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Group Homepage
The New Homepage At first glance, the 2.5 homepage may not look much different from the one on 2.0, but many of the features have been enhanced to be more informative and easier to use. Let's take a closer look at every element that makes up the new homepage… Homepage Announcement As before, group administrators will be able to write a Welcome Message that displays on the homepage. In 2.5, we've renamed this feature the Homepage Announcement. It will still support HTML and be limited to 4,000 characters. Homepage Publisher While there was a similar publisher on your 2.0 homepage, you could only upload one item at a time and you couldn't add a new photo to an album. The new publisher does not have these limitations, as it allows you to upload multiple photos and videos into albums (yes, you'll be able to put videos in albums) without ever leaving the homepage. As promised, uploading photos and videos is much faster on 2.5. And once your upload is complete, you can go directly to a page where you can create titles, descriptions and tags for everything you just added. Activity Feed There are many key differences between the new activity feed and the What's Happening module from 2.0: - When a comment is added to an item, that item (along with all previous comments added to it) will now accompany the new comment. Take a look at the example above. You will notice that no comments are alone within the feed, which you would see frequently in 2.0. By grouping everything together, it makes the activity feed much more informative and gives a clearer picture of what is happening within the group. - Rather than being a static list, items can move to the top of 2.5 activity feed as soon as comments are left on them. For an example, take a look at the activity feed above. The album "Spring 2009" had appeared at the bottom of the feed because the latest comment was three days old. However, when Wendy commented on it again, it was moved back up to the top of the feed because her comment was the most recent activity to occur within the group. - Uploading photos into a new album will no longer appear as two separate items within the activity feed, as it did in 2.0. - Whenever there are more than four comments on an item, the comment list collapses to save space. You can easily expand the list by clicking on the 'See more comments' link. - A new page control replaces the older/newer buttons that appear at the bottom of the 2.0 activity feed. It will allow you to easily jump around between pages in the feed. Slideshow The new homepage slideshow allows you to feature entire albums on your homepage. A small overlay displays the title of the photo (only if it has a title) and the navigation tool lets you browse through the photos in the slideshow, as well as pause it. You can also turn it into a full-screen slideshow with just one click. If you do not select an album to display on your homepage, then it will simply display a slideshow of 20 random photos from the group each time you visit the page. Recently Online This is an enhancement of the Member List from 2.0. It features larger profile pictures and displays the status of group members. Clicking on the nicknames of any of the members listed will take you to their Profile Page. What appears on that page depends on the profile privacy settings of that member. Tag Cloud This displays the tags most commonly used within the group. The bigger the tag appears in this tag cloud, the more often it is being used. Clicking on one of these tags will take you to a page that displays all items on the site with that tag. |
