Posting opinion pieces on your site

Tendenci is powerful in its ability to give all of your members a voice.  Distributed authorship is great not only because it gives your Web site new and interesting content, but also because it keeps your membership active and engaged.
But sometimes you may want to make the distinction between an opinion-based piece of content posted by a member and a more objective one written/posted by your organization.

No problem – you are able to label any article with a disclaimer stating that it is a piece of ‘unofficial content’ by following these easy steps.

Tendenci Updates went out 04-May-2006

Tendenci updates went out on 04-May-2006 – the most notable updates:

  1. Job
    Notifications

    • users can now
      subscribe to notifications for job categories (or just jobs in
      general).
    • once subscribed they
      will receive email notifications on jobs that were added since the last
      notification (the user can define the frequency of the emails, and the category
      to receive them on)
  2. QuickBooks Export of
    Accounting Entries

    • Tendenci now exports
      accounting entries in iif format that is compatible with
      QuickBooks
  3. Careers
    Module

    • users can now track
      their career history through Tendenci
  4. New Reports in
    Memberships

    • some of these were
      rolled out some time ago but are worth mentioning

      • Pending Memberships
      • Current Member Roster
      • Export by Join/Renew
        Date
      • Export by Expiration
        Date

Thanks!
Kathryn

A little known fact about Tendenci – OPML

OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) has been in Tendenci for some time now but is one of the little known pieces of functionality.

So – what is OPML? 

Technically:
OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is an XML format for outlines. Originally developed by Radio UserLand as a native file format for an outliner application, it has since been adopted for other uses, the most common being to exchange lists of RSS feeds between RSS aggregators.

The OPML specification defines an outline as a hierarchical, ordered
list of arbitrary elements. The specification is fairly open which
makes it suitable for many types of list data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPML

In English:
OPML is a list, much like the grocery list on your kitchen counter, or the to do list on your desk.   In Tendenci, OPML is a list of RSS feeds.

For more on OPML and Tendenci: https://www.tendenci.com/en/help/#opml

Thanks!

Kathryn

Email notifications help your job hunting members get the most from your job board

Job_notification_1
Your site users can now subscribe to email notifications of your job board updates.  This will help your members utilize your online job bank to the max by bringing them all the latest job postings in the areas they are most interested in, right to their inbox.

Users can define how often they want to receive updates, as well as what job categories they want to be notified about.  For more information, read this Tendenci help file!

HR help files to manage your site access

Tendencihr_1 Things are going along just fine and then – BAM – your site admin up and quits. You take over the job and the first order of business is to remove the old admin from the site and add yourself. But where does the admin’s email address show up? The Tendenci HR help files will walk you through adding and removing administrators from your site, as well as show you how to run a periodic listing of all of your site admins. Security is muy importante! Stay on top of it!

Tendenci Memberships

Memberships are cool! Have you seen what Tendenci can do to manage Membership status?

You can upload your members from a third party (national) database, then let new members join and pay online. Members receive automatic email notification when their membership nears its expiration Membershipadd_2 date with a click to renew their status, update their record and pay online — or print the renewal application to submit with a check or cash.

You can set a grace period during which members retain site access after expiration and run a script that removes all expired memberships from the system. You can also set up multiple membership types at different rates and with different pricing for events and restrict site access, including member lists, to members only.

What an awesome feature!!

Tendenci RSS Feed update brings you more content and graphics



The latest Tendenci update brings you richer RSS feeds for your feed consumption pleasure.

What does this mean?  When you subscribe to an RSS feed, via a free service like Bloglines, your Tendenci feeds now appear with even more content, clearer headlines and include all of your graphics and photos from your online content!

These changes make your content appear even more professional and enticing to your potential Web site visitors and content readers.  Great stuff!

Tendenci software updated 4/25/2006

Tendenci sites were updated with minor revisions throughout all modules on April 25, 2006.

The most noteable change is richer RSS feeds with more content and photos.

Thanks,
J

What not to do when adding new content to your site

Calendar_screenshots
Schipul loves to repeat the ‘Content is King’ mantra.  By now you may be tired of hearing it, but it’s true!  Fresh content really is important to your search engine ranking and the way your users interact with your site and your organization. 

Everyone likes to be able to add content to their site quickly and easily – which is one of the great things about the Tendenci software.  However, some users have found that one of the fastest ways to do this is by re-activating OLD content.  Not a good thing to do.

Example – An already expired job position comes open again and instead of creating a new job and posting it, an administrator re-activates that original (old) job listing.  Don’t let this happen to you!

But why is activating old content on your Tendenci site so bad?:

  1. Dates matter to the search engines.
    You may be able to trick your human users into believing they are seeing new info, but search engines still remember the original add date and are likely to NOT score your old reactivated page.  Yikes!
  2. Dates matter to humans.
    Your users DO notice the low numbered ID for the listing. Would you rather attend an event that is number 5 or 500? Doesn’t the latter seem more alive and current?
  3. RSS!
    RSS feeds pull your site’s information based on the content’s creation date and time in the database. You may not be able to see this date information, but it is there hiding on every object. Extending an expiration date will NOT put your content back in the RSS feeds. This is by design RSS feeds are supposed to be new content. New is cool!

The moral of the story is to always add new content as new content.  Doing so will keep the search engines, your site users and your RSS feeds happy and up-to-date.  Happy content adding!