Blog

Today's tip puts your community site in front of your members on a daily basis, by adding an icon to their mobile screen.

Remember that, in Hoop.la community, you can control which page is the "landing page" for mobile devices in your control panel, under Module Configuration.

Adding a Home Screen Icon For iPhone

Open your browser and type in the URL to the community site.

Click the "share" icon. It will bring up some options (see screenshot).

Click "add to Home Screen."

You'll see an option to name the icon (keep it short). Your phone will automatically use a screenshot of the page as the icon, however you can create a custom icon if you want to take it up a notch!

Here's an article with a tutorial specific to Android devices (it's a similar process).

Now you have real estate on your members' devices!

Feel free to either link to this tip or share it with your members if you'd like to encourage them to add your site to their mobile device.

Attachments

Photos (2)

Hoop.la automatically offers Google fonts in a dropdown menu within the themes editor. But what if your marketing department has demanded you use a specific font that's not included in Google fonts?

No problemo.

First, make sure you have purchased the font in question, and it is hosted somewhere in your web servers, or you've purchased a font hosting service. Basically, you'll need the URL for the font in question.

Next, open your Hoop.la control panel, and go to Display Settings.

In the Custom CSS box, place code like this:

@font-face {

         font-family: crazyfont;

         src: url ('http://www.crazyfont.ttf');

}

Then, open the Theme you wish to use, and in the Fonts section, choose which font you want to customize, and select "Other" in the dropdown.

Then, just type "crazyfont" and click Submit at the bottom of the page.

Have fun!

Attachments

Photos (1)

CSS stands for "cascading style sheets." In plain English, it means you can more efficiently control the design of HTML elements. Want all of your H1 headers to be red and italics? Done. Want your widget boxes to have a drop shadow? No problemo.

CSS is the jelly to HTML's peanut butter.

Hoop.la includes easy ways to include custom CSS within the site framework as well as inside themes.

If you'd like to become more self-sufficient with your site, how about learning some CSS?

Free and Cheap CSS Online Courses

• Udemy Beginner CSS courses (paid)
• Free Codecademy Web Fundamentals course (includes HTML and CSS): 
• Free CSS Tutorial from W3Schools
• Free CSS Tutorial from HTML.net

Example of How to Use CSS for Design

For example, if you'd like to make all H1 headers in your Hoop.la site a specific color, insert this code into your Display Settings > Custom CSS box:

h1 { color:red; }

You can use any color name, or use the hex code. If you apply this at the top level, in Display Settings, it will control all H1 headers across your entire site. If you want to control just the H1 headers in a specific theme, just place the custom CSS inside that theme's Page Shell > custom CSS area. 

Example of How to Use CSS for Feature Edit

This same trick can be used to actually hide Hoop.la features you don't want to use. For example, if you don't want to use the community ranking system, you can hide "community rank" from the interface completely.

Insert this code into the Display Settings > Custom CSS box:

<style type="text/css">

#communityRankProfileSection { display:none; }

</style>

After you've become a CSS expert, and created cool tricks for your Hoop.la site, why not come back and share? Show us your mad skills.

Image via Flickr CC: RVWTito

Attachments

Photos (1)

We've just rolled out our "SEO Ninja" software update for Hoop.la and UBB Forum.  This update is focused primarily on making all pages served by your site much more SEO-friendly.  This will help drive more traffic to your site.

1.  All Content URLs Automatically Optimized

Whenever new content is created, no matter what type, the URLs for the content will reflect the title of the content.  You, as admin, can customize these URLs if you want, but the point is that every content URL is now optimized for you, so you never have to lift a finger.

2.  Most URL Paths Simplified and Improved

We've streamlined many of the standard path URLs the system uses.  This leads to much simpler URLs and improves SEO by making it easier for search engines to properly classify your pages.  In addition, things like forum categories are now also SEO friendly because we display the category name, rather than an ID number, in the URL.

3.  HTML Page Titles Improved

We've changed the way we format HTML titles for pages.  Now, we display the name of the page first, followed by your web site name.

4.  All Old Content URLs Will Automatically Direct To New URLs

Don't worry about these new URL formats.  Anyone who bookmarked an old URL will still be directed automatically to the new URL.  

In addition to these SEO-related improvements, we also added the following:

5.  New Member Preference Controlling Default Follow Settings For Content

We've added new settings to the "Your Personal Settings" page that allows your members to control the default behavior of the "Follow" checkbox when they create new content or reply/comment on content. Previously, this checkbox was ALWAYS checked by default, but now each member of your site can control the default behavior, as shown below.

6. Product News Twitter Feed Back In the Control Panel

In a previous update, we had to remove our product news twitter feed from the control panel "Summary" page.  That was done because Twitter had changed its API and because its widget system would not support this.

Twitter has subsequently changed things, however, so now we are able to display our product news Twitter feed on that page again.

In addition to these changes, there were numerous other minor bug fixes and tweaks. 

Attachments

Photos (1)

When you name something, it becomes real, memorable, definable.

Think about the Redskins Hogettes, the Pomodoro technique, Beliebers...all names that conjure a simple image, quickly. 

You can use this technique to solidify and extend the close identification your members have with your online community. If they can call it something, they can easily talk about it with their friends and share it socially.

Consider the difference between:

"I love to scrapbook! I just became a Fiskateer!"

and

"I love to scrapbook! I just joined the Fiskars online brand evangelist community."

Name your community, name the members, name your traditions.

It creates a special "insider" feeling when your members all use the same terminology. Make your members feel like insiders when they talk about your special community.

Bonus points if your members name themselves as a group; take that and run with it!

In yesterday's Hoop.la release, we added a cool little feature that makes it easier to export forum topics for further analysis.

Download Topic Data as CSV

In all forum topics, you'll now see an option on the right side to get a CSV file for the topic data.

When you click the tool, you'll get a zip file that contains a file called "posts.csv" (if it's just a simple topic). If the topic you chose includes a poll, you'll see additional files with poll questions and data.

Attachments

Photos (1)

You would never intentionally kill your community, right? But sometimes we lose track of those little details that can make a big difference.

Here are 10 common mistakes that can kill community

1. Where's the community?

There's no button in the navigation, and you've got discussions buried three layers deep into the site, or in a tiny link in the site footer.

2. Are there people here?

You aren't "bubbling up" and highlighting faces from the community on your home page. We are trained to be drawn to human faces, so don't hide them!

3. What is the most recent stuff?

You aren't pulling timely content from the community out to the front page. Don't make visitors go searching around to find out what's new.

4. Why should I join this community?

There's no explanation of what the community is for, or why I might want to join it. Will I get answers to my questions? Will I get to hobnob with celebrities? Will you help me increase my business revenue? Will there be dancing unicorns?

5. Difficult registration process

You have a multi-step process, no social login options, and 20 custom profile fields to get through before I can join. I don't have time to mess around with that. Make the info required on initial registration as minimal as possible.

6. Totally private

You've locked down your entire community behind a wall, and I can't see it at all. There's no teaser content or any hint of what's in there.

7. Calling it something weird

How am I supposed to know that "Joe's Garage" is the name of your community? I'm probably not going to click that to find out. At least in your navigation, call your community "community" or "forums" or "discussion."

8. Repellent theme or colors

I'm talking to you, website from 2009. Too many blinking ads, seafoam blue and orange together (sorry Miami Dolphins), and super tiny fonts are probably going to send me away.

9. Giant banner that makes you scroll on every page

Yes, Google+ just added strangely huge cover photos to your profiles, but that doesn't make it a good idea. Any graphic that pushes the content I'm interested in to the bottom of my screen is going to annoy me, particularly if it's on every page. Keep your banner graphics to a reasonable width, no more than 200 pixels.

10. Not enough breathing room on the page

You don't have to throw every widget, every ad, and every badge on all pages of the community. Just highlight the most important content and let it breathe. Leave some white space and your members will appreciate it.

What mistakes are you seeing out there? 

We'll be rolling a bunch of tutorial videos for Hoop.la and UBB Forum over the coming weeks, but first off is a video that walks you through the process of creating a theme.  The tutorial explains what each theme setting means and how each is applied on your site.

http://www.hoop.la/video.php?id=tutorial-create-theme

Attachments

Photos (1)

Have you ever gone on a trip and then noticed that your community’s time stamps are wacky? That used to happen because your normal time zone preference was being honored, and you’d have to manually re-set it to your “travel” time zone (and then set it back when you got home).

Our last Hoop.la release included a handy dandy timezone checker that will help frequent travelers.

Now, when you start a new session, Hoop.la will check your current browser time zone and compare it with your existing time zone preference. 

If it’s different, you’ll see a message asking if you want to change your time zone. Clicking yes will automatically re-set to your current location’s time zone.  When you get home, Hoop.la will prompt you to re-set again.

This mechanism will also work from Hoop.la’s mobile interface.

One less irritation when you're traveling.

(Sorry, there's nothing we can do about those TSA pat-downs.)

Attachments

Photos (1)

One goal of every community manager is to make community members feel special, and keep them closely connected to the community.

Today I'm offering up a quick hit list of ways to make that happen (please add your own ideas in the comments!):

1. Give them graphic badges
2. Surprise them with custom titles
3. Send a personalized welcome email
4. Start holding In-person events
5. Offer custom avatars
6. Use activity level titles
7. Give them special powers (make them a moderator)
8. Make them a chat featured guest
9. Interview them in a forum or blog series
10. Feature their content
11. Poll them - ask their opinion about something
12. Get PR for something cool the community has done
13. Brag about them specifically, highlight their accomplishments
14. Share their content on other social channels
15. Make traditions
16. Send them a handwritten card or little gift
17. Have a member of the week or month
18. Name them as a group (or let them name themselves)
19. Make it exclusive or hard to get in (have an application instead of registration)
20. Keep track of your history and highlight key events from the past
21. Refer to new members by name in content (posts, blogs, etc.)
22. Help members achieve their goals or dreams
23. Let the community participate in rebranding or theming
24. Set up a special photo or video area for members to share pet photos
25. Celebrate membership anniversaries together