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There are two ways in which individuals may become members of your site. If you choose to enable this feature, they can fill out an online form and join without any intervention from you. You can also add individual members to your site manually.
NOTE: You are already a full member of your own faculty web site so you do not need to complete the sign-up procedure there. This page describes steps that other must take to become members of your site.
Letting members join your site
If you follow the instructions for Enabling Membership, a Join Now link will appear in the left sidebar on every page of your site. Anyone who clicks on the link can become a member of your site by filling out the online form. (Members who are already logged-in will see the Sign Out link instead.)
When a prospective member of your site clicks on the Join Now link, a new Member Signup Form page will appear. The form is mostly self-explanatory, but here are a few guidelines.
- The fields in the Required Info section of the form must be filled in. These include:
- Email Address
- Name - should include first and last name.
- Password - the applicant may use any password.
- Repeat - re-enter the password to ensure accuracy.
- Filling in the fields in the Personal Info section is optional but recommended.
- Zip/Postal Code, Country, state, and gender should be self-explanatory.
- Time Zone is the time zone of the person filling out the membership form. For local De Anza College users this will be "GMT -08:00 Pacific (U.S. & Canada)."
- The Receive email bulletins in HTML or plain text section includes two fields. The default choices will be fine for most members.
- Receive bulletins? - Lets the member decide whether or not to receive email bulletins that you may send using your web site's bulletins feature. Default: Yes
- In HTML? - Lets the member decide whether to recieve bulletins formatted as web pages (in html) or as plain text. Default: No
After completing the form the new member will receive an email message confirming membership.
Anyone can become a member
The procedure outlined above allows anyone to become a member of your web site. Depending on how you configure your web site this means that anyone who joins can:
- read all discussion messages at your site.
- post discussion messages
- receive email bulletins
Experience suggests that this is unlikely to be a problem since the people who join faculty web sites will overwhelmingly be students enrolled in the faculty member's classes. While it is possible to restrict membership, it may not be worth the extra effort. (Administrative tools for Managing Membership let you block or eliminate a member if necessary.)
Adding members manually
If concerns about open membership are too great it is possible for you to bypass the Join Now button and create memberships manually. This also lets you add members if you are not using one of the discussion-based themes. The tools for this are found on the Admin page:
- Go to your site and log in
- Click on Admin in the Editors Only menu at the top of the page. This will take you to the Admin page.
- Scroll down to the Membership section. There are 4 actions that you can take here.
- Add a new member lets you manually add a member to your site. (See step-by-step procedure below.)
- Block a member allows you to block discussion group postings by a member.
- Unblock a member lets you restore posting privileges for a member.
- Delete member cancels a person's membership at your site
Adding a new member entails filling in additional information and selecting from among several options:
- Fill in the member's name, email address, and password.
- Select a level of "Member privileges" from the pop-up menu:
- A member will receive bulletins and can post in your discussion area, assuming that you have enabled member posting. This is the default membership category and in almost all cases you will choose this level.
- A Contributing editor may create new stories and upload pictures and gems. Give this level of privileges to a member only if this person is authorized to share authoring privileges with you.
- A Content Editor has the same privileges as a contributing editor and may edit and delete postings by other site members. Only allow trusted collaborators to become content editors.
- A Managing Editor has the same access to your site that you have. Managing editors can create, edit, and delete stories, pictures and gems and have complete access to administrative features. This is not to be taken lightly!
- A checkbox lets you send a "welcome message" to this new member. You should check this option in most cases since it sends a message confirming membership and giving some instructions about using your site.
- Finally, click the Add Member button.
The latter three procedures (Block, Unblock, or Delete a member) are described on the Managing Membership page.
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