Posts in OnlineGroups.Net Administrators
Hi All,
Getting more members into your online groups just got easier. Today
we launched a much-improved group member invitation system on
OnlineGroups.Net.
The biggest change is that you can preview the invitation message before
you send it. The preview shows you the invitation email and the page
where the invitee can respond to your invitation. This makes it easier
to write personal invitations that people will respond to.
To get to the Invite a New Group Member page:
* log into to your online groups site,
* navigate to your group, and then to Group Admin,
* click "Invite members to the group",
* and then click "Enter the details of a new member".
You can now write a message inviting the new member to join the group.
Preview the invitation message to see what it will look like to the
recipient. From there you can follow the link in the preview to see
what the new Response page looks like.
* To accept an invitation you add a password and click the Accept
button.
* To decline an invitation you just click the Decline button.
The Response page contains some information about you, including your
profile photo and biography. Some information about the group, including
how busy it gets, is also shown.
Once you have filled out the new member's email address and name, you
can send the invitation. You will get an email when the person accepts
your invitation.
Kind regards,
Michael JasonSmith
OnlineGroups.Net mailing lists have a moderation feature that allows a
moderator to approve or decline posts to a group.
In "Group Admin", the "Change the Moderation" page allows a group
administrator to set group moderation to one of the following.
* No moderation.
* Moderate specified members only.
* Moderate specified members, and all new members
that join the group.
The group admin can choose who is moderated, and who is a moderator,
using the "Manage Members" page.
When a moderated member posts, the system sends an email to all the
moderators, with the post to be moderated attached, and links to approve
or decline the post.
If you have any questions about moderation, please post them here.
Hi Beth,
> I can't tell you how much we have appreciated the use of your
> onlinegroups.net for the beginning of our Community Foundation. I will
> probably continue with the Ashton Community Foundation site for a few
> months until we finish up the start-up. What do I need to do to sign up
> to continue our private site so no data is lost?
I am delighted that the Online Groups site is working out well for
Ashton Community Foundation.
You do not need to do anything to keep your private groups going. Even
when we do start charging for private groups, we will not delete data.
We plan to simply disable posting on private groups where the fee is not
paid.
with regards,
Dan:
I can't tell you how much we have appreciated the use of your
onlinegroups.net for the beginning of our Community Foundation. I will
probably continue with the Ashton Community Foundation site for a few
months until we finish up the start-up. What do I need to do to sign up
to continue our private site so no data is lost?
Beth Wright, Co-Chair
Ashton Community Foundation, Inc.
www.ashtoncf.org
You can start unlimited free public email groups with OnlineGroups.Net. Currently, private groups are free, too, but we do plan to charge for members of private groups, at some stage. Pricing is on the Start a Site page. http://onlinegroups.net/sites/ You can start unlimited public, private or secret groups on your site for free. With public groups, you can have as many members and posts as you like, for free. With private groups, when we introduce charging, we will charge for the number of site members who can access a private group. Each private group member can access as many private groups as you invite them to join. I'll explain how public and private groups work. To start a group, log in and visit the home page of your site. On the home page, you will see a large "Start a Group" button. You will be asked to choose a name, ID and "real life group" for your group, to make your groups a discussion or announcement group, and to choose a privacy level. There are three levels of privacy for online groups. Public Group — anyone can see posts, anyone can join. Private Group — only members can see posts, joining is by invitation or request. Anyone can see that the group exists. Secret Group — only members can see posts, joining is by invitation only. Only members can see that the group exists. (The secret group option is not available when starting a group, but you can make a group secret after it is started.) Here are some examples of how typical sites could work. Free Public Site ================= Three public discussion groups. One for everyone (500 members), and two for subgroups (200 and 100 members respectively) with special interests. Site with up to 100 Private Group Members ========================================= Three public discussion groups. One for everyone (500 members), and two for subgroups (200 and 100 members respectively) with special interests. Seven private groups, each with between 10 and 60 members. 80 site members in total have access to one or more private group. I hope this clarifies things. Please feel free to reply if you have questions.
One of the advantages that we believe that OnlineGroups.Net has over other email list services on the web, is that it is based on open source software. This means that if you prefer not to use our hosted service, you can download, install and run the software yourself. Today, we announced the release of version 1.0 beta of GroupServer, the software that powers OnlineGroups.Net. You can download GroupServer for free. http://groupserver.org/downloads Details of what is new in the latest version are in this announcement. http://groupserver.org/r/post/1aaZsi2KWu7Zy6mkHxLU7r We have also posted a comprehensive summary of the features of GroupServer, and how these compare with two other popular email list systems, Mailman and Google Groups. All of the web and email list features listed here http://groupserver.org/groupserver/features/ are provided on OnlineGroups.Net. Administrative Freedom is the advantage that you'd gain by running your own GroupServer installation. with regards,
Hi All, A site administrator asked me for ideas for setting up a community online groups site. The requirements included the following. Community Committee news and updates, sometimes a lot. Could be about issues discussed and decisions made, plus meeting minutes, meeting dates, a list of committee members, repairs & maintenance wish list, and council links. Facility for local community groups like church, hall, playcentre, scouts, and sports groups. Important not to overwhelm people with email! Here are some ideas. Feel free to add your own comments about what has worked for you. You could set up a site for the entire community, and then start a public announcement group for the Community Committee. The committee could then post updates to that group, and community members could subscribe for email updates, or just visit the site to find them. You could also add some content about the locality, and Community Committee on the Home page and About page. You could offer to set up public announcement or discussion groups on your site, for these organisations. People would be free to subscribe or not. If the groups are public, they will not have to log in. I'd suggest using email addresses that you already have those carefully. When you start groups, pick the people you think will be most likely to want to participate actively. Contact those people to check that they want to be in a group, and invite them to join. Attention to engaging people will pay off later. If your committee has lots of news, you could set things up the way CST has. http://cst.org.nz They have groups for particular types of announcement, like job vacancies. http://cst.org.nz/groups/job_vacancies People who are interested in these can subscribe to get them straight away. Those who prefer less email can subscribe to a weekly summary. http://cst.org.nz/groups/teharakeke I hope this helps. with regards,
Hi there,
An OnlineGroups.Net Administrator asked this question:
> I am trying to set up an organizational site. The only thing I'm having
> trouble with is that it keeps calling it "[my name]'s Site" instead of
> my organization. But if I change the name in the profile, it will appear
> that all the posts from me are from the organization's name. What should
> I do?
Change the name on your profile back to your own name, and change the
name of the site.
To change the name of your site, log in, and visit the site home page.
On the left hand side of the home page, you will see the following.
Administer your site:
* Start online groups where people can join and post.
* Change the site title.
* Edit this page to reflect the purpose of your site.
* Set up a custom domain for your site.
* View posting statistics for your site.
* Get support with administering your site.
* Check out pricing for your site.
Follow the link labelled 'Change the site title'.
Hi Folks, If you are thinking about starting a new site, it pays to think a bit about how you will name groups on your site, before you start the site. With other online groups sites, like Google Groups http://groups.google.com/ and Yahoo! Groups, http://groups.yahoo.com/ you have to start your groups at their site. With OnlineGroups.Net, first you start an online groups site of you own, then you start your groups. This works better for organisations, and others who wish to start multiple groups, and group those groups on a dedicated site. On the downside, this makes it a little harder to start your groups. I recommend that you plan the names of your site and groups, before you start. While you can change the name of your site or group at any time, you can not change the "id" of a site or group. Because it is best to choose an ID that matches the name you plan to use, it is useful to decide the names for your site and group, before you start them. I have prepared a couple of templates to help you with that. The easy way to start a site is to use a subdomain of onlinegroups.net. Our Demo site is an example. http://demosite.onlinegroups.net/ With a subdomain site, your groups will have an email address ending in '@onlinegroups.net'. If you are starting a site at a subdomain of onlinegroups.net, use the following template to choose the site id, and your group ids (add groups, if you want more than two, of course). http://site_id.onlinegroups.net/groups/group_id0 <email obscured> http://site_id.onlinegroups.net/groups/group_id1 <email obscured> If you prefer, you can also set up a site using a custom domain. http://onlinegroups.net/sites/features/index.html#custom_domain Here is an example. http://dataversity.org.nz With a custom domain your groups have email addresses ending in your custom domain. If you are starting a site with a custom domain, use the following template to choose the site id, and your group ids (add groups, if you want more than two, of course). http://custom_domain/groups/group_id0 group_id0@custom_domain http://custom_domain/groups/group_id1 group_id1@custom_domain
Annelies Pekelharing asked the following.
We have an onlinegroup going called bush_rescue,
under biodiversity.
I am coordinator.
I would be very useful to me to have a list of names,
phone numbers , addresses and e-mails typed out.
Any suggestions how I could go about that?
If your group members have added information to their profiles, anyone
who is logged in can view that information on their profiles.
Unfortunately, there is currently no way to view a list of the profile
information for all members of a group.
with regards,
A site administrator asked me whether it is possible to change the ID of a group (ie the left-hand-side of the email address), once a custom domain has been set up. Unfortunately, it is not possible, but we can change the right-hand-side of the email address for you. For example, let's say you have an online groups site for the (fictitious) City Dance Club. http://citydanceclub.onlinegroups.net You have set up a group called City Dance Club Announcements, http://citydanceclub.onlinegroups.net/groups/citydanceclub_announce and a group called Dancers. http://citydanceclub.onlinegroups.net/groups/dancers Your groups have email addresses that use the OnlineGroups.Net domain. citydanceclub_announce(at)onlinegroups.net dancers(at)onlinegroups.net You decide to move the site to the a subdomain of domain 'citydanceclub.net' that you own and use for City Dance Club. Following the instructions for setting up a custom domain, http://onlinegroups.net/sites/features/index.html#custom_domain you make the following changes for 'groups.citydanceclub.net', Set the A record to 216.98.148.185 Set the MX record at 'smtp.onlinegroups' and let us know. We at OnlineGroups.Net make the necessary changes, and then let you know that your site is now at your subdomain. http://groups.citydanceclub.net Any new groups that you set up on the site will now use your custom domain in their email addresses. group_id(at)groups.citydanceclub.net The two groups that you already have on your site, however, will still use their original email addresses. You can choose whether or not to use your custom domain for them. If you would like your groups to use your new custom domain, you let us know that, and we change them over to the following. citydanceclub_announce(at)groups.citydanceclub.net dancers(at)groups.citydanceclub.net If the groups already have members and posts you will have to let the group members know about the new group email address, and web address. If your groups have lots of members and posts, let us know and we'll set up a redirector so that posts to the old address will still work. (We can even set up an http redirector so that links to topics using the old url will redirect to the new one.) Any questions, please let us know.
Hi all!
An administrator asked me if the link to the "Start a New Topic" page
could be made more prominent. It could, but I do not think that it is a
good idea. From our observations, reading posts is a more common task
than posting, so the interface tends to emphasise reading. We make it
easier to post to an existing topic than to start a new topic because it
keeps posts on the same topic together, which makes reading easier.
While I do have plans to make starting a new topic easier, they are not
a priority.
One way we help people read posts is by organising messages into topics.
We show the latest topics on the site and group homepages, so people can
quickly find out what is being discussed. We display keywords for
topics, so people can find relevant discussions easily. In addition, the
posts in a topic are arranged from oldest to newest to make reading an
entire topic easier.
Adding to an existing topic is encouraged because it keeps posts on the
same topic together. We do this by placing a form at the bottom of every
topic that allows a group member to add to the topic. We almost hide the
"Start a New Topic" page, only linking to it from the Latest Topics
page. The idea of placing the link there is that the member will have a
chance of seeing an existing topic that is relevant to the post that he
or she wishes to make, and then add to an existing topic.
It is far easier to start a topic using email, so we may have made
starting a new topic using the Web too hard! While I do have some plans
to make the Start a Topic page easier to find, the lack of reported
problems (compared with login and joining groups, for example) makes it
a low priority.
Kind regards,
Michael
Hi all! At OnlineGroups.Net, we aim to make it easy to hold conversations and share information using email and the web. While discussion groups are really good at that, they are not always ideal. For some communication a simple web page is more suitable. Today we have introduced a feature where you can change the content of a page. The page now is available on your site, and it is called "About". To view it, go to your site and click on About in the main menu. You will see a page with the place-holder text "This is the About page.". Log in and you will also see the tabs "Change", "Privacy", and "History". Click on Change, and you will be shown a page where you can change the page content. View the help for details about changing pages, changing the privacy, and viewing the history of a page http://onlinegroups.net/help/manual/#manage-pages-edit-change-a-page Currently anyone can see the About page, but only you can edit it. If you want to remove the About page you can hide it by changing the privacy so only you can view it http://onlinegroups.net/help/manual/#manage-pages-change-privacy If you want a different page to be editable drop us a line at <email obscured> We will see what we can do to help. The page editor is deliberately simple. However, I welcome feedback on features and changes that will make it more useful to you. I will allow you to add files (like images) to pages soon. Kind regards, Michael
Hi Rose,
> I've supposedly started two groups but they don't show up listed in
> my Groups. Yet, when I try to create it again, assuming that it
> didn't get created, I'm not allowed to use the same group name
> because it's already been created
I'm not sure what's happening there, Rose, I'm sorry.
When you start a group, the system navigates you to the home page of
your new group, so you can start adding group members and posting.
One this could try is starting a group with a different name, to
establish that you can in fact start a group, and then get to it.
If you have trouble with this, please let us know what you did to create
the group, and how the system responded.
I've supposedly started two groups but they don't show up listed in my Groups.
Yet, when I try to create it again, assuming that it didn't get created, I'm
not allowed to use the same group name because it's already been created. .....
help :D
Hi Lew, I'm sorry, I did not answer your whole question in my first post. The system is in fact designed to support the task you describe, depending on how you interpret "all the oversight and management". Once a group is set up, a group admin can do all the management. What they can't do is change the settings of the group. We consider this a bug, not a feature (as changing the group settings after people join could breach the contract under which group members joined). Effectively, the structure of a site with multiple groups gives you the status of group hosting service provider. You can create as many groups as you like and delegate administration of them to others. If, however, you want to share the administration of the site with another person, right now you can not do that via the site interface. Arguably this is a bug, not a feature, but we have bugs of higher priority. http://svn.iopen.net/projects/groupserver/report/12 If you would like to share site admin status with someone else, just email their profile url to <email obscured> and we'll gladly set that up for you.
I take it that means "no." Unless that is, a site admin can change his/her
email address, profile info, etc. -- which would accomplish the same result.
Most other group hosting services I've looked at allow the creator to grant
co-owner or at least co-administrator rights to someone else who then can do
all the oversight and management.
A site admin asked me: can I set up a group and then grant admin rights
to someone else. Here's how this works.
When you start a site, you are the Site Administrator. A Site Admin can
do the following.
Start groups.
Change group settings like privacy,
moderation, and description.
Change the site title, home page text,
and timezone.
Set up a custom domain for the site.
Make people Group Admin for a group.
Everything that a Group Admin can do.
A Group Admin can look after a group, but not change the way the group
is set up. A Group Admin can do the following.
Invite members to join.
Remove members.
Change the moderation status of
group members (in a moderated group).
A site administrator just asked me how to promote their new site, as it
has not shown up in Google yet.
Your site will show up in Google, but it may take a few days. Even when
Google has indexed your site, it may not appear in the first page of
results for a relevant search.
Here are some ideas promoting your site. Each of these will work in two
important ways. Firstly, when people actually arrive at your site, they
will be more likely to join and post to your groups. Secondly, people
will see links to your site in relevant places, including Google search
results.
1. Add relevant content to your site.
Create a site introduction (log in, visit the
home page of your site, then click "edit
this page"). Add a brief summary, and then a
more thorough explanation of what your site is
about.
Create an open group and start making posts to it,
that are relevant to the purpose of your site.
2. Link to your site.
Post about your site on other sites, and
blogs, and in other forums that are relevant
to your site. Always include a link
to your site.
3. Engage others.
Contact as many people as you know who
are interested in the topic that your
site relates to. Ask these people to
make relevant posts to your site, and
to post about your site elsewhere.
If you have any additions, comments or questions about this, please post
them to this topic.
This site is provided by OnlineGroups.Net, where you can start your own free online groups site, using the open source web-based mailing list manager GroupServer.