they looked like and that the messages people posted were stories (diary), interesting items or links to items they like to share with the rest of the world. But during this module I experienced that blogs are more than just that, I never knew there was such a ‘community feeling’ among these ‘bloggers’.

I never had the idea to start an own blog because I didn’t really knew what to post on this blog. This could be something that I am interested in (like web and graphic design), but most of the information I needed I could find on other websites or blogs, so I didn’t thought it was necessary to start one.

After registering on WordPress I had to go and find a community that I found interesting and would like to join. After some web browsing on websites I visit commonly I decided to choose Smashing Magazine, a community all about web and graphic design. People can find lots of articles about web(design)-related subjects, wallpapers, information about coding, articles that give you inspiration and tools and tutorials than can help you.
There’s also a forum (the actual community) were visitors of the website can exchange information and discuss subjects that they’re interested in. There are also a lot of visitors that just join the forum to ask for help, this is also no problem as long as you stick to the forum rules.

Most of my blog posts were related to articles I read on the website itself, and other websites that had interesting articles about subjects that were related to the module. Because a lot of the articles I found were related to something that comes in handy when you’re developing a community it was relatively easy to post articles like. I also learned a lot from these articles.

Because it was the main part of this assignment I also took part in the community behind this website, the Smashing Magazine Forum. During the past weeks I only posted a few messages, most of them were reactions on topics I liked or found interesting. There’s also a part of the forum that is called ‘Look at my design!’, here people can post their own website or design and it will be reviewed by other members. I also posted my design in this topic and I got a few reactions that were quite useful.
But after all the best way I think to describe myself in this community is as ‘lurker’. This because I was more passive than active, I read a lot of topics, responded to several but only started a few. If you look at it from this point it was quite difficult to come up with topics to post on the forum. I didn’t really had questions about certain subjects and found it hard to come up with interesting subjects. I learned more from the other members and topics than they learned from me.

I wanted to participate in this community because I was very attracted to all the interesting articles on the website itself. That’s why I choose to subscribe myself to the forum. I’m following this website for several years now. A lot of times when I was searching for an answer to my question this website passed me by, and most of the time their articles helped me further. It’s also a great source for inspiration and interesting tools + tutorials.

The organization behind the community is quite normal. You need to follow the rules and guidelines; this will keep the forum clean. Examples are: don’t post illegal content, respect other members and post you article in the right section of the forum. The technique behind it is phpBB and they work with Administrators and Global moderators that need to take care of the forum (just like in a normal forum). There’s a clear division between the different categories, because of this it looks well-organized and clean.

Like within a lot of communities the commercial model behind the Smashing Magazine community is based on advertisements of websites with related topics, some of these are partners as well. Another marketing technique that is important to this website is word-of-mouth; a lot of visitors visit the website because someone told them about it.

The community is very young at this moment; it’s around for about a year. When you visit the homepage of the Smashing Magazine it’s not directly visible that there’s a forum. To attract more visitors to the community they could place link to the forum in the menu, so it will be clear to everybody that there’s a forum. Another option to improve the community is by relating articles on the homepage to topics on the forum or another way to ‘connect’ the forum directly to the homepage. The most important thing for this community is that it still needs to grow.

After all I think starting a weblog was quite interesting. Because we were triggered to post at least 2 posts a week I became really involved in all the topics. I was searching the web for interesting articles and things that were very instructive. Next to the theory in the module itself I also learned a lot from the articles I posted on my weblog, especially about how to make good social/community websites.
I don’t know if I will go further with this weblog, but what I do know is that I will be more active on the Smashing Magazine website and the forum, because they always come up with interesting items.

Kind regards,

Arjan

Designing Social Interfaces

Since community website are also ‘Social’ websites, I think the following article will be interesting to everybody who is following this module or manages/ has built his own social community website.

Designers normally approach interface design by crafting a channel that allows them to easily and efficiently control hardware or software; it’s all about the interaction between people and computers. Nowadays user interfaces are being approached in a different way: it’s no longer about people interacting with computers, but more about people interacting with people through computers.

This is the nature of the social Web. Social news websites, message boards, social networks, online stores and blogs all have some sort of user interaction going on, whether it’s comments on a blog post or social games on Facebook. The critical issue here is that people are not interacting directly with other people; rather the interaction occurs through a user interface.

So when you’re developing an user interface for a social website you need keep this in the back of your head, otherwise you won’t reach the goal you have set. To improve your ‘Social interface’ there are several techniques and options you can add so the users will have a better experience when using the community/social website.

A short description of these practical examples can be found below:

User points and Badges
Achievement, and more importantly, the feeling of achievement, can play a big part in social websites and games. You may be familiar with the massive multi-player games that have a system whereby players progress through levels as they play the game. Each level brings more prestige to the player and so keeps them playing more — with the next level always just a little bit out of reach.

Unlockable Features as Rewards
Points and badges are superficial prizes: they’re all about ego. You can go a step further and offer tangible benefits to your biggest contributors, such as by unlocking new features for your website or application. Unlocking new features differs from things like badges and points because the user isn’t interested here in building their ego; they’re interested in getting more value out of your website or application.

Reply Notifications
A popular feature on blogs and message boards is email-based notification of new replies to your messages. The feature works like this: you submit a new post to a social website, and when somebody replies, you are notified by email. This allows you to keep track of new replies without having to visit the website.

Dealing With Troublemakers
However much we want our community members to all get along, there will inevitably be one or two people who seem to want to cause nothing but trouble. Unfortunately, one rotten apple can spoil the barrel, so you’ll want to deal with these troublemakers quickly and efficiently.

Reply Threading
Threading, or branching, is a way to organize comments and posts on message boards and blogs. A thread, or branch, is a collection of comments that stem from one particular post, and so they focus the discussion on whatever that parent post is about. Threads organize different topics on the same page, usually by indenting the child comments under the parent. This technique may not work in all circumstances.

The full article can be found HERE

Starting with CMS

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article about about CMS Made Simple and why I like this cms so much. Today I came across an article called “Getting Started With Content Management Systems“, because I talked about CMSMS I think this article could be interesting as well.

The main points of this article can be found here, for more detailed information I recommend you to read the full article yourself.

1. What Is A Content Management System?

If you have never heard the term before, a content management system (CMS) is a Web-based solution that makes it easy for a company to manage website updates internally. For many companies, updating a website is not something to look forward to because it can be a lengthy and, over time, expensive process. Most companies search for easier means of accomplishing their goals. The solution that many large and small companies have found is a CMS. The easy-to-use application allows your company to control its online identity with little to no knowledge of Web design.

2. Essentials Of A CMS

Three key elements that every CMS has, one way or another, are templates, content and meta data. Understanding how these three elements interact with the other CMS features is important: the template is the graphic wrapper of your website; without the actual content, you would have no need for a website; and the often over-looked meta data helps with search engine optimization.

3. CMS Features And Functions

Content management systems come with many standard features to help you create, manage and edit your content. In addition to standard features, additional features can be added to the flexible system framework. These additional features are often referred to as add-on modules or plug-ins. Because a CMS is very flexible, you can use it for a simple website with little content or expand the features to support a complex website with a lot of content. Here is a nice list of high-profile companies that use a CMS for their websites, which will give you a good idea of how far you can expand these systems.

Overal this article gives the reader an clear idea of where you need to think of when choosing and working with an CMS.

40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design

The most of you may know that typography in design is very important and can’t be overestimated. The accuracy, precision and balance of geometric forms can give letters the elegance and sharpness they deserve. Besides, elegant fonts can help to convey the message in a more convenient way. In fact, while there are many excellent professional fonts (some of them can be found in this article 80 Beautiful Typefaces For Professional Design) there are literally thousands of free low-quality fonts which you would never use for professional designs.

Quality costs. The price of “bulletproof” fonts usually reflects their quality and starts at 50$ per typeface. However, before purchasing a font you will probably use only once in your designs you might want to take a glance at outstanding free alternatives first.

Over the last year Smashing Magazine has been observing typo-designers and their works; they’ve regularly collected high-quality fonts available for free download and free to use for personal or/and commercial projects. In this article you can find an overview of over 40 excellent free fonts you might use for your professional designs in 2008.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT

6 Common User Interface Elements

The appearance and usability of certain interface elements and functionality are crucial to the success any websites in today’s market.

Studies have demonstrated that even a split-second delay in thinking on the user’s part will weaken their perception and interest in a website and ultimately lower the website’s conversion rate.

In certain niches and industries, having UI elements that are not obvious in their use may be perfectly acceptable. The blogging and web development industry are perfect examples.

But when we design user interfaces for non-tech-savvy audiences—which is usually the case with client work—we have to ensure that certain UI elements do not stray too far from what users are accustomed to.

This article discusses some best practices and usability traits of six user interface elements and the conventions for each, so that developers can create user experiences that are both beautiful and simple.

1. Appearance of the Search Box

On large information-rich or product-heavy websites, search is king. Users here generally forgo conventional navigation bars in favor of the search box.

2. Clearly Marked Collapsible/Expandable Content

Websites benefit from collapsible panels and drop-down menus because they make for cleaner and less cluttered layouts. The hidden content in these interface elements can, however, impair a website’s usability if their presence is not clearly indicated.

3. AJAX Loading Indicator

When you improve the user experience by loading content through asynchronous requests, make sure to inform the user that an AJAX request is being processed. Without this indicator, the user may give up waiting or wonder why nothing has happened in response to their click.

4. Location of Shopping Cart and Log-In and Register Functions

When users scan a page for the “Shopping cart” button or “Register now” link, the first place they look is the top-right corner of the page. Unless you have a compelling reason to do so, keep this functionality in its familiar location, or else you risk slowing down and disrupting the user experience.

5. Expiration Date Format on Credit Card Forms

When a form asks for your credit card’s expiration date, the format is always the same: the month, represented by two digits, followed by the year, represented by two or four digits (e.g. 03/11 or 03/2011). The four-digit format is how the expiration date appears on the credit card itself.

6. Easily Identifiable Links

This should never be a problem, but unfortunately some websites still do not clearly distinguish between links and regular text in the main body.

For the full article you can visit: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/11/best-practices-for-6-common-user-interface-elements/

CMS Made Simple

For every webdeveloper/designer it’s important to work as efficient as possible. And it’s also important that when you’ve finished a website your customers won’t come and bother you with questions. To solve this we use Content Management Systems which offers customers the possibility to manage their website by their own.

A couple of weeks ago I’ve got an order from a political party to make a website for them. Well I talked to them and came up with a design. And when they approved it I could start building the website, but there were several options for me. Am I going to use an open source CMS or am I going to program the backoffice on my own (which would cost me more work because I’m not that good with PHP). So I’ve deciced to use an CMS. After surfing the internet I came across CMS Made Simple, like the sais, it’s simple to use, but it also offers lots of possibilities.

Because I want you see this CMS for yourself I’ve worked out some points in relation to this CMS:

Content

In the content section it’s very easy to manage your pages, these are displayed in a clear overview with all the important information like: the used template, the content type, the status and who has made the page. It’s possible to directly view the page, copy it, edit it and show all the subpages this page contains. Next to this it’s also possible to place more specific information like metadata, rights and the location of the page.

It’s easy to manage mediafiles. With the FileManager users can easily manage their files that are displayed in an clear overview. It also displays all the file properties (size, dimensions, owner, rights, etc.) and it’s possible to edit and delete them.

Structure

The managent system is clearly divided, layout and content are clearly separated, just like the management of users and extensions. When someone makes a page this needs to be linked to a template, which is linked to a CSS-stylesheet. The menu (dropdown) is very clear, so everthing is easy to find. There’s no HTML editor in the development section, which is something that can be quite anoying when you need to edit the sourcecode.

Design

The management system looks well-organised, they’ve used a lot of light tones combined with a dark menu. Icons are used and these strengthen the overview, all the options are directly visible.

It’s also possible to design or upload your own backoffice template.

Components

CMS Made Simple offers a lot of extra components. It has also a lot of standard components like: a search function, tags with certain functions (breadcrumbs fe.), a WYSIWYG-editor and a mail function. Next to this there’s a Module Manager which gives an overview of all the modules available, and there are a lot.. Examples of these modules are AJAX applications, photogalleries, blogs, bookmarks, news system, Google-applications and hundreds of others

Investment

There are no costs related to CMS Made Simple, it’s fully free to use. It can be used by small- and middle-companies, it’s easy to manage content and it offers enough possibilities for these kind of companies.

So I recommend this CMS to all of you! More information can be found at: http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/

The website I was/am working on can be found here: http://www.r10venlo.nl/

Re: Portfolio website

As you may have seen there’s weren’t that many responses on my “Portfolio Website” topic. This could mean that people didn’t took the time to take a look at it, or that they don’t have any comments on it.

On comment I got was about the menu that’s on the bottom of the homepage. He told me that it would be better to place it underneath the banner or on another “higher” place. This because people don’t like scroll a lot, especially when they’re on a netbook. And I agree with this, so when I have the time I will update this page so the menu will be used more.

Portfolio website

As you may know I have my own portfolio website called AVBvision, which can be found at www.avbvision.com. I’ve posted this website on the Smashing Magazine forum and asked the members to look at it and tell what they think of it. These reactions will hopefully help me making my portfolio website better, it’s still a BETA-version at this moment.

Hope you will look at it as well, if want to let me know what you think of it and you’re not an member the Smashing magazine forum you post your reaction right here.

The forum post I made can be found HERE.

Social Media Marketing in practice

Sociale media like Hyves, YouTube, blogs, wiki’s, social newssites and Twitter are not only popular, they also deliver money. A recent study from the Altimeter Group proves this. Sociale media are an excellent way to reach your target group online and start a dialogue  with them. In spite of this the secret of social media isn’t easy to unravel.

Outmoded laws don’t seem to count because flat sales just don’t work. It’s the dialogue where it is about, this provides the possibilty to create a bond with the customer. And this will eventualy lead to certain brand preference, a higher loyalty and with that also higher sales.

Social media generates income
The research by the Altimeter Group (july 2009), proves that succesful customerinteraction via sociale media (engagement) connects with better financial achievement of the enterprise. The Engagementdb study shows that companies with a high extent of engagement generated 18% more income in the last 12 months. While companies that have little or no interaction on social media show 6% lower income in the same period.

The study looked at more than ten different social media, like blogs, social networks, Twitter, wiki’s and discussionforums. The engagement activity for every channel was judged by the degree of interaction that the company engages with their customers.

The top 10 ‘engagement brands’ are according to the study:

1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)

Characteristics of succesful companies on social media
The idea is actual simple: how closer a company stands to their customers, the more succesful the company will be financially. Social media offer the possibility par excellence to create this ‘neighbourhood’, to interact with others and guide the dialogue. And then we’re not talking about a simple blog in which the company only posts a few passive messages. It’s about an ‘real’ dialogue, in which the company and the customer are on the same level. ‘Push’-information is improper.

Succesful companies have – according to the study – a team that is fully focussing on social media. The teammembers evangelize the importance of social media within the organisation and manage to mobilize enough supporters.

The winners can be characterized as following:

• Social media are a central part of the marketingactivities en innovationprocesses in particular
• They are active in different social media
• They posses a devoted team
• They have a companyculture that recognizes the importance of dialogue and participation

I found and translated this information from the following article: Social media marketing in de praktijk

There are also two cases in this article, about Starbucks and Incontro.

The right on broadband for ALL

Today I came across an article which states that all Finnish citizens have the right on a broadbandconnection of at least 1 Mbps. This has been legally anchored in the law, this will be applied from july 2010. And from 2015 and on everybody has the right on a broadband connection of 100 Mbps.

When I read this article I was suprised, but I really like the idea behind it. I think it will be good for the development of peoples knowledge when they all have fast access to the internet. In my opinion this can be introduced in The Netherlands as well, but I don’t know how the government thinks about it.

The Finish government also implied that this law does not count for the 2000 people that live in areas that are difficult to reach, which is something that won’t be a problem in The Netherlands.

Other countries like Switzerland and France have laws that are comparable to this one.