Welcome to Net2Learn! We've created this guide to help you get started. If you have any questions, please, contact us.
Follow these steps, more or less in order, to create your resource center.
From the right-hand sidebar, click on "create content" to reveal the drop-down menu. Then click on "resource center". Or click here.
Choose a name for your resource center, and enter it under "title". This title is what people will see in the list of resource centers. (Don't worry, you'll be able to change it later.)
Then write a welcome message: a brief description of what your resource center is all about. This description will appear at the top of the main page for your resource center, so you want to make it short, informative and engaging. Again, you can always edit this later.
In the "description" field, enter a very short description of the resource center. (This will only show up in a few administrative pages.)
And finally, unless you know exactly what you're doing, under 'Team membership Requests', leave the check box set to "open -- anyone can join this team immediately, without approval". The only exception to this is if you have a very specific group of fellow-experts you want to work with in creating this resource center; then you might set your team membership to "moderated" so that you can limit participation to the specific folks you plan to invite.
IGNORE ALL THE OTHER FIELDS AND OPTIONS ON THIS PAGE.
Then click "submit" (at the bottom of the page).
We can populate your resource center with four types of pre-existing content:
But to get this content we need to set up some keywords for your site. E-mail us with some suggested keywords and we'll set up these areas of content for you.
How-tos give site visitors specific advice or tips related to your resource center's topic. If your resource center is on a technical topic, a how-to might walk users through using a specific tool or piece of software. If your resource center is on a strategic topic, a how-to might cover an organizational or operational challenge and how to handle it.
Add a how-to by clicking "create content" and then choosing "how-tos". Give your how-to a title, and put the main content for your how-to under "body".
Note: You may want to first write a draft of your how-to in a text editor, and then copy and paste it into the "body" field. If you take this approach, be sure that you are pasting PLAIN TEXT into the "body" field -- don't copy text directly from MS Word. If you use Word to write your text, please copy and paste it into a plain text editor (like Word Pad or Text Edit), and then copy it from your plain text editor into the "body" field.
At the bottom of the page, make sure there is a check in the checkbox next to "Public" AND a check in the checkbox next to the name of the resource center you want this how-to to appear in.
Weblinks are another very useful type of resource you can offer on your resource center page. Weblinks are annotated collections of resources that can help people learn more about your topic.
By default, resource centers organize weblinks into two different categories: "general resources", and "cases & examples". Each of these categories of weblink will appear in a different area on your main resource center page. If you would like to add an additional category for your weblinks, let us know, but remember that your category name and type will have to be applicable to ALL resource centers.
When you're adding a weblink, be sure to tell users how this resource will help them learn more about your topic or work more effectively. Accurate, concise descriptions that convey why a particular resource is worth exploring will make your weblink collection very valuable to your users.
To add a weblink, choose "weblink" from the "create content" menu (right-hand sidebar again), or click here. Complete the fields as follows:
Title: the name of the resource you're recommending
Link: the full URL (http://www.thiswebsite.com) of the resource
Author: if the resource has a specific author, enter it here; otherwise leave blank. If it's a web page for an organization you could list the organization as the author.
Publisher: If the resource is an article or document you can list the online (or offline) publication it appears in here.
Translator: Ignore this unless your resource is a translation.
ISBN: If your resource is a book with an ISBN number you can include this here; otherwise ignore it.
Rating: You can use ratings to indicate how useful this resource is likely to be.
Link type: choose either "general resources" or "cases & examples".
Body: Enter a description of your resource. What makes this resource or web site useful? Who should visit it, and why?
At the bottom of the page, make sure there is a check in the checkbox next to "Public" AND a check in the checkbox next to the name of the resource center you want this weblink to appear in.
Then click "submit". You can come back to revise or edit your weblink any time.
Discussion forums are the place for question & answer sessions or discussions related to your topic. You might use your resource center's discussion forum to:
- solicit and answer questions from visitors to your resource center
- faciliate a discussion about a challenge related to your topic
- get input on what kinds of resources people would find useful in your resource center
BEFORE you can start a discussion forum topic in your resource center, we need to set up your discussion forum.
If you'd like a different set of discussion forums for your resource center, just let us know. Remember, each discussion forum can contain multiple topics, so you'll be able to have many many different discussions within each of these four default forums.
To get the discussion going, you need to start by setting up a few initial forum topics. Think of these discussion topics as containers for the different types of conversation you want your users to participate in. For example, you might set up three initial forum topics:
"What's your biggest challenge in undertaking (name of topic) in your organization?" (post this in "Issues & challenges)
"What are your questions about how to do (name of topic)?" (post this in "Questions for the resource center team")
"What resources would you like to see on this page?" (post this in "Wishlist for the resource center team")
To create each forum topic, click on "create content" (in the right sidebar) and then choose "forum topic". Or just click here.
All you need to do now is to choose a title for your forum topic (this is what people will see on the main page of your resource center) and assign it the appropriate forum ("Issues & challenges, " "Wishlist", etc).
Note: Special Features aren't working properly at this point - please contact us for help creating special features.
You can add additional feature sections to your resource center. Each feature can include multiple stories, so this is a great way to create special sections about a particular topic of interest or a current issue.
For example, if your resource center focuses on a strategic challenge, you might have a feature section called "Solutions to watch", which profiles how different organizations have addressed your challenge. Or if your resource center focuses on a technical subject, you might want to create a feature section called "Product reviews" where you assess different hardware or software options.
Note: You may want to first write a draft of your feature in a text editor, and then copy and paste it into the "body" field. If you take this approach, be sure that you are pasting PLAIN TEXT into the "body" field -- don't copy text directly from MS Word. If you use Word to write your text, please copy and paste it into a plain text editor (like Word Pad or Text Edit), and then copy it from your plain text editor into the "body" field.
To create a new feature section, click on "create content" (in the right sidebar) and then choose "create feature".
Do you want to invite other people to help you build this resource center? Here's how:
The name of your resource center now appears in the top-right sidebar. One of the items in that list will say "1 team member" (that's you!). Click "invite friend" to invite additional team members. Other members of your group can invite friends to join, too.
It's possible, too, that you'll get users requesting membership on your team without having been invited by anyone. Any user that's registered and logged in at Net2learn will see a link to 'join resource center team' on your page. If they like what they see, they may offer to help out. If you chose to set your team membership to "moderated" (see Set up your Resource Center) you'll have to approve these requests; details are below.
That's it. Have fun!
Approving team membership requests:
Instructions for resource centers with moderated team membership
If you chose to set your team membership to "moderated" (see Set up your Resource Center) your team manager (the person who set up your resource center in the first place) will have to approve these requests. If you set your team membership to "open" (which we recommend) you don't have to worry about this step.
As manager, your approval is required before folks are granted access to your group. So if someone asks to join your team (by clicking the "join resource center team" link), or when a non-manager invites a new member, you will get an email with a link to follow, allowing you to approve or deny the membership request. Or, if you like, you can do this through the team management page. Right now, it's a little tricky to access this page. Follow these steps as best you can, or email us to get some additional help.
Navigate to learn.netsquared.org/resource-centers-list. Once you're there, locate the name of your resource center in the list, and click on the number in the "Subscribers"column. This is your user-management page; bookmark it for future reference. Here you can add team members from the ranks of net2learn users, approve (or deny) proposed memberships, and set the access permissions of your teammates. This last option is especially useful if you'd like to 'promote' someone on your team to allow them to help you to create and administer users & content.