Content microsites / 5 min read

Create a voice for your community

By Marion / April 02, 2021

A lot of people are struggling with isolation and looking for ways to connect to their community.

To help in the current crisis we’re giving free access to our developed content platform called Reptile (used by membership organisations and global businesses to publish information to their audiences) to genuine users who want to set up a community platform for a good cause. Or, alternatively, if you want to use your time and skills to create a content site for any commercial organisation, we’ll be providing you with a discounted paid-for licence.

Maybe you have a friend who runs a business and needs a content site? You might even be able to make some money in your spare time?

Reptile is built around content and best used by organisations that want to post daily news and updates to a number of people, especially

• if you have an audience with whom you want to communicate essential information in real-time
• and if that audience relies on the information which you provide

Why should I use a community-owned platform and not any other social platform like Facebook or Twitter?

The biggest advantage is that a community-owned platform gives you tighter controls over your messaging without the ‘noise’ of other people on the same platform. A dress store on Facebook, for example, might have a built-in audience to engage, but they have to compete with all the other dress stores on Facebook, all addressing the same people.

A community platform also allows you to go beyond the limitations of social networks. More focussed access to your community and custom design allows you to create a better experience for everyone.

How to launch a community platform?

The first thing you would need to do is register for Reptile and create a free account. Tell us what you want to achieve to help us prioritise your account. We process each request manually so we can focus on the best cases.

Once your account is activated – same or next day – we have some tutorials to help you get going. But because we want to improve the process for new users, we will also be on hand to help you get set-up.

You should be able to set-up a custom micro-site in half a day. That is a lot quicker than building a new website!

Do I need to be technical?

A little bit of familiarity with modern web technology will definitely help. Once Reptile is set-up anybody can write or upload new content and for that you need no special skills.

What about the hosting?

We do all of that, you don’t need to worry.

Creating a site with Reptile

We have one simple rule for a free account (that includes set-up, training, hosting and assistance) – you don’t need to pay anything to create your site and hook-up your content.:

• if the beneficiary has no commercial arm or paid staff we will support the site at no cost, provided it is for a good cause (at our discretion).

If you are building it for someone who has a commercial interest, we will charge a licence fee (ranging from £25 /€$ 30 to £250 /€$300 per month). We will only apply the charges once you have agreed with your friend/customer. This fee will be defined by the size and turnover of the organisation (at our discretion) and will be paid directly to us by the customer and you can/will charge them for your time.

BONUS: you will receive a 25% discount on your first commercial licence and Reptile Ambassadors, who build multiple sites, can receive up to 40% discount and get fast-track support from us.

These things you’ll need to think about first

• Choose or build a theme. This determines how your content will look. Basically setting the fonts and styles. To make it easier you can copy an existing theme on Reptile, or we can help you build a new one.
• Your home page. This is where all your content will be accessed from and can be designed exactly as you would like by adding drag-and-drop widgets to the page. You can start with an existing one and adapt it, or we can help you.
• Create your initial categories. Remember, your initial category list is not carved in stone and you should avoid creating too many categories at the start. Keep it simple and let your categories evolve.
• Sign-up or open for all. We assume, it should be open to all, but if you want sign-up, the easier the process is, the more likely people will want to sign up for your community.
• Decide who’ll be able to post/publish content.

Once those are done the rest is just adding and updating content.

So what exactly does Reptile do?

Reptile is built to deliver content in a way that makes it easy for readers to absorb it. How you see that being used depends on your background:

• Some publishers use Reptile to deliver their online magazines, journals, updates. These can be either page-turning issues created by uploading a PDF; or mobile-responsive issues created in HTML.
• Some membership organisations use it to provide an educational microsite that delivers all of their lessons, tutorials and reports.
• Companies use it for communications to their employees, resellers or customers

Want to know more? Take a look at some of our demo sites

• The Scientific Theme envisages how individual articles can be designed in a continuous reading flow and use different styles of tiles.
• The Elegant Theme, groups articles into sections, or issues.
• Use Reptile to keep teams updated and centralise your communications.

then apply for your Reptile account and we will take it from there.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Cheap Street photo by kerry rawlinson on Unsplash