Linda Peng » Blog Archive » 10 Lessons I Learned from Designing an Online Com... - 0 views
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I recommend giving people single sign-on options using Twitter, Linkedin, OpenID, Livejournal, etc. as well as Facebook.
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The rest of your target market still needs to be convinced to care about your community enough to join.
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Make your homepage interesting enough to visit twice.
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I re-discovered my fascination with online community building around the time I subscribed to a shared hosting service, installed WordPress, discovered the Buddypress plugin, and stumbled upon open-source forums where people were amazingly helpfully about sharing troubleshooting tips and code. This was last December. The discovery turned into an independent study I dubbed "Volunteerism in a Web 2.0 World," which turned into the development of a website and lots of meetings and several pages of an annotated bibliography - all of which I submitted to my Research in Practice Program (RIPP) advisor at the end of the semester.Over the course of my meetings with "stakeholders" (Duke students and administrators) to asses the value of the "website" (an online social network for Duke civic engagement), I learned a few things about designing an online community using WordPress and Buddypress.