Coming Soon!

Groups are essentially mini-web sites within bfi.org. As a supporting member of BFI's Network, you will be able to use the full groups capabilities on our website.

Groups allow people with specific interests to exchange information using our website. They are different from mailing lists and list-servs in that they also provide social networking functionality in addition to messages. With BFI Groups you will have the ability to learn about the other people in our network and exchange information with them. Additionally you will have the ability to start your own group by contacting us. Some ideas for groups might be

• Dome Builders in New York State
• Synergetics discussion group
• Model makers in Ohio
• etc.

You will also be able to control your notification options for each group individually and chose to subscribe to updates via email or RSS feeds.

Also available will be a listing of all the groups on our website and a feed that gets updated when new groups are created.

Our new website now has a built-in notification system that sends out global emails to all users interested in receiving updates when new content is posted. To start using the notification features, you will first need to create an account on our website.

After your account is set up and you have logged in to our site, you can access your notification preferences by clicking on the my account link in your 'toolbox' on the lower right hand side.

Click on the my notify settings tab in the middle to access your notification preferences.



Notification settings

The screenshot above shows the basic notification configuration page. The Master Switch on the very top enables or disables notifications in general. This is set to be 'disabled' by default. Set this to Enabled in order to begin receiving notifications.

The Detailed Settings underneath control specific details about the kind of notifications you can receive.

• Notify new content determines whether the actual new content is included in the notification email. If this is set to enabled, you will receive the headlines and excerpts of the new content.
• Content controls which exact parts of the new content you will receive in your email.
• Notify new comments controls whether excepts of new comments will also be included in your email or not.

Our new websites features a simple rating system to identify popular community content. Our model is based on democratic editing, similar to sites like digg and others.

Ratings are basically given either as positive or negative. Each user can only rate an item once. Every piece of community content will begin to accumulate a score based on the combined ratings of everyone in our community. For each positive rating, the piece of content will get 1 point and for each negative rating, the piece of content will lose 1 point.

To rate an item simply use the rating section that appears in the top section of each piece of community content.

Assigning a rating to a piece of content*

To give a positive rating, click the up arrow (which will appear in orange). To give a negative rating, simply click the down arrow (as seen in the screenshot).

Cumulative totals for content will appear in the bottom section of each posting as points.

First, create an account on our site (unless you already have one) and log in to our site. You can add comments to Community Content, forum topics or content throughout our site by clicking on the add new comment link that appears on the lower-left underneath each posting.



Adding a new comment

First create an account on our site (unless you already have one) and log in. Then select create content from the toolbox on the lower-right hand side. Pick Community Content from the list of options and fill out your posting.


Creating Community Content

Please note that it is required for you to fill out at least the title and body of your posting, as well as to tag it with some keywords. Keywords can be freely chosen and should be separated by comma's. For example a posting about dome construction might be tagged with domes, geodesics, construction.

You may also attach up to two images and one file attachment to your posting.

If you are a member of BFI's Network you may see a Groups setting (as in the screenshot above). This setting basically controls whether you want your community content to be private and posted in your group(s) only or public.

Forums (Discussion Boards) are useful for posting questions, thoughts and comments amongst our on-line community, which currently consists of over 1,100 members.

Forums are thematically grouped lists of threads. Threads consist of a topic, which is typically the beginning of a discussion and a series of comments.

We have organized bfi.org's forums into three basic categories:

• Buckminster Fuller Discussion Forums pertaining to Buckminster Fuller himself
• Design Science Discussion Forums pertaining to Domes, Shelters, etc.
• and the Buckminster Fuller Institute Forums that concern BFI, it's mission / programs and our website.

To add a new forum topic:

First create an account on our site (unless you already have one) and log in. Then select create content from the toolbox on the lower-left hand side. Pick forum topic from the list of options and fill out your posting. Remember to select an appropriate forum for your topic from the drop-down box at the top of the page.


Adding a new forum topic

» Find out how to add comments to content

In order to get started with using our website, you will need to create an account. We require everybody who wants to interact with our site to create an account in order to prevent anonymous users from posting spam to bfi.org.

Setting up an account is free, easy and fast, requiring less than a minute of your time. To get started simply click here and chose the register as a 'user' option (2nd bullet). You will then be directed to a registration form:

BFI.org registration form

All that is required is for you to fill out the username and email adress boxes in the middle of the page.

If you wish to become a supporting member of BFI's network, please also fill out the mailing information towards the bottom and we will contact you with more information.

Click here to find out more about the benefits of becoming a supporting member of BFI.

You should then receive an email within minutes after clicking on the Create new Account button at the bottom. The email will contain a temporary password that can be used to log-in to our site. From there you can chose a permanent password.