Rare Web TrainingIntro to RarePlanet

Dinah Berch, Web Content ManagerPhone: 703-522-5070 ext. 153Email: dberch@rareconservation.orgSkype: silence_speakerGchat: dinahrgoldbergTwitter: @newmediamaiden

rare on the web

Two websites: www.RareConservation.org & www.RarePlanet.orgTwo video channels: Vimeo (curated) and YouTube (repository)

Six Flickr Accounts

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Sina Weibo

Welcome to RarePlanet

What IS RarePlanet?

A project management tool for managing the Pride campaigns.

The public online face of the campaigns, providing information and status about the campaigns to interested parties.

A technical resource where campaigns can go to find information to address specific conservation challenges, through the toolkits and other resources.

A collaboration platform for the Rare Community, where members and alumni from different campaigns can meet to discuss, exchange ideas, as well as interact with donors and conservation experts from outside organizations.

“Once upon a time two men in a bar had a vision to create a network that was part LinkedIn, part Wikipedia, part SAP (a workflow & project management program) and part Blogger…and in 2008 RarePlanet Launched.”

RarePlanet’s mission is to build a network of conservationists.

The site was redesigned in 2010.

The site uses the Drupal 6 web platform.

Take the RarePlanet Tour

Experience what it takes to launch a campaign.

Connect with a campaign team.

Contribute ideas, expertise, support.

Experience what it takes to launch a campaign. Experience what it takes to launch a successful grass-roots conservation campaign that changes the way people relate to their environment.

Search for Campaigns & Visit a Campaign Page

Photos, Videos and Resources

See the Detailed Campaign Promise& Theory of Change

Read Stories of Conservation Bright Spots & Social Marketing in Action

Follow Campaigns to Receive Updates fromthe Campaign Team

There are 290 Campaigns and

95 groups on RarePlanet

today.

Connect with a campaign team. Connect with technical experts, policy makers and community organizers from around the world focusing on real conservation solutions in real communities.

Search for People & Organizations

Create and Join Groups

There are 6,162Registered Users

on RarePlanet today.

Follow Members, Organizations andGroups for Updates

Join the Conversation by Creating Your Own Profile and Blog

Blog, Blog, blog!

Contribute ideas, expertise, support. Contribute ideas, expertise and financial support to empower local communities to protect the world’s most threatened species and habitat.

Ask and Answer Questions

Contribute to forums and groups

Learn from Experts Each month RarePlanet

receives around 9,000 visits and roughly 36,000

page views

The Homepage

Log in or out

Change your Language

Search

Check out Featured Members and CampaignsFind

Campaigns by Region, Species, Threat or Partner

Use the menu to go to your RarePlanet or to visit the search page for Campaigns or Community.

Switch to Low Bandwidth

Home: Search for Campaigns, See Featured Members/Campaigns

My RarePlanet: Your Personal Dashboard to Campaigns & Groups you follow or are a member of as well as your personal profile and your personal blog

Solution Search: A contest that rewards innovative conservation successes in communities where the need is greatest

Campaigns: Find a campaign by searching by region, threat or species.

Navigating RarePlanet

Community: Database of partner organizations, members and groups on RarePlanet.

Get Involved: Don’t have a RarePlanet account? Lost your password? Go here to create an account or request a password reset.

My RarePlanet

Go to “My Settings” to change your password or update your profile.

“My Dashboard” shows recent activity from the campaigns you manage, campaigns you follow and groups you belong to. If you are a

Campaign Manager or a member of a Campaign Team you can use the Quick Links to create a blog post for your campaign or to upload a milestone

Use the search to quickly find campaigns, groups, people or resources.

Under My RarePlanet > My Dashboard you can find recent activity in the campaigns you manage, campaigns you follow and groups you belong to.

On the right is: RarePlanet news (mostly dormant)

A list of the Campaigns you follow – if you’re a CM your campaign should show up here.

Groups you’re a member of.

You can use these links to get quickly to your campaign or group.

My Dashboard

Under My RarePlanet > My Profile is your Public Profile.

Here you can tell the RarePlanet community about yourself.

The profile will also list your recent contributions – blog posts, resources, anything you’ve added to RarePlanet, including blog posts to a group or campaign.

You can add more about yourself by editing your public profile – you’ll find the form under “my Settings”.

My Profile

Editing My Profile Adding a Public Profile on RarePlanet is completely optional,

but it’s nice to show a picture of yourself when actively commenting on blogs.

There are fields in the ‘public profile’ form for a bio, Salutation, First and Last Name, Job Title, Organization, a profile image, “I first knew I was a conservationist when…” and education credentials.

The fields on the right-hand side look confusing – but they’re optional. This is called “Taxonomy” and Drupal uses these terms to help organize information. Remember how you can filter members by ‘action’, ‘region’, ‘threat’, etc.? This is how to tell Drupal what search terms you, as a member, should show up for.

If pasting information from Word always paste as plain text.

When finished, don’t forget to save!

Under My RarePlanet > My Campaignsis a list of the campaigns you have chosen to follow. From here you can visit any of the campaigns to read their blogs and add comments.

To find more campaigns to follow go to “campaigns” under the general RarePlanet navigation and search by region, threat or species. Select a campaign, then find the big “follow this campaign” button on the campaign’s overview page.

My Campaigns

Under My RarePlanet > My Groups is a list of the groups you are following or are a member of.

From here you can visit any of the groups to read their blogs and add posts, resources or make comments.

To find more groups to join go to “community” under the general RarePlanet navigation. You can also create new groups!

My Groups

Under My RarePlanet > My Blog is your personal blog.

This is a space for you to share anything you’d like with the RarePlanet world. Anyone following you will see your posts. If you are a Campaign Manager, though, it’s recommended that you post your blogs within your campaign to receive more exposure.

To add a blog go to My Settings > Create Blog Post.

My Blog

Under My RarePlanet > My Reports is a section that allows you to see progress reports for many of the different campaigns.

Two notes: not everyone has permission to see these reports (if you need this access for your job please contact the webmaster).

And second, these reports often take a LONG time to load – this is normal.

My Reports

Under My RarePlanet > My Settingsis where you can really DO things.

Go here to:

Add or change your personal profile

Write blogs

Change your account info (such as your password or email address)

My Settings

Campaigns

From the Campaigns tab you can search for campaigns by region, threat or species. You can then click on the campaign name to go to that campaign’s page.

Campaign Promise – goals and objectives.

Success Means – methodology for campaign implementation.

Symbol of Pride – charismatic pride engendering species.

What’s Happening – real time feed of campaign activity (blog posts, resources, milestones).

Similar Campaigns – easily pull up other campaigns by region, species or habitat.

Campaign Tracker – Progress on the campaign and deliverables.

Campaign Team/Partners – Rare employees and partners working on the campaign.

Loreto Bay: Example Campaign PageOverview Page provides purpose and context

Follow this Campaign – Choose to follow a campaign to receive weekly updates.

Campaign Overview

Campaign Details

Campaign Blog

Campaign Resources & Multimedia

Campaign Milestones

Change information displayed on the main campaign pages, including Theory of Change.

Upload Milestones

Create Blogs for the Campaign

Upload photos, videos and other documents.

Campaign Admin

Community

From the Community tab you can search for RarePlanet members, partner organizations or groups. You can filter your search by region (such as North America), action (such as land/water management), threat (such as agriculture and aquaculture) or discipline (such as climate change).

Community: Members

You can click on a member’s name to be taken to his or her personal profile on RarePlanet.

Community: Partners

The Partner directory leads you to individual pages for partner organizations. These are usually the local partners involved in Rare campaigns.

Community: Groups

Any registered user on RarePlanet can create a new group – there is a large directory of groups created on Social Marketing, various conservation projects, and each cohort has a group.

Rare Staff Groups

Rare Staff Intranet GroupOverview Translate Group

content using Google Translate

Join or leave the group

Spread the word: Share Group content using social media

See other members of the Group

Read the Group’s Mission Statement

What’s Happening: Recent blog updates and new resources

Rare Staff Intranet GroupBlog

Click on blog post titles to read more and add comments

Rare Staff Intranet GroupForum

Check out the forum great discussions and questions

Rare Staff Intranet GroupResources

Rare’s Intranet Group Resources page has a wealth of videos, photos, documents and how-to guides.

You can use the filters to help find what you’re looking for.

These items are only available to staff, so they will not show up in the general RarePlanet website search results.

Rare Staff Intranet GroupActions

Go to ‘Actions’ to add a blog post, forum topic or resource to the Staff Intranet Group.

Anyone can create a new group on RarePlanet

The “create new group” button is on the right-hand side of all existing groups, near the Google translate widget

If you have questions about the Create Group form, or need to restrict your group to certain roles (like only staff), consult the webmaster for assistance

Creating A Group

Tips and Tricks

Inline photo

Attached photo

Paste from Word document

Create a Blog

If you see these characters in your blog, chances are you copied and pasted from Microsoft Word or even your email.

It’s ok to do that – if you use the ‘paste as plain text’ or ‘paste from word’ options in the blog editor.

Don’t paste directly into the body.

Best Practice: Using “paste as plain text” or “paste from word”

Public vs. Private PostsAssume your post is PUBLIC

On most groups and campaigns, the default for blog posts is “public” – meaning anyone on RarePlanet can see that post, not just members of the group or campaign. To make a post “private” make sure this checkbox is NOT checked.

On some groups, such as the Rare Intranet, public posts have been disabled – meaning you will not be able to publish your post unless that ‘public’ box is unchecked.

SpamSpam posts do occur on RP. Flag the post!

Spam posts or comments on RarePlanet are usually REALLY easy to recognize – they look something like the post here, with every other word a hyperlink. If you see spam, let me know!

All you have to do is click the “flag for moderator review” on a blog or comment. That automatically sends me a notification so that I can remove the comments or post and block the user.

How-To: upload an inline image to a blog post

From the Create Blog form select the ‘image’ icon When the “Image Properties” Window opens, select the “Browse Server” button A “File Browser” window will open. Select the “upload” button in the top left to browse

your computer for the image – then choose ‘open’ to upload the file. After the image loads, select the filename below. The Image will display in the bottom right. Then select the Insert File link.

This will return you to the “Image Properties” window. From here you can optionally set the width and/or height (be careful not to stretch the photo), add a border (use 1-10 to define pixel width) add white space to the right and left (hspace) or top and bottom (vspace) of the photo or change the alignment to left, right or center. You can also add Alt Text to help search engines index your photo.

Click ‘ok’ to return to editing the blog. Don’t forget to Save!

1. 2. 3. 4.

How-To: embedding video in a blog post

To embed a video in your blog make sure the video is uploaded to a site like Vimeo or YouTube that provides embed code like shown in this picture. For YouTube in particular RarePlanet prefers the “use old embed code” option. Set the width and height first, then copy the embed code.

In RarePlanet in the ‘create blog’ form look for the ‘source’ button and select this. That will allow you to paste html into the body field. Paste in your embed code. Then hit ‘source’ again to return to the regular editor mode. Finish editing your blog and don’t forget to save!

Additionally, you can upload your video as a file attachment to a blog or resource.

2

1

International programs means content in many languages. Rare offers two ways to translate content on the RarePlanet website.

1. Use the translation drop-down in the upper right-hand corner to change the site navigation to one of the four languages Rare operates in. This will translate the “framework” of the site – navigation, links, etc.

2. On most specific content types, like blog posts, use the Google Translate widget on the right side to translate content from any language into almost any language. The translation is usually good enough to get the gist of the story.

International Website

*See a translation that’s wrong? Let me know! I might be able to fix it.

Many parts of the world do not have access to high-speed, dependable internet – but you can still use most of the

features of RarePlanet by switching to LOW BANDWIDTH

found at the very bottom of every RarePlanet page.

The low bandwidth version has been optimized to work without high-speed internet and without putting a high bandwidth demand on servers.

Inconsistent Internet Access

F.A.Q.

People frequently receive ‘access denied’ pages when they: Click on a link from an email Try to use a bookmarked page Try to post a blog in a campaign or group

If this happens to you: Make sure you’re LOGGED IN.

Many resources and pages on RarePlanet require you to be logged in to view. Make sure you’re following the campaign or group.

You can’t post a blog to a campaign or group unless you’re following that group or campaign – even if you’re a member of the campaign team.

If you continue to experience problems contact the web manager atwebmanager@rareconservation.org to check your account settings.

The “What’s Happening on RarePlanet” Weekly Digest!

RarePlanet sends you an email each Sunday with a recap of recent activity from campaigns you manage or follow and groups you’re a member of. You can customize your email settings or the email address associated with your account from MyRareplanet > My Settings > Edit My Public Profile

How Do I Keep UP?

Where Do I Find How-To Guides?

Check the Staff Intranet Group on RarePlanet – whenever new how-to guides are completed they’re uploaded to Resources there.

Arlington Staff: How-To Guides are saved on the Share Drive under raref1/Shared/Communications/WEB/How-Tos

Rare Google Docs Account: All how-to guides are also uploaded to a Google Docs account – this should be available from anywhere in the world with the exception of China.• To Access the Google Docs account go to docs.google.com • Log in using info@rareconservation.org as the username• rare1234 (all lower case) is the password

Email Dinah Berch at webmanager@rareconservation.org

rareplanet today

290 campaigns, 279 Campaign Managers

140 Local Partners

9,000 visits/month, 36,000 page views/month6,162 total users!!!

135 Rare Staff

rareplanet tomorrow

We are continuously working to upgrade and patch RarePlanet. Three sets of security updates have been deployed in the last six months. Google Translate was fixed. The launch of four new cohorts has shown a number of bugs that will be fixed within the next few months.

What’s on the Horizon? Here’s a few ideas for the distant (or not so distant) future:

IE-9 Compatibility Fix Fix Facebook Connect and Offer Greater Facebook Integration SMS-to-Blog Capability Improvements to Low Bandwidth Option Speed Analysis Drupal Site Audit and Upgrade

If something’s not working, let me know!

building a network of conservationists

Campaign Managers

pride alumni

experts

Donors and public

University staff

Rare staff

Local community

Rare Web Training

Want to know more about RarePlanet?

Check out these helpful videos on Vimeo:

Overview of RarePlanet: http://www.vimeo.com/11220342

Blogging tutorial: http://vimeo.com/10598382