Customizing your community to make it stand out

There are lots of ways to customize your community to attract attention to it.

Use a great icon for a visual connection

Upload a compelling icon image to give users a visual link to the community. If you create a custom icon, here are a few tips:

Use any drawing app that lets you save your image as a bmp, jpg, or png file.
The default icon size is a circle with a diameter of 110 pixels.
Note: If you are comfortable working with style sheets, you can change from a round icon to a square icon following the steps in the topic Defining a community theme.
If you use text, make sure it stands out from the background to make it easy to read.
Centered text displays best in the circle icon.

Customize the community layout

Reorganize your apps. Change the number of columns on the Overview page and then move your apps into different columns.

From the community Overview page, select Community Actions > Change Layout
Select a new layout, for example 3 Columns with side menu.
Change the positioning of apps on the Overview page. Select an app and drag it to any location marked Drag app(s) here.

Customize the apps on the Overview page

Customize the placement and visibility of your apps to make them stand out.

From the community Overview page, click the Actions icon in the title bar of the app that you want to work with. There are lots of ways to modify an app, the most important are these:

To work with app settings, select Edit. Some apps cannot be edited, in which case you don't see the Edit option.
To change the app title, select Change Title. The title of some apps cannot be changed.
To temporarily remove the app from the community, select Hide. The app is removed from the overview page but persists in the navigation bar. You can restore the app by selecting Community Actions > Add Apps and choosing the app from the Hidden section of the palette.
To permanently remove an app, select Remove. Complete the form that displays and then click Delete.

Change the community start page

Bring critical content into the foreground, change the community's start page to be redirected a particular app. For example, if gathering ideas is important, make the ideation blog the start page:

From the community Overview page, select Community Actions > Edit Community.
Click the arrow next to Start Page: and select a new start page.

Personalize your community and include content from other sources with the Highlights app

Adding a Highlights app to your community gives you access to the IBM Connections Engagement Center (ICEC) widgets so you can build a truly custom experience for your community users. Using the ICEC widgets you can create a portal-like experience where content from several sources is aggregated on the page. You can also use personalization features to customize what your community users will see.

For example, you might include a news feed that brings in posts from a couple of key blogs that everyone in your community can see. But you can also add widgets that allow the logged-in user to see just their files and bookmarks for quick access. You can truly make a community a one-stop experience for your user, where, on one page, they can find everything they need to collaborate with a team and manage their own work.

Attention: To configure ICEC widgets for the Highlights app you should be comfortable working with HTML or configuring a portal.

For more information about using ICEC widgets, see the ICEC documentation.

Tip: After creating a Highlights app you can set the app as the Start Page so that users will land on the Highlights page when they access the community.