- Blog
- Blogs (short for weblogs) are online journals that each member can maintain for others to read. Each blog post can be associated with an optional category for easy organization, or they can be sorted chronologically.
- Blog List
- A blog list is a collection of blogs that interest a given member in the system. When viewing the profile of a member who maintains a blog, a special link will appear to add their blog to your blog list. The blogs in this list are sorted by most recent post date by default.
- Comment
- Comments are similar to messages where the topic of conversation involves a single member. All members can post comments about any other member.
- Community
- The community is a collection of groups in which members
can communicate with each other by replying to each others' messages.
- Friend
- Friends are at the heart of the community. Members can invite their friends to create their own profiles on the system. Confirmed friends can often see more information from each others' profiles.
- Group
- A group is made up of one or more members who want to discuss
a particular topic through a collection of threads. This is similar to
an online message board. Groups have certain properties, including a name,
description, and possible thumbnail image. They may be...
- open or closed: An open group is open to the public, meaning that any
member may participate in conversation. A closed group is restricted to a specific list
of members who may join the group directly or by invitation.
- public or private: If the group is public, then any member may join
themselves. If private, members must be explicitly invited.
- read-only: A member can only post a message on a read-only group if they happen to be the owner or a moderator of that group. This attribute is most often used to allow a few people to post announcements, with no chance for discussion.
- Invitation
- Any member can invite others to join their groups by using the "Invite" function.
This will send an email to each of the addresses you specify which contain a link back to the community. This will also record each email address so that your friend
can "Accept" the invitation once they have created a profile under the same address.
- Link
- A link is a URL and corresponding label specified by one member to be shown to other members in the system. These are analogous to bookmarks or favorites in a web browser.
- Member
- A member is a user of the system who has created a profile and may have joined
one or more groups. Members can usually post messages within
those groups or can create new groups.
- Member ID
- Every member is associated with a unique identification (ID) number, which can be used to
positively identify a particular user in the event that their nickname (e.g., Bob)
isn't sufficient.
- Message
- A message is written by a member of a particular group and should contain
a brief subject. They are organized into threads, and a
message may be written as the start of a new thread or a reply to another message.
- Moderator
- Any member can be assigned a moderator to a group by its
owner or another moderator. They have the power to edit some information
about the group, remove group members, or moderate (edit/remove) any messages posted to the group.
- Nickname
- A nickname is the name that other members will see attached to each of your messages.
It might also be shown on a member list for some groups.
- Owner
- The owner of a group is usually the member who created it,
but this may change over time. Owners may assign moderators for their group,
remove other members who have joined, moderate (edit/remove) any
message posted to the group, or remove the group altogether. The owner
of a group may permanently transfer ownership to any moderator of that group.
- Profile
- Every member has a profile, which is simply a collection of information about
that particular member. This includes login and contact information, an optional
thumbnail, and a nickname for use within groups. In addition, a member can provide information that can be seen by whomever they specify, including personal friends, anyone within their social network, or anyone that cares to look!
- Simple HTML
- This includes basic formatting tags, such as <b>bold</b> and <i>italics</i>, or tags such as
- <a href="http://my.domain.com">links</a>
- <center> centered text </center> and
- <ul><li>bulleted lists</li></ul> (like this one)
- Subject
- The subject of a message is similar to the subject line of an email. It
should briefly describe what the body of the message contains. If the new message is the
first message of a thread, it is especially important that the message
contain an accurate subject to make it easy to identify in a list of threads.
- Thread
- A thread is simply a collection of messages within a given group.
Any replies to a message within a thread remains in that thread, indented to indicate which
messages are replies to which.
- Thumbnail
- A thumbnail image is a small photo or other graphic (no larger than 500 kilobytes) which is
used to identify a member or a group in the system. They must be in GIF, JPG, or PNG format.
|
