SOAR

The Comments feature allows general members the ability to comment on Announcements, Calendar Events, and Photos. This is a great way for members to add their opinion or additional information to create an interactive Unit Website.

Both the Leader and Admin accounts have the ability to edit and delete member comments.

Photo Albums are a great way to share pictures with your members.

To use this feature, you must first create a Photo Album.

Photo Albums

New Photo Albums can be created by clicking on "Add Content" under the "Administration" menu and then click on "Photo Albums". Enter an Album Name and optionally a description of the album. Albums are sorted alphabetically by default. You can order them manually by selecting a "weight" - lower numbers (including negative numbers) move to the top. Albums with the same weight sort alphabetically.

You can edit/update a Photo Album after creating it by clicking on "Manage" under the "Administration" menu and then click on . To delete an Announcement, follow the procedure for edit/update and then click the "Delete" button. This will delete the Photo Album and ALL pictures in it.

The Calendar feature can be used to keep an up-to-date list of Events for your entire organization. Each Event can store all the details that a member will need to know to be prepared and find the event on time. The Calendar provides the following views.

• Upcoming Events - shown on the right hand side of the home page, this will show the next 8 events in the Calendar.
• Month - Shows an entire month of events and provides the ability to page through the months.
• Week - Show the events for a specific week. You also have the ability to page through the weeks.

Summary
Announcements help to communicate important messages to your members. They can be used instead of sending out an email to all members. They are shown on the Home page of your website so that everybody will read them upon first accessing the site. The newest Announcements (or last edited) will show at the top of the home page.

Create
To create an Announcement, click on "Content" under the "Administration" menu and then click on "Announcement". Required fields are Title and Message. Optionally, you can add file attachments to the Announcement that contain more detailed information to by downloaded by members by opening up the "File Attachments" section at the bottom of the Announcement page.

Access to the following features id dependent upon the package (Basic, Standard, or Advanced) that you purchased.

Your website has the following layout sections.

Login

To access the content of the website, you need to use an account username and password. Click on the words “Login” and a box will appear that you can type this information into. Click the “Log in” button after typing in your username and password.

Menu

This is the navigation menu for your website. It contains links to all the website sections for your members to easily access. As you modify your website’s settings this menu will change appropriately.

Administration

Your website has a built in security system to only allow authorized users to access the information you add to it.

The home page of your website (the page displayed when you first type in your Domain Name) can be seen by anyone. Access to any other part of your website however is restricted to those with an account – they will have to type in a username and password first.

This provides a good balance between promoting your unit by allow anyone to see the home page “teaser” while also securing the important information about your Unit that you only want members to see.

Note: The text of Announcements will be shown on the home page and be available to any user. Care should be taken not to provide contact information you do now want public in these Announcements.

You have already read about the default membership – Simple Membership – that provides three standard accounts for you to use. This is the default membership method.

The second option is Individual Accounts. This option provides you with the ability to create a separate account for each member of your organization if you wish. You can then designate which of these accounts have additional privileges for adding content or site administration. You can access the Membership options through the Administrator menu.

Within Individual Accounts you can manually create accounts on your website or Import members.

Your website comes preconfigured with three access accounts.

Member Account - "member"

This is the account that your members will use. It allows basic access to the website. Users can post comments to existing content, but cannot post new content or change site settings.

Leader Account – "leader"

This is the account that you can provide to anyone you want to add/modify/delete content from your website. In addition to basic website access, this account has the ability to post content (i.e. Announcements, Events, Files, etc..).

A content editor is used on your website to type in text that will be displayed back to your members. There are two types of content editors available for use.

The first is a Text Editor that allows unformatted text and minimal HTML tags. It is easy to use and ensures a consistent look and feel to your website. This is the default editor.

The second is a Rich Text Editor that provides a user interface similar to Microsoft Word and provides more features. It can be learned relatively easily. It does put complete control over look and feel in the hands of the content creator.

Note: You should select a text editor early on and stick with it. You may encounter formatting issues on existing content if you switch editors at a later date.