Today, we have begun the process of rolling out a major update for Hoop.la sites.  This upgrade focuses mainly on the forums module.

Let's go over the changes!

1. New Topic List Mode

In your control panel for the UBB Forum module, you'll see a new setting that looks like this:

The "New" topic list mode focuses on making it faster and easier for your members to browse through topics in your community. There is no separate list of categories and forums in this mode. Instead, all forums and/categories are listed above the topic list, serving as a filter of the list.

Here's what the new mode looks like:

As you can see, in this mode, there is a prominent search bar, a list of all forums, and three different topic list tabs- Recent, Trending, and Following. Following includes only the topics the member is explicitly following. For each topic in the list, we display profile pictures of the last 3 members that replied.

The "new" mode also utilizes infinite scroll, rather than pagination.

It's a much cleaner, simpler (and more powerful) way to browse forum topics. But of course, if you prefer the old way, just keep yourself in Legacy mode. Existing sites will still be in "Legacy" mode, so you will not see any changes associated with the new model unless you decide to switch to the "New" mode.

2. Post Button Now Viewable By Guests

The big "Post" button displayed at the top of the widget column is now always visible, even to guests (people not signed into your site). If a guest clicks on the button, they will be queried to sign in or register.

3. New Theme

We've added a new theme called "Charleston". Aside from the new theme, we've also spruced up our base CSS a bit. Much of it is adding more rounded edges to things. You may notice these changes on your own site, depending on the amount of custom CSS that you have added. If our changes put a crimp on your own style in some way, create a support ticket here and we can help you get things the way you want them.

4. New Primary Community Logo and Simple Header Option

A new, optional General Settings field is "Primary Community Logo"

The primary logo is automatically displayed in the site header, when using a Simple Header. The "Custom HTML" site header option remains for customers that want to display more than a single logo in their header. If you are an existing customer, you probably do not need to use the new field, because you have already created your site header.

5. New New Approach To Default Member Avatars

Previously, we displayed the same generic profile image for members who did not supply a profile picture. We've improved things quite a bit on that front by instead assigning a color and initials for each avatar-less member. Thus, you'll see a colored circle with one or two letters inside the circle representing the member's name.

6. Sticky Header for Forum Topics

This is a featured we borrowed from our QuestionShark support topics. When you scroll down on a forum topic, the forum title will remain sticky at the top of the page.

7. Removal of Google+ from Social Networks

Now that Google+ has ceased to exist, we have removed support for that Social Network.

As usual, there are numerous other bug fixes and minor changes associated with this major update. If you experience any issues or have any questions, please let us know.

Note: it may take a week or so for us to deploy this update to all customers. Pro/Enterprise customers will be the last to receive the update.

Happy Friday!

I've been asked a few times about how to get community members talking to each other, so I thought I'd share some ideas here.

If you've had success in your community, and want to share you own tips, please comment!

1. Use mentions to tag in other members (like Quora's ask to answer feature). If you think a specific member has the expertise to answer a question well, tag them in. This will also help surface that feature for your other members.
2. AMA in a forum. Invite interesting members to do an "Ask Me Anything" in a forum, where the other members can pose questions during a specific time frame. (You could also use a chat event to do this, if you want to do it live.)
3. Set up searchable interest fields (custom profile fields). If you make these public fields, your members will be able to use Advanced Search to find fellow members who have similar interests.
4. Celebrate "wins" for peer to peer (Joe got his solution...). You can highlight these in a widget, or even add this type of information to your regular newsletter.
5. Reward when people engage (use Recipes to kudo people who do it). Add points for commenting. Anything you incentivize will happen more often.
6. Add social integrations to encourage external socializing. Enable as many of the social integrations as you can, so that your members can meet each other "off-community" as well. That may solidify relationships within the community.
7. Hold an in-person event (use calendar w/RSVPs), then give everyone who attended extra points.
8. Make private spaces to encourage self-disclosure (sometimes people are reluctant to share in the public spaces, especially if your community's subject area is sensitive).
9. Use a survey to surface opportunities for folks to engage with each other (fun or business oriented). Quick surveys are a great way to offer a low-barrier entry point for discussion. It's easier to vote in a survey than to start a conversation yourself.
10. Enable the recommendation engine, and it will recommend similar members. This allows your members to get to know each other too!

What are your ideas and past successes with sparking peer-to-peer engagement?

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

It's the beginning of a new year, and whether your community is just getting started or has been around for years, it's always good to go into the shop for a tune-up once in a while.

Here's a handy checklist you can use to make sure your online community continues to hum along throughout 2016 and beyond.

10 Point Community Tune-Up Checklist

1. Terms of Service, legal - Have there been any changes in the last year that affect your TOS or legal position? New regulations? New lines of business? Here's an example: if you enabled image or video sharing in your community over the last year, do you have language that protects copyrighted material?
2. Community guidelines - How is the tone of your community? Do you need to tweak your published community guidelines to address any issues or conflicts that arise consistently? If you do make changes to the guidelines, make sure you are transparent with the edits and bring your community members in on the changes and any future moderation changes that will come along with them.
3. Administrator and moderators - Check in with moderators or admin team and take a pulse. You should be doing this frequently anyway, but if you haven't lately, now is a good time to start the year with some input from the team. Look for suggestions on how to make the community even better. Do you have adequate staff? Do you want to accept volunteer moderators or hire some this year?
4. New features from your technology platform - Did your community platform release any updates or new features in the last year? Have you decided how you can take advantage of them or integrate them into your strategy?
5. Address inactive members - Do you want to send out a communication to inactive members? If they've been inactive for all of 2015, do you want to consider pruning out those old members? Depending on the mission of your community, you might want to consider getting rid of dead weight or coming up with a strategy to bring them back.
6. Address irrelevant, stale, or incorrect content - Take a look at the content created over the last year. Does anything need to be updated, refreshed, moved, or deleted?
7. Look at design and branding - When was the last time you refreshed your header or footer? Do you have a new logo or color scheme? Will you be running any special campaigns this year that might require a custom image for the community? Get proactive and prepare now.
8. Consider rewarding your super members - Review your all-star community members. Who are they, what is their profile? How do you create more of them? Have you said thanks lately? Do some direct outreach to make sure they know you've noticed them.
9. Highlight key content produced over the past year - What stood out last year in the community? Think about creating a highlight widget or featured content for your most popular items. You could also consider doing some additional social promotion if it's public content. Make some hay out of your best stuff!
10. Goals - Come up with a community goal for the year, with metrics to track progress. Involve the community itself in setting and achieving the goal; you'd be surprised at how motivating this can be.

Do you have a routine check-up that you do for your online community? Have you had your oil checked lately?

Please share your ideas in the comments!

Title image via Flickr CC: JD Hancock

The best community guidelines are brief, publicly visible, and written with support from community members themselves.

Typically, community guidelines are different from the Terms of Use/Terms of Service, which tend more toward legal language and often fulfill regulatory requirements. (In Crowdstack, you can use the Registration Settings area to tailor that messaging.)

You’ll sometimes hear community guidelines called a “code of conduct” or “behavior guidelines.”

Why Community Guidelines are Important

Clear, concise online community guidelines are important.

• Get your members off on the right foot when they join the community (setting expectations for behavior).
• They’re a useful tool for moderators managing engagement as the community grows beyond the initial members.
• Get everyone on the same page in terms of values and vision.

Here's what The Community Roundtable found out about guidelines in their State of Community Management Research a few years ago...

Community guidelines can crystallize values and ideals that bring the community members together.

That’s why I recommend focusing much more on the positive behaviors and actions you want to incentivize, and keeping the list of “don’ts” to the bare minimum.

Nobody is going to read a 5-page list of do’s and don’ts anyway.

When or How to Present Community Guidelines

During registration - when a new member is registering, you can ask them to agree to abide by the community guidelines as part of that flow. This is good because you’re drawing upfront attention to the tone and behavior expected. It can be a drawback if it’s too lengthy and puts friction into your registration flow.

Email drip for onboarding - you can include the community guidelines in your onboarding emails, either in the initial welcome or a few days later. Be sure to frame the guidelines in a positive way, rather than “don’t do these things.” That’s a huge turnoff.

Persistent link so you can refer back to them - however you introduce the guidelines initially, make sure you have a way members can see the guidelines persistently. They could be linked in the footer, in a featured topic, or somewhere else in your community. Ideally, your moderator(s) can point members to the link if needed, if they’re working with an unruly member.

Don’t make it frozen in time - schedule a reminder to revisit the community behavior guidelines periodically (maybe annually). Over time, the tone and composition of your community will shift, and you may want to edit the language or guidance.

Who Should Write the Community Guidelines

So far, we’ve been talking about a scenario where the community owner or administrator writes the initial guidelines and may ask for input from founding members of the community.

A different approach is to do a “community constitution,” as suggested in the book Buzzing Communities, by Richard Millington.

“...the Community Constitution should not be established by the organization at the initial launch of the community but should be a process the community is engaged in shortly after critical mass of activity has been achieved.”

Your decision on which approach to use will depend on how much autonomy you can give members in your particular community. For example, a financial services community may be required to moderate certain types of content for regulatory reasons.

If your community is more in the style of “let’s build a barn together,” then the community constitution model might be perfect.

FOR THE RESEARCH NERDS: If you want to dive deeper into research on community self-governance...

Frey S, Sumner RW (2019) Emergence of integrated institutions in a large population of self-governing communities. PLoS ONE 14(7): e0216335.

What to Include in Your Community Guidelines

• What is the vision/mission/reason for existing for this community

• What are the key behaviors and activities you WANT to see

• What can’t you do? (keep this very brief)

• What is the consequence for violating?

• Who’s in charge, or who should I talk to if I have a problem?

• Who owns the content I post?

• Link to the legal documents (privacy policy, and Terms of Use if applicable)

Example Community Guidelines from Around the Web

YouTube's Community Guidelines

Buffer App Community Guidelines & Code of Conduct

Reddit Content Policy

_____________________________________________________________________

Template for Community Guidelines

(Get the Downloadable PDF of this Template here. Feel free to borrow or be inspired by this template, just remember we're not lawyers and this is not a legal document.)

We welcome you to [NAME OF COMMUNITY], a community for [WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE].

All members are welcome to share posts in the community, so long as they abide by our posting guidelines.

Here’s what we love to see [LIST YOUR DESIRED BEHAVIORS]:

• Sharing of insightful, thought-provoking posts
• Members connecting with one another directly to offer support
• Inviting new members to join
• Lively, civil discussions
• Member collaboration on community projects
• Detailed feedback and suggestions that will improve our product/service for everyone

By joining this site, you agree to treat all community members in a civil manner. Abuse of any kind will result in your community membership being revoked.

In order to provide a great community experience for everyone, we ask that you avoid [LIST YOUR DEALBREAKER BEHAVIORS OR TWEAK THESE]:

• Posting sexually explicit text, pictures or videos
• Using excessive profanity
• Making physical threats
• Publicly publishing your (or anyone else’s) personal contact information (like your phone number or home address)
• Unsolicited advertising or marketing activities
• Spamming or posting duplicate content

[TAILOR THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS FOR YOUR OWN CASE]

While we do not moderate all posts to the site, we reserve the right to remove any content at any time. In addition, you understand that the administrators of this site may suspend or ban you from the site at any time, for any reason, without notice. [YOU COULD INSERT YOUR PROGRESSIVE DISCIPLINE POLICY HERE IF YOU HAVE ONE.]

When you post any content in this community, you give us the right to use, republish, edit or delete it for any purpose. We may also use your content for marketing purposes. [OR THE MEMBER RETAINS RIGHTS TO THEIR OWN CONTENT AND YOU WILL ASK FOR PERMISSION BEFORE USING IT FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE.]

We respect your privacy. We do not share or sell your personal data with any third parties for any reason. The Google ads you view on this site are a non-personalized service. We do not collect or save your IP address when you visit this site.

We will not send you any unsolicited communications that do not directly relate to your participation in this community. You can control the communications/notifications you receive via your profile settings, under "notifications."

[IF APPLICABLE] You have the right to deactivate, delete or download your own profile information. To view these options, click your username/avatar and see “edit profile.” In accordance with GDPR guidelines, deletion is irrevocable, so use caution before applying that option!

Community Administrator and Management Team

If you have any questions about these community guidelines, please contact [GIVE A NAME AND EMAIL HERE]. Your current moderator team includes [USERNAMES HERE].

Our privacy policy is linked at the bottom of every page, if you'd like more detail or wish to contact our Privacy Officer for any reason.

_________________________________________________________________________

Your Input is Welcome

Would you like to share a link to your community guidelines? Pop into the comments and share your experience.

Let’s inspire each other!

And feel free to share this resource with your favorite community manager 🙂

We've deployed a major new release for Hoop.la that adds the following new features:

1. Personalized Activity Stream

Hoop.la's activity stream is now available in two modes- a general stream that reflects all activity on the site (this is what we have always supported) and a (new) personalized stream that includes only the things that user is following.

This option is available for activity and content stream widgets.  In addition, there is a new Personal Activity Stream page available whenever the Activity Stream is enabled for your site.

Please note that this feature may not be available on all Hoop.la plans immediately. It can take up to 24 hours to properly index your site to support this feature.  Thus, if you are not seeing the option now, you should within the next day. 

2. Search By IP Address Geolocation

Admins can now search for members by country based on their IP address.  You can find this in the Manage Members control panel.

3. Improved Image Quality

We've changed the way we process uploaded images.  Previously, we were compressing (and reducing quality) for nearly every image that was uploaded.  We are not longer doing any image compression when processing uploaded images.  This will result in much better image quality.

4. Support for Filtering By Circle in Groups

Group admins can now filter their members by circle in their member management control panel.

As usual, there were numerous other bug fixes and minor changes.  If you have any questions or concerns, please post to our support site here:

https://hey.crowdstack.com/support

Thanks!

As you may (or may not) be aware, the EU last year passed a strong set of guidelines aimed at protecting individual data privacy rights.

Those guidelines are called “GDPR,” or General Data Protection Regulation, and they apply to any entity who collects or processes identifiable data from EU citizens (in short, almost everyone).

There are a few primary principles:

1. Users must be notified specifically whenever data is being collected from them.
2. Users have the right to delete or export the data you’ve collected in a “portable” format.
3. Users have the right to revoke permission to collect data as easily as they give it.

Here is a link to the more detailed guidelines: https://ec.europa.eu/commissio...-protection-rules_en.

Here is what is considered “personal data” under the GDPR:

• a name and surname;
• a home address;
• an email address such as [email protected];
• an identification card number;
• location data (for example the location data function on a mobile phone);
• an Internet Protocol (IP) address;
• a cookie ID;
• the advertising identifier of a phone;
• data held by a hospital or doctor, which could be a symbol that uniquely identifies a person

Obviously, anyone using a modern community platform is collecting much of this data, either passively (cookies and IP address) or proactively (profile information). Therefore, Social Strata has been working to ensure that we provide the tools so that our customers can comply with GDPR.

We strongly recommend that you do your own internal audit and legal review of GDPR and how it might relate to your organization and community. Our goal is to make it easy for you to follow through on the privacy strategy you’ve chosen.

So what are we doing?

1. We have already implemented an update that allows hoop.la members to delete themselves (their profile account) from a community. (https://hey.crowdstack.com/b...deactivation-release). Our current approach is to leave the posted content in-place when a user takes this action; leaving only “guest” as the author.
2. We will be implementing a tool that allows members to download/export their own personal profile data and content (in csv format, for portability).
3. We will be providing a mechanism for members to request deletion of all of their content by the admin (Right to be Forgotten). There will be an additional option for Admins to allow users to delete all of their content when deleting their own account.
4. We will be making the affirmation/agreement to the TOS in your community discoverable (and revokable) after the member registers, via their profile settings. We will also provide options for the admin to enforce a ban if a member chooses to withdraw consent to your TOS, and for the member to delete themselves in this same process.
5. Social Strata is part of the EU-US Privacy Shield framework.

We will be updating our own privacy policy in the coming months to ensure that we’re following the guidelines ourselves as well. Look for some additional blog posts here, to help you consider what you might need to tweak in your community’s TOS (for example, you’ll want to alert your members that their data is being processed by Social Strata, and for what purpose; you may want to include a link to our privacy policy as well).

We are committed to offering the updates described above prior to the May 25, 2018 deadline for compliance.

If you're interested in learning more about global privacy initiatives/regulations, this is another great resource: https://www.dlapiperdataprotection.com/

Stay tuned for additional updates!

Title image: Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

This week, we are rolling out a Hoop.la update that adds the following new features:

1.  Integration with Pinterest. 

Pinterest is a new supported Social Network that you can enable for social sign-ins, as well as to allow users to display their own Pinterest pins on their member profiles.

2.  Admin-Only Custom Profile Fields

Administrators can set private profile fields that only they can set and access via a new "Hidden" option.  The members themselves would not see these admin-only fields.

It's a great way to add structured data per profile that is only accessible by your site admins.

3.  New Custom Profile Field Format - Date and Date/Time

We've added support for date, as well as data and time, as a custom profile field type. This is useful for setting date-related info in a profile.

4.  New CSS Classes For Improved Style Targeting

We added some new CSS classes to help you style things even better. Specifically:

a.  A new .selected-menu-item class for the main navigation menu.  This allows you to easily target the menu item that is selected for the page.  Custom menu items are also supported.

b.  New CSS classes allow you to target specific calendar, collection, and set labels.

There were numerous other minor tweaks and bug fixes in the release, which should be available to all sites sometime this week.

Anyone running an online community for business purposes should take the time to put together a formal business plan for the community. 

Even if you never share it with anyone else, it will help you figure out (in advance, hopefully) how the community will be successful.

Keep in mind that all business plans are meant to be fluid documents; they need to be revised and revisited periodically. Set up a reminder to do a quarterly or semi-annual plan review.

This post will give you some tips for adapting the standard business plan format to an online community.

Elements of an Online Community Business Plan

Executive Summary

This is your “elevator pitch” for the community. In other words, what’s your response when the C-suite says “why do we need to do this?”  If you plan to share this business plan with others in order to get buy-in or budget, include a clear statement of what you need (resources, funding, staffing).

Market Analysis

Show how much work you’ve done to find out about the landscape for your community.

• Are there competing community sites?
• Are they monetized (and how)?
• Who is your target community member?
• How many people fit your profile, and how active are they in communities and other social networks?

Demographic information would be great in this section. Great sources of all types of community data include: The Community Roundtable, Leader Networks, and Feverbee.

Online Community Description

This should be a brief description of how the community will work, and how it fits into your larger business operation. What components of your community plan will make it successful?

Organization and Management

Describe who will be managing and moderating the community. Do you need internal staffing? Will you incorporate volunteers? What are the skills and experience of your designated community team? How will the community management team interact with the larger organizational structure of the business?

Marketing and Sales Strategies

Summarize how you plan to bring in community members, beginning with the early founding members and proceeding through to the maturity phase. Put in place an ongoing mechanism for attracting and retaining members. How will you promote the community? 

Service and/or Product

Do you plan to monetize the community directly? If so, what are the proposed revenue streams and how much do you forecast you will earn for each? What are the benefits from the community for the larger organization? What is your unique selling proposition for this community? Why would your target audience join your community rather than a competing one?

Funding Requirements

How much budget do you need to get the community up and running? How much do you need to maintain it into the future? Are there recurring costs? Consider time requirements from any departments that may need to be involved (do you need graphics from the marketing department? help with single sign-on from the IT department?) 

Financials

Unlike a business plan for a startup, you probably can’t include true financial statements for your community, but if you have access to any key financial metrics, you can include them here. Perhaps your community is geared toward support, and you have determined that the community has prevented a certain specific number of phone calls (a cost savings). If you have directly monetized the community (with ads, premium memberships, or premium content), you could include those numbers in this section.

This type of formal plan may seem like overkill, but even if you run through the structure and ask yourself some of these questions, it will benefit your community in the long run. 

Knowing the road ahead, and planning for results, will lead to a more coherent community strategy. And if you’re trying to build support from C-level executives, this type of planning will present the community in terms they prefer.

Photo Credit: gerlos via Compfight cc

Happy Holidays!  

We've just rolled out a major new update for Hoop.la that includes the following new features:

1. Member Deactivation and Account Deletion

We now allow members to deactivate and/or delete their own accounts. This is an important new feature, given the new GDPR rules that are going into effect next spring.

You can allow your community members to deactivate or delete their own accounts, giving your users a lot more control of their data.  Note that these options are not enabled by default. You will need to enable the options in your Member Settings.

Once enabled, your members will see new options on their "Update Profile" pages that allow them to deactivate or delete their own accounts.  

When members deactivate, they will no longer have an active profile on your site (though their accounts will not be deleted).  All posts made by such users will no longer be linked to their accounts.  Only the deactivated member can reactivate his/her own account; admins can not do it on their behalf.

If a member deletes their own account, it works exactly the same as if you, as an admin, had deleted their account. The account will be permanently deleted and all posts by the user will remain but will be credited to a guest/anonymous account.

Admins can also be notified about member-initiated deactivations and deletions, via the new "Member Deactivates/Deletes Account" notification option.

You will need to decide if you want to support these new member options, but we highly recommend it, in light of the upcoming GDPR regulations in Europe.

2. Deactivated Members Queue

If you allow member deactivation, you will notice that there is a new "Deactivated Members" area in the Manage Members section of your Admin Control Panel.  This allows you to see a list of all currently deactivated accounts (and you can delete any of those accounts, if you like, via this control panel, as well).  Note that deactivated members are not included in your regular Manage Members control panel, because they are technically not members while they are deactivated and thus you cannot involve them in the kinds of actions available in that control panel.

3. Member Reactivation

A member who deactivates can reactivate his/her account anytime by simply signing back into your site. After signing in, the user will be asked if they wish to reactivate their account, before proceeding. As stated before, only the deactivated user can reactivate; admins have no way of doing this for them.

4. Improved Posting Experience on Mobile Devices

The posting option was somewhat buried when using Hoop.la on a mobile device. We improved this by adding a posting icon (a plus sign) that displays in the lower right corner whenever a user is viewing in a mobile browser (or more accurately, in any scenario where the small-grid version of the application is applied).

This way, the posting button is always very visible, though it is hidden while you scroll.

5. Circles Are More Visible

Previously, only admins could see which circles a member belonged to, when viewing a user's profile page.  We've changed that so that any user can see the circles someone belongs to, though if the circle is only visible to Super Admins only, it will only be displayed to Super Admins.  This is an important improvement, because circles are much more flexible than they used to be. 

6. New Recipe Triggers for Member Deactivates/Reactivates

Now that users can deactivate their accounts, we added new recipe triggers for this action so that admins can automate actions each time this occurs.  For instance, you may want to add a note to a user's profile each time they deactivate (and reactivate), or remove them from certain circles, or send an email to encourage them to reconsider he action.

7. Member Preference To Suppress the Display Of Signatures on Comments/Replies

Users can now suppress the display of all signatures in comments/replies via their own Personal Settings.

Note this option will only be displayed for users if you are permitting signatures to be displayed in comments/replies (via your Admin Control Panel's Display Settings).

8. Support for Emojis

Graemlins (emoticons) now support emojis (in addition to regular images). 

As usual, there were numerous other minor changes and bug fixes in this update.  If you have questions or issues, please reach out to us on our support site:

https://hey.crowdstack.com/support

We wish you all a wonderful holiday season!

Social networks can be depressing.

Scrolling through a "feed" is a self-reinforcing loop, and you're being "fed" the pieces of content with which the algorithm has determined you will engage.

You spend your time scrolling, occasionally flicking a reaction or typing a quick comment, feeling inferior because it's not your birthday, you didn't eat at Ruth's Chris last night, and your 2.5 beautiful children haven't won the gymnastics competition. Sometimes there will be a random, intrusive political rant tossed in just to get your blood moving.

It's a fast paced amalgam of pictures, videos, and gifs on a jumble of topics.

And those shoes you looked at on Zappos last week are hovering menacingly in the corner.

Let's contrast that with the experience you have in an online community.

You spend your time focused on finding an answer, posing a question, or In an active conversation. The content you're viewing is there because you subscribed to it, and found it useful enough to return to.

You slow down, read the discussion, and possibly add your own thoughts.

If you connected intentionally with other community members, you might see content or messages from them (regardless of whether you've recently interacted with them).

There are pictures, videos, and gifs, but they make sense in the context of the conversation (again, a conversation you decided to join).

And those shoes? They'll still be over there at Zappos when you're ready to buy them.

Featured image: Photo by Mario Azzi on Unsplash

Here at Social Strata, we are always looking for ways to increase security for our customer communities, and today we are announcing a new offering to allow our customers to use HTTPS (i.e. "SSL")at no cost.

Both of our community platforms, Hoop.la and Eve Community, have supported Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), both frequently referred to as "SSL", for several years. SSL adds a layer of security to the original HTTP protocol by encrypting all communications between a visitor’s browser and the website. This means that all our customers can switch to HTTPS (the ‘S’ at the end stands for “Secure”) and have the traffic to and from their website fully encrypted. HTTPS requires an SSL certificate which, until now, our customers had to purchase. The cost varies depending on what Certificate Authority (CA) the customer purchases it from and requires some manual work to setup and install. This setup and installation process has to be done every time the certificate needs to be renewed, as well.

There are three types of certificates that can be used currently:  

• Domain Validation (DV) certificates provide privacy and data integrity between a internet user and the site they are visiting.
  
• Organization Validation (OV)  certificates provide the same privacy and data integrity as the DV certificates, but give the visitor a higher level of assurance about the company or organization they are interacting with.
  
  
• Extended Validation (EV) certificates uses the same encryption as DV and OV certificates, but there is increased security due to a thorough identity validation process.

Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open Certificate Authority. It is a service provided by the  nonprofit Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), and their mission is to create a more secure and privacy-respecting Web by promoting the widespread adoption of HTTPS. As a result, their service offers free DV certificates.

Social Strata is pleased to announce that our customers can now request Let’s Encrypt certificates on their communities at no charge! The benefits of enabling HTTPS on your community are numerous:

• Improve search engine ranking: Search engines (like Google) have previously announced that they give priority in search results to sites that use HTTPS. This will give our customers that have not yet switched to HTTPS a boost in their community’s SEO. If you look carefully at the results of internet searches, you will likely notice that the links on the first result page are primarily HTTPS sites.
  
  
• Protect visitors: By using HTTPS, all data sent to and from our your community is fully encrypted. This will protect your community and increase confidence of the members using your community.
  
  
• Eliminate security warnings: Several browsers (like Chrome and Firefox), in an effort to protect internet users, already display warnings when they visit a site that does not use HTTPS. Google announced that beginning in October 2017, Chrome will show the “Not secure” warning in additional situations. With HTTPS, this will not happen.
  
  
• Full automation: Social Strata is providing a fully automated process so that the request and renewal of the certificates does not require any work by you, our customers. Let’s Encrypt certificates will be automatically renewed every 90 days.
  
  
• Free certificates: The certificates provided by Let’s Encrypt are completely free.
  
  
• Full transparency: All certificates issued or revoked will be publicly recorded and available for anyone to inspect.
  
  

If you are interested in getting SSL enabled for your community at no cost, please submit your request via support topic to [email protected] or https://hey.crowdstack.com/support.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Can Social Strata also provide free OV and EV certificates?

It is not possible to offer full automation for OV and EV certificates, so these can’t be offered for free at the moment unfortunately.

What is the difference between the free and the paid DV certificates?

The main difference is between the free and the paid DV certificates is the validation period. Free DV certificates are (at the moment) valid for 90 days and paid DV certificates can be valid for up to 3 years. The 90 day limit of Let’s Encrypt certificates is used to limit the damage from misuse and to encourage automation. The shorter validity period does not represent any inconvenience to our customers because the renewal process is completely automated.

What information will be used in the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to create the DV certificate?

Because Let’s Encrypt only issues DV certificates only the domain control is verified. The only relevant information is the Distinguished Name (DN), i.e. the fully qualified domain name to secure. All the other fields of a regular CSR are discarded because the automated process that Let’s Encrypt uses has no way to check if information is accurate.

Can SAML Single Sign-On (SSO) customers use Let’s Encrypt certificates?

Due to the 90 day expiration, Let’s Encrypt certificates are not currently supported for SAML SSO usage. The SAML metadata XML exchange process requires engagement between Social Strata and the customer’s SAML server that is not reasonable to complete every 90 days.

Where can I find more technical details about Let’s Encrypt?

You can visit this page for further information.

Photo Credit: System Lock flickr photo by Yuri Samoilov shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Many online community platforms (including Hoop.la) offer the ability to form smaller groups (sometimes called subgroups) within the larger community. 

But as with any feature, you should make an informed decision as to whether it suits your particular community's style and mission.

When You Should Use Groups in Your Community

• You need to create private spaces with different types of content within a public site.
• You have a very large community and want to give new members a non-intimidating place to start.
• You want to give a brandable identity to specific parts of your community.
• You want to make it easier to connect members with similar interests.
• You need to have a completely hidden content area within your community (for example, for staff discussions or behind-the-scenes coordination).
• You have very defined constituencies within your community membership.

When You Shouldn't Use Groups in Your Community

• You are just launching a new community and you're building your audience from scratch (groups can hide activity or make it look empty).
• If there are too many groups to start with, it can be confusing where to post content.
• If the membership of your groups doesn't overlap at all, and you don't want to provide common content at the top level, you may want to consider multiple separate communities rather than groups (and we can support that scenario).
• If you just need a private (or restricted access) forum, you can do that without using groups. I recommend using the simplest solution first.

Are you using the Groups option in your community?

What would you say are the pros and cons?

Title image via Flickr CC: David Stanley

Good news!

The beta period for Hoop.la 2.0 is going great and we are now prepared to announce that all Hoop.la, UBB Forum, and QuestionShark sites will be upgraded to 2.0 between November 30 - December 3, 2015. We'll be spreading out the upgrades across all four days.

Once we get within a couple of weeks of that time frame, you will be notified specifically about which date/time your site is scheduled for.

With that in mind, you'll want to make sure that the BETA site we set up for you is the way you want it prior to that upgrade date. All of the following items from your BETA site will be migrated over to your real site automatically when we do the software update:

• All control panel settings available to you in the beta site
• All widgets and content blocks (including the positioning of the widgets and content blocks on pages)
• All custom pages
• All themes

The content on your real website will not be impacted, since we will not be migrating any of the BETA site content over to your real site. Similarly, no member profile information will be migrated over, so your member profile info will be untouched by the upgrade.

Tattoos?  Kazoos? Gluesticks?  Yep, we've had them all.  For today's Friday Behind the Scenes, I thought it would be fun to share our pantheon of weird swag.

This is an "Infopop Brain," possibly the weirdest swag we ever devised.  It was produced for a presentation I was giving for Springboard Silicon Valley in 2001, part of a Venture Capital forum.  Trust me, it made sense at the time...





This is an Infopop mousepad.  I know, you youngsters are saying "what's a mousepad?"  These items were in high demand, and this is one of our last remaining samples.  Note the awesome logo, which was our first "officially designed" corporate logo.




"Make your site sticky!" That mantra was all the rage back in 2001 when this gluestick was used at our trade show booth at Vir-Comm.  These are coveted collector's items now.




The lightbulb stayed around, but boy did we get edgy!  The Infopop tattoo (as modeled by Lori), was us thinking outside the box for swag ideas.  I can't remember what we were using these for, but I'm pretty sure we've got a lot of them sitting around the office.



It's hard to tell from the picture, but this is a small lapel pin, like the ones I used to wear on my jean jacket in high school.  (Of course, mine was a Rick Springfield button.)  This button has the Groupee swirl logo on it---one of my favorite logos.  We still give these out when we do our Groupee video sessions.





...and last but not least, the Groupee Backstage Live Kazoo!  At the time we created these, we were doing video interviews with all kinds of celebrities, and our ace interviewer had a keen interest in kazoos.  He has moved on in his career, and recently opened a Kazoo Museum on the East Coast.  Seriously!




(Photo production coordinator: Lori Hope)

I hope you enjoyed our little tour through the weird and wonderful world of Social Strata swag history.  Have you ever received or given a strange piece of swag?  Do tell....