recommendation for groupsite managers - use html instead of WYSIWYG for your summary page
I spent a good few hours yesterday working on the front of my groupsite. The end result is something I am pretty happy with:
http://phf.groupsite.com/main/summary
I would recommend to anyone looking to customize their front page to consider taking the time to learn a little html in order to make it look better. I had played around with the WYSIWYG editor as well as trying to build simple images in an image editor and placing them on the front page, however neither options worked as well as writing custom html.
On my site, I have used some html tables (and tables within tables) to create the outline, then bought some images from istockphoto to provide contrast against text. I planned ahead of time the various sections and knew what I wanted to achieve. I was also lucky enough to find a free set of icons that suited the site. Just google (free icon sets) and you will find some very nice free professional icon sets. For those that are interested, I referred heavily to a "HTML Goodies" book by Joe Burns (htmlgoodies.com).
The other important thing is to visit your "Group Settings" and make sure the theme for the site matches the colours you use on your custom html.
I am happy to share my actual html with anyone who might want to do a similar thing for their groupsite. Obviously choose some different text, graphics and images but the structure might suit you.
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Gareth - Great tip. Your Groupsite looks fantastic. I personally have never touched a single line of html code in my life and do not plan on it anytime in the future but I respect those who do, especially when they do it with a sense of purpose.
Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing.
Shaun
Gareth - your Groupsite looks sweeeet! Thanks for sharing your experience and the resources you used.
Gareth - great post and nice work on your site! We've done some custom HTML work on the groupsites we build too. It makes a world of difference. Here are two examples:
http://terracecommunities.groupsite.com/main/summary
http://community.livingwellalah.com/main/summary
Thanks for posting your work. Very helpful!
Well done, thanks for the examples!
Thanks for the feedback everyone - much appreciated. I really like what Brian has done with his sites and it is testament to what a little html can do (even if it scares Shaun
). As I continue to improve my site, I will keep people posted.
Your Groupsites are fantastic. I took some external help, but I see lot of room for improvements after looking at yours.
https://oracleerp.groupsite.com/
Thanks Sanjay - I really like what you have with the hover buttons. Looking at your site gives me ideas for mine also :)
The hover effects are nice! Are you sure you want to open all menu clicks in new windows, though? I ended up with 4 open windows pointing to different pages on your site as I browsed around a little.
Thanks for sharing!
Scott - My intention is to open up new tab instead of new window. Firefox does that and IE is opening up a new window.
I'm using Safari on Mac, and it also opens a new window instead of a tab.
I like your use of shoutbox as a chat window, I've been looking for an embedded chat solution as well.
Thanks Scott for the feedback. Will check this out.
Chat box: To be honest with you I see very little usage of Shoutbox. The reason being it's open and it's a one-to-many chat application. Members are asking for a one-to-one solution similar to Facebook. I requested this several times to have this as an integrated feature in a Groupsite atleast as a premium feature.
It is probably hijacking this thread, but I would like to talk more about chat. I will start another one.