Providing two separate pages as they did in Groningen was not a very smart thing to do. It confuses users. And moreover both pages are not being updated. I does give me the feeling of a hit and run start-up. Neglect of the community is the major threat to this project 
Agreed, therefor a more integrated solution would be welcome. I think one of the problems currently is the limited publishing capabilities a local community has on the thethingsnetwork.org site. Therefor a subdomain delegation would be nice. Communities should then be able to choose wether they first want to continue the standard community page or alternatively have their subdomain setup and pointed to their own web server. However, it the is important to keep a homogeneous look and feel of all those separate pages.
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I agree it would be much preferred to have a uniform look and feel. I’m not sure subdomains (CNAMEs) to random servers would work well in practise though, it will look fragmented anyway and is kind of tricky to setup and maintain. It would be much better to give communities enough freedom to work with this landing page, and incidentally link to other systems when needed (slack, twitter, other specific systems). Groningen setup their own landing page because they were in a hurry, but using the TTN site would work as well now.
Custom uniform email addresses is something we’ve been thinking about, but haven’t had the time to dig into yet. I prefer not to setup our own email server, but don’t know any free/cheap service with API that would allow easy setup (receiving + sending emails, maybe even webinterface). If anyone has experience here, PM me!
@Arjan: for now, add via the Impact page and let me know which names you gave; I’ll set them manually (non-kickstarter, name, active/planned). Will add an interface soon similar to what’s on the /settings page for the community right now.
@gonzalocasas: would it work to allow customisation of the email being sent out on joining? You could include links to other resources and instructions to get started. That way, initiators still have a say on who’s joining and it would work well with the existing landing page (adding users, coupling with auto-email addresses later on, permissions for posting, etc).
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@turiphro regarding fragmentation: that is a problem yes. What about email only? For example: now I’ve registered a ttnflevoland gmail address (per the instruction on Integrated communications for teams to advertise their local presence – best practices and suggested framework) but reality is that for example (among others) do not accept a gmail address. So the reality is then that I will be looking at registering my own .org as Groningen did, in my case just for email.
@turiphro: allowing a customized email might work, but I personally would still prefer just being able to redirect the “Join” button to something other than the default behavior, because I can just slap a URL there and be done with it. I do not want to be in control of who joins: everyone that wants to join should be able to sign up and immediately get in the conversation. Instant gratification. If you need to wait for a moderator, the excitement might be lost.
@Arjan: for us, what is working really well is a twitter account + Slack instance (adding slack-in to allow people to invite themselves). I personally haven’t had the need for a “corporate email address” of sorts.
@gonzalocasas: I’m fine with various forms of community organisation, but would still like to have coherent behaviour on the website (e.g. join community -> being listed on the landing page, getting notifications, permissions for various things). I think an “auto-accept requests” + email template with instructions should work well here, pointing to other systems when desired. We’re trying to satisfy many different communities here, but it’s important to keep some common functionality.
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A few updates on the platform and the gateways in particular:
-
All gateways on the platform (http://thethingsnetwork.org/map and the community pages) are live updated from now on - every 5 minutes - to reflect the status and, if set, the coordinates, if send to the network. Gateways not seen for more than 3 hours are set to ‘inactive’ until they appear again. Unknown (new) gateways will be added automatically and named “Unclaimed gateway”, until the owner adds its own gateway with the same EUI to their gateway list.
Matching happens based on the gateway EUI, so if you have a (real) gateway, add it to your account and fill in the EUI identifier! If you want to disable automatic updates for a particular gateway, uncheck the ‘Automatically update status and coordinates’ checkbox.
Small note: changes on the platform are not integrated back into the http://thethingsnetwork.org/api/v0/gateways, which is completely based on actual live data from the network backend. -
All pledges gateways from the kickstarter ‘impact’ landing page have been assigned to accounts with the same email address. If so, you’ve received an email about this. (If you used a different email address and want your gw attached, PM me with the original gateway name and your username.)
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When you sign up for a new account, pledged gateways with same email address are added to the account.
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profile pages:
- You can manage your gateways on your profile page (http://thethingsnetwork.org/accounts/profile)
- It’s possible to reset your password (if forgotten via email, if logged in via the web interface)
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some minor bugs fixed and text updated
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@turiphro I created an account and registered my gateway, but I just realized I typed in an incorrect email address. How can I change it? Also, my gateway isn’t showing up in the list. Here’s the forums post - Gateway not showing up in list
Thanks,
Chris
Everyone now has a public profile page, like this one:
http://thethingsnetwork.org/u/turiphro/
You’ll be able to find someone’s communities, gateways, and profile picture.
To upload a profile picture (only 900 accounts to go!), login and click ‘Update Settings’ on the bottom of your account page. You can also update some settings like your personal tagline, name and email address.
On the map page (http://thethingsnetwork.org/map) it’s possible to click on a gateway to find its owner’s profile page. Will add some way to contact the owner soon.
There’s also some big update coming up in a few weeks in terms of design, so if you find some UI glitches fear not 
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*********************** pls remove
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@kersing it’s working now
@BoRRoZ cleaned up this thread; in summary, everyone can change their name at:
http://thethingsnetwork.org/accounts/profile/settings/ (is not the forum).
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Hi all,
The new design of the community pages has been launched. Please take a look at your community page, or go to http://thethingsnetwork.org/c/amsterdam.
A new feature of the community page, is a generator that creates a unique logo for each community. The logo is an svg file and can be downloaded and used for any purpose.
Feedback
We would like to receive feedback on the new design. We’re happy with any positive feedback and/or recommendations. Please provide the feedback on this forum topic: New design community page (or send me a personal message: laurens@thethingsnetwork.org).
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##Today, TTN LABS is launched.
TTN LABS is the educational and inspirational platform of The Things Network and aims at boosting the value creation on top of the network.
I hereby invite you all to visit the platform, to create groups and to share stories.
https://thethingsnetwork.org/labs/
Groups can be formed around a different topics like:
- A specific use case (air quality monitoring / asset tracking)
- An expertise (specific types of sensors / cloud platforms / data visualization)
- Jobs / roles (community initiators / business developers / UX designers)
Stories can be detailed tutorials, cool applications or simple links to relevant content.
Please use this forum channel to write out your thoughts, report bugs and/or to share words of praise.
Cheers,
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A small update about the Community page:
Everyone who is part of a community can add posts now (before, only the core team members were able to do so).
This means that there are no more excuses to not inform the community about your activities or success stories
In case communities only want to release official posts on the community page, written by one of the core members, the ability for anyone to write posts can be taken away by unchecking the box on the https://thethingsnetwork.org/c/[CITY]/settings page. Only core members can access the /settings page.
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I’m wondering if the communities updates are pushed to the members. We do had an update on the Paris page, but AFAIK, the only way to know about it is to go the page.
Wouldn’t be useful to mail members with the update, so we don’t necessary have to check the page every other day?
Currently, members don’t get a notification after publishing a post.
Yes, I agree it’s useful to mail community members every now and then with updates, it’s on our to-do list.
A new update on the community page: Auto-join
New members can join the community right away, there is no more need for an approval from a core team member.
Part of the joining-process is that new members write a short message to introduce themselves to the community. This introduction message is displayed in the Activity Feed at the bottom of the page (the feed gets more attention in the next update).
This is what a new members sees when joining a community
When a member joins, he / she receives a welcome message. This welcome message can be altered by the core team members in the community dashboard via the general tab.
Via the dashboard the Welcome Message can be altered.
Please find your dashboard by adding /dashboard after the url of the community page (for core team members only).
E.g. www.thethingsnetwork.org/community/amsterdam/dashboard/
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Another new page has been created, showing an overview of all the global and regional / community updates.