Curl Developer Community Quick Tour
Welcome to the Curl Developer Community Tour! Use this tour to get a step-by-step view of some of the things you can do in the community. As you read through the tour, it will point out features and suggest things you can do to start putting the community to work for you. Here are the steps:
Get Started
Get to know the Curl Developer Community. When you first log onto the Curl Developer Community, the home page offers links to places where you can dive in. Check out the latest blogs posted by our experienced staff of bloggers, as well as "What's New" where announcements and new and changed items are listed with the most recent first. Use the document type icons, titles, and change age ("3 hours ago") to decide if there's anything of interest for you here at the top level. You can also access all the key community spaces containing content, see who the top contributing members are on the site, etc.

The content type icons are your first clues as to the kinds of content you'll find and create in the Curl Development Community. They include wiki documents and discussion topics. You'll learn more about the types later in the tour. From the home page you can also get a feel for how you can find content. For example, through the sections on the home page you can browse by space, browse by content types, or browse by tags (more about tags later, too). Also, the menu bar near the top of the page is present on all the other pages. It provides shortcut menus including Browse for content types and spaces, History for your recently viewed items, and Your Stuff for items you've created or working on.

 Find Content
As you saw on the community home page, you've got a number of paths into the content. You can browse by space, by content type and tags, and you can search. You can also browse for content created by other users — just click on someone's name. This section of the tour will introduce you to the organization of the Curl Developer Community and the community's content-finding features.

The content in the Curl Developer Community is organized by spaces. We've set up the following spaces where you create, find, and organize content.
  1. Developer Community Blog: A platform for the Curl team to engage community members in conversations about what we're working on and to share information about what's going on in the enterprise Rich Internet Application space.
  2. Training Center: Provides access to a series of tutorials that will help you develop your skills for building Rich Internet Applications using Curl.
  3. Resource Center: Find answers to commonly asked questions by Curl community members, view user documentation maintained in the IDE, and view and download articles, technical white papers, Curl libraries, and introdcutory videos.
  4. Ask-the-Expert: This forum is designed to provide a rapid response to your questions that don't apply to a specfic Special Interest Group. Post your question here and a knowledgeable member of the community or Curl team will respond to it shortly.
  5. Special Interest Groups: We've set up several special interest groups where you can access and share content applicable to the group. Special interest groups have been set up for the OpenCurl Project, Widgets/Gadgets/Curlets, and Curl Product Directions.
Browse Spaces
  1. On the home page, you will find the various community spaces listed in the Communities section, or you can click the Browse menu for a list of spaces.
  2. Click the name of a space. On the landing page for the space (see example below), you'll see static content and/or dynamic links to content pages. Note the tabs at the top of the content section. They provide access to a discussion forum, documents, and links to sub-community spaces where applicable.
If you haven't already, take a moment to browse your spaces.


Browse by tags. When you browse by tags, you're using a community-made indexing system. You may apply tags like index keywords to new content to make the content searchable. You look for content you want by clicking tag names to see a list of related content. Wherever you go in the Curl Developer Community, you'll see tags that group content into categories.
  1. Look for the tag cloud on the home page of a community space. A tag cloud visually displays tags in alphabetical order and by popularity (more popular tags are shown in a larger font size).
  2. See the content associated with a tag. Move your mouse over a tag to see the number of times it has been assigned to content. Click the tag to see a list of the content it has been assigned to.
  3. Refine your search for tagged content that is listed. Select the type of content and the community space you are interested in and click Submit.


Search for content. You can do a general search for content in the Curl Developer Community and then filter your search to refine the results.
  1. Type in a keyword(s) in the upper right corner of the page and click Search .
  2. See the results on the Search page. You can filter search results by content type, by space, or by date by clicking on the More Options link.
Through browsing and searching, you can look for the content you need. But what if you've found something you want to keep your eye on? By subscribing to RSS feeds or email notifications, you can get updated on changes to content you care about.


Subscribe to RSS feeds. Real Simple Syndication (RSS) gives you a way to get a digest of updates to the content or areas you're interested in. When you "subscribe" to an RSS feed — say, for particular search results or a particular tag or the content of a particular space — you can check back any time for a list of updates using your RSS aggregator (which might simply be your web browser). That list will include only the content you subscribed to. You can get an RSS feed for nearly everything in the Curl Developer Community!
  1. Click the RSS icon at the right side of your browser's address bar to subscribe to an RSS feed for the content you're looking at. For example, if you're using a recent version of the Firefox browser, you'll get a list, such as the following, if there are multiple feeds available.
  2. If you've chosen to be prompted to pick an RSS aggregator (also known as an RSS reader), you might see a page such as the following. You can choose the reader you want to use and see what the feed will bring you.
If RSS sounds appealing, take a moment to get it set up. Select one of the Curl Developer Community RSS feeds and subscribe. If you select a reader to use for all feeds, subscribing is as easy as clicking the RSS icon where you see it in a page.


Get notified by email. In addition to RSS feeds, you can also stay on top of content using email notifications. When you sign up to receive email notifications, the Curl Developer Community will send you email whenever the content you're interested in changes.
  1. Navigate to a page or a document you want to be notified about and click Receive Email Notifications in the Actions box.
  2. After you click, notice the link will change to Stop Email Notifications . You can come back here when you want to stop getting an email notification, as well as manage all of your notifications from your profile, as you'll see later in the tour.

 Create Content
As a guest or registered member, you''l find the content you need, but the real power of the Curl Developer Community is when you contribute your thoughts and insights with others in the various community spaces. Asking and answering questions in forums, creating documents such as white papers and articles, posting code samples you've developed in Curl, posting comments to the Curl Community Blog, etc., will benefit all members of the community. Note you must be a registered member and logged into the Curl Developer Community site before you can create content.

Discussion Forums: Most of the community spaces have Discussion Forums associated with them. As a registered member, you can create topics for discussion or ask questions you would like feedback from others on that are related to the community space.
  1. To initiate a discussion, click the Start a discussion link in the Actions box or New > Discussion (on the menu bar).
  2. Enter the Subject and Content of your post and mark it if it's a question. You can simply post a comment for feedback from others. But if you're asking a question, be sure to mark your post so that others know you'd like an answer.
  3. After receiving replies from others, you can indicate which replies helped you the most. When someone responds to your topic or question that's helpful or correct, mark it as such so that others know which is the best answer. Registered members get status points for helpful and correct answers.


Documents. You can enter content to the Curl Developer Community in the form of wiki documents and uploaded files in the various community spaces. You and others can work on the same document, and you can designate other members who should review or approve the content. You can also upload a file that was created outside the Curl Developer Community. It is recommended you tag documents created from an uploaded file, as well as ones that are created directly in the wiki, to make sure they can be easily found by others.
  1. To create a new document, click Create a document link in the Actions box or New > Document (in the menu bar).
  2. Create a wiki document by starting a new document or uploading a file.
  3. If you choose to start a new document in the wiki, give the document a title and enter your content in the editing window. Notice that you've got two ways to edit the document, along with a preview pane to see how your work is coming along. The rich text editor is like a word processing program, with tools for more advanced formatting. If you choose to upload a document, give the document a title and description, and browse for the document to upload. Note you will not be able to edit the uploaded document content in the wiki editing window, but can do so by opening the document, saving it to your hard drive, making your edits, and uploading it back to the community space.
  4. The plain text editor (see tabs below) offers simple formatting features, but is designed primarily for editing in the wiki markup style. Click the question mark help icon to see a list of wiki markup conventions you can use.
  5. You can attach files and add tags to categorize the document for easy search by other members. As you and other members add tags, you'll develop your own way to describe the content everyone uses. It's also a good idea to use existing tags whenever possible. You can enter tag names or click the tag in the Popular Tags list to add the tag to the document.
  6. Click on Collaboration Options to indicate if you would like others to edit the content, approve the content, and/or comment on the content. See the Collaborate on Content section of the tour for more information on collaboration in the Curl Developer Community.
  7. You can click Save and Continue to save your work and keep writing, or Save Draft to save your work and come back later. Click Publish when you're ready for others to see your document.
  8. After you've published the document, notice that the Actions box lists tasks related to the document. In particular, notice the Manage Versions and Manage Collaboration links. Clicking Manage Versions will display a page that lists versions of the document. You can select document versions in the list to compare changes to the document over time. The comparison shows additions and deletions.
Tip: You can make a document from a discussion! View the discussion in the community space, then click the Convert thread to document link in the Actions box.


Blog Posts. Entering blog posts in the Curl Community Blog are restricted to the Curl team. They will be making regular contributions on topics to engage community members in conversations about what we're working on and to share information about what's going on in the enterprise Rich Internet Application space. Members are welcome to share their thoughts by entering comments on the blog posts.
  1. Click on Add a Comment if you would like to enter a comment on the blog post, or click on Reply next to an existing comment to create a threaded discussion.


Member Profile. Your profile is a quick way for other community members to find out more about you. It can be bare bones or more thorough. If you fill in the optional fields, you can give others a sense of who you are and what you know. This can be very useful for locating community members when you've got a question or suggestion in mind.
  1. Click Your Stuff > Profile (in the menu bar) to view your profile.
  2. On your profile page, notice that the Actions box that enables you to edit your profile, avatar, preferences, and password. On the preferences page, you can adjust your notification and subscription settings.
  3. Click Edit Profile and fill in as much profile information as you desire. If you have professional roles or interests that would be useful for other members to know, be sure to include them.

Collaborate on Content
Nearly everything you do in the Curl Developer Community is collaborative. Content you add is always visible and searchable (unless you have explicitly indicated that it shouldn't be, as with "closed" documents). For example, you can create a document that other members can work on with you. You can also create a list of people who need to be involved in a document's progress, whether it is editing or approving.

Add collaborators. When you add collaborators to a document, you're giving them special roles in the document's "workflow." In other words, work on the document starts with a draft, and moves (or "flows") through a process — possibly more drafts, review, and approval — until it's ready for publishing. Refer to Documents in the Create Content section of the tour to see how to add collaborators in the document creation process.

Manage Collaboration. After a document is saved, you can change the collaboration permissions.
  1. Click Manage Collaboration in the Actions box to edit the collabortive permissions assigned to the document.
  2. On the Manage Collaboration page, you can change the permissions for editing, approving, and entering comments on the document.
Approve Documents. The Curl Developer Community will alert members who have been designated as an approver. Until the document is published, authors and approvers will have the document listed as a Draft under their Your Stuff menu, as well as prompting them they have Documents Awaiting Approval .
When you view a document needing your approval, you will be presented with the option to Approve or Reject the document.

This is the end of the Curl Developer Community tour. It has really only scratched the surface. The best way to get to know the community is to put it to work by adding content and responding to the content other members have added. Give it a try!