Virtual Community Set-up in Earthgrid.Net

Please read the Whitepaper on Virtual Communities prior to making your decision. After the overview, please fill out the form by choosing the desired functions and levels where you wish the function to operate features you would like activated for you online community. They are grouped in terms of security/liability risk and hence the user interface will need to be adjusted accordingly. 


The entry primary 'screens' of the Earthgrid virtual community are:

1) Welcome - a single web page that could link to many other pages securely to your 'cloud site' - in some cases we simply have the welcome page add on the security tokens and then instantly redirect over to the 'cloud page'.

2)  Meeting - a single web page that displays three key types of communications (one-to-one, many-to-one, one-to-many) along with menu buttons that link to other features in the system.

  1. Announcement Message (one-to-many) - like a Tweet except there is only ONE per person. They can update it everytime and it is time/date stamped. The more frequently you update the higher you show up on a person's profile.  It can be used as a 'webchat box' or serves the same function as Twitter minus the clutter.  We have written a 'limitation script' for mobile that ensures that this message is only 160 characters in length at any given time.  This way when a SMS message is sent out via a Broadcast - it doesn't end up as two messages.
  2. Incoming Instant Messages (one-to-one)- private messages that are sent TO you by other people. To see what you say back to them simply click on their name.
  3. Community messages (many-to-one)- the Announcement messages of OTHERS (what they type in box A in their Meeting)

Meetings can have several layouts. In business and administrator applications we recommend using a single column layout. items A,B,C above can be ordered in any sequence you choose. The default is A,B,C as outlined above, because as your community grows - this page can get very very long.  For example my page has several thousand community messages.

In the Earthgrid Virtual community there are four tiers of access:

  1. New - they just registered and we don't know anything about them.   Whenever they log in they go to Welcome for New Members Page
  2. Member - an 'event' of some kind triggers an upgrade. By default this is automatically triggered whenever a New person enrolls 6 people into the system that contain his/her ID tag in the enrollment.  Whenever they log in - they go to Welcome for Members page - this page links to different content and buttons as well.
  3. Member Plus - a subscription event triggers this by default. We have a script that once someone pays through paypal X$ per month (you decide on the monthly fee) they become a Member+ automatically.   When this happens their LOGIN event bypasses Welcome and goes directly to Meeting Plus.
  4. Administrator - can only be set by the system admin (Earthgrid ID: webmaster) - aka email: webmaster@earthgrid.com - Administrators log into Meeting also by default same as Member. The big difference is that they can view ALL community messages within their 'Grid' (account) - whether they are 'following' someone or not.  This way they can spot-check to see if they want to contact someone.  What we need is simply a list of usernames of people who have created profiles at Earthgrid.net.


Basic Configuration
  
Your Earthgrid.Net Grid
Welcome
  Redirect  Pages
Meeting New  Member
Login HTML Snippet  Pages
Password Reset
 Earthgrid Custom
Mobile Version
 Earthgrid Custom
Terms of Use and Privacy - Member Legal Agreement
 Earthgrid Custom
  
Low-Risk Functions/ToolsAll Levels
Announcement Message Box

Update/Edit Personal Profile

Edit - My Content Field (Personal Page) with HTML editor

Send Invitation to Join via Email Form
(can put in several addresses by commas but not too many)

Link Manager Tool
New M M+
Medium-Risk Functions/Tools
Member or Member+
Import E-mail Addresses - bulk

Create an Event - update, modify. 
By default all Events are visible as soon as they are posted.  In the past we had abuse of this system so we took it down. We can produce a special 'Event Snippet' that filters out only Admin-approved events for an extra fee.
 M M+
Widgets - HTML snippets that contain code that webmasters can use to put functions in their own website.
  M M+
Broadcast to Group (planned expansion) - using checkboxes select the group you want to broadcast to and it will send your 'announcement to everyone in the group' - not yet available.

High-Risk Functions/Tools
Admin Only
Broadcast E-mail - allows users to send to their 'imported list' - we had abuse of this function as well and have since taken it down and only allow certified Administrators to do this.

Broadcast to Mobile Devices

Export 'Imported Emails' from members of the Grid

Export 'Register' Data containing all contact information and data gathered from users.

Export Message Log File containing all communications from all members of the Grid

Export Session Data including login IP and timestamp for tracking down abuse of the system

Medium-Risk Functions (requires some knowledge of the person who is performing these functions)

High-Risk Functions (requires a street address, authentication and accountability of the person who is performing these functions) - these involve some kind of 'broadcast' capability that creates a server-event that sends data to a mobile device or e-mail.

Most of the high-risk functions we have mitigated the risk through proper training and incorporating third-party solutions such as e-mail broadcasting services.  The exporting can be done most securely by generating a server-side protected password protected Excel File or CSV file that resides on a Permalink that once the file is retrieved it is deleted.  If we attempt to automate any of the High-Risk functions we open ourselves up to data theft. We do not EVER email these data files to our clients as they could be intercepted and the data used for spam, advertising.



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