Web Security Stories to scare you in the right direction.

Recently, I presented a session on web security at Joomla Day Chicago and to prepare for this our PM team and I had the pleasure to meet with the mastermind developer of the SecureLive software and security specialist Jeff Brown as well as the acclaimed author of the “CMS Security Handbook” Tom Canavan. We shared many stories about client experiences and what our clients and their customers should be concerned with when it comes to security. I think the most important realization here was that there really needs to be more awareness on the amazing capabilities of hacker networks and the potential liability an average Joe website owner could be responsible for.

I want to share reasons for paying attention to web security that should scare you… because, it sure scares me and I am more fortunate than others to have folks on our team that are real security pros. The real life capabilities of some of the crafty hackers and what they actually can do is nothing less than amazing. In this article I want to help you identify where you can find good information on security and offer a couple solutions you can consider for protecting your Joomla CMS web portal as well as reducing risk to you and your company.

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Part Four: Building Revenue Streams

For any community to be self-sustaining it will need to have some type of revenue stream(s). Even volunteer based communities require funding to keep relevance and growth. There are always tradeoffs with how to approach this since visitors do not want to be blasted with more ads than content and advertisers want to have the best possible exposure. With the same token not everyone that adds value to your community is willing to pay to be a member. Picking the right model and strategy can significantly affect your success or failure.

• How do I plan to build my membership model and how does it fit with my base user?   
• How much would members be willing to pay for each tier of benefits?   
• Where would I place advertising or sponsorship?   
• Are there limitations on or conflicts with certain types of advertisers?   
• How will I manage the transactions?   
• What disclosures or legal disclaimers are required?
• Will I have affiliate, partner or reseller programs?   
• Where does my community add value to an advertiser?

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Part Three: Marketing, Audience and Incentives

Connecting with the right people or networks

When you consider building a community site with Joomla CMS  or any other technology for that matter, you have to make sure you understand what social or professional need you are filling and where your members will be coming from.  What are the average or common demographic profile elements? You will need to make sure your community “type” or “model” is right for the audience that you want to serve and that you configure your tools and presentation accordingly.

• Is the group or industry mostly male or female, younger or older and what special interests do they all have in common?    
• What will be the glue that holds them together in a community and attracts new members to join?
• How will you capture and keep their attention?
• What information will you need to push to them or gather from them?
• What key benefits make your community save them time, money or frustration, or give them a sense of pride to participate in?

Once you have a clear demographic profile of your intended community you will be able to create incentive programs and key selling propositions for marketing your community to the world, even if this world is a small niche market or private membership for an organization. 

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Photos add visual interest to your website. Most visitors will look at the pictures to determine the content before they read even one word. Sites like Pinterest and Flickr have made images even more important since they are increasingly easy to share.

If you have multiple images, a photo gallery presents your photos in a user friendly manner, allowing your visitor to browse through at their leisure. It's also easier on the website administrator's side, as uploading and resizing are batched.

Note: All are compatible with Joomla 1.5, 1.7, and 2.5

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Part Two: The right tools and user experience

Community Building Extensions and Customer Experience Using Joomla CMS

When building out your technology platform for a community site using Joomla! CMS you have several options for extensions that you can use. The two most popular are: www.jomsocial.com and www.joomlapolis.com. Each has benefits or strengths depending on the type of community you are building and the priorities of how the data associated with user profiles will be handled.

Essentially what these extensions do is, they allow you to build “buckets” of information (extended profile fields) associated with a user profile. These profile fields are linked with the Joomla user profile and authentication system. For example; JomSocial organizes this information differently than Community Builder and thus giving you alternate ways of displaying your profile related content. Comparisons will be beyond the scope of this article but you should make sure that you take the time to evaluate each of these extensions suites based on some the following criteria:

• How will I need to present profile information?
• Will I need lists or to segment information from profiles into reports?
• How will users collaborate in the system and what features do they need?
• Will they be sharing files and photos?
• How do their systems integrate with the priority social networks you will connect with?
• How comfortable are the system administrators with either of the tool suites?
• Which templates will best support your goals for the look and feel and how will they look?
• What other extension will be used and are they compatible with them?
• How will they affect my intended user experience?

I am sure there are other questions that can be asked but either way you should make sure you do a careful evaluation with your developers and stakeholders.

Once you have chosen the most appropriate Community extensions and are comfortable with how they integrate with other potential extensions in your strategy you can start building.

User experience:

Some of the important aspects to consider for users when they first get to your site are:

• Will this be easy for them to join and participate in?
• Is there any information related to the membership sign up process that you need to communicate?
• When in the interaction is the best place for this all to happen?

Careful consideration of the content and information that your users see when they first get introduced to your community will leave a lasting impression as they continue to the next steps of exploring what they can get from participating.

Pace the roll out of your bells and whistles:

It is very easy to overwhelm your users with too much information or too many features all at once. One effective strategy is to have regular updates and frequently add something new and exciting for users when they return to your site.Consider rolling out features over time and swapping out call to action images without losing consistency. Select your priority features to push first and then consider adding new features every month or week over a period of time. This gives you opportunity to tease and excite visitors and may actually create some groundswell of conversation that will help enthusiasm for your community.

Respond quickly:

You will need to keep a sharp ear open to your community. If you are hearing folks are having a difficult time with using some of your features or if there are technical issues you should be prepared to respond very quickly. Not doing so could cause irreversible damage to any momentum you have been building within your community. Responding to new feature requests and communicating promptly will also build loyalty within your community and encourage referrals from within. If you are not listening remember there is a lot of competition for where your users can spend their time online these days.

For more information on Building Communities with Joomla CMS see other related articles in this series.

Part One: Starting with a plan

Part Three: Marketing, Audience and Incentives

Part Four: Building Revenue Streams

Christopher Nielsen is the CEO/General Manager for www.cnpintegrations.com and will be a featured speaker at the Joomla Day Chicago event August 10th 2012.

For more information on the myPugetSound.net Case Study presentation about building communities with Joomla! CMS visit: http://joomladaychicago.com

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