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Welcome to the developerWorks community, the place where developers and IT professionals congregate to connect, share, and collaborate. The developerWorks community is all about you. Whether you're here to troubleshoot a technical problem, network, share your knowledge, get input from your peers, or just soak up wisdom from the technical community, our variety of community tools will help you to meet your specific goals. Use this overview to navigate the community landscape and discover which tools are best for you.
Refer to the developerWorks article, "New ways to build your technical skills and your professional network," for an in-depth look at participating in the developerWorks community. How you interact with other members of the community—whether it be through blogs, forums or other means—is up to you. We only ask that you keep the developerWorks terms and conditions in mind as you're participating.
New to activities
Activities are a set of tools for keeping track of your and others' contributions, shared resources, to-dos, and deadlines in individual or collaborative projects. The activities page lists the activities that you've started or that you're a member of. To start an activity, identify a goal, such as resolving a bug or researching a topic. Create an activity to track that goal. Then add entries to the activity to capture required tasks, store associated documents, and assemble the people that you need to reach the goal. Read more about using activities to organize your work projects in the My developerWorks article.
New to blogs
Blogs allow community members to share thoughts and expertise on topics that matter to them, as well as engage in conversations with each other. developerWorks blogs feature a tagging system and a recommendation feature, so that bloggers and readers can categorize discussions, in addition to recommending blog posts generated by the community. Read more about how to create and interact with blogs in the My developerWorks article.
New to bookmarks
The bookmarks component is a set of social bookmarking tools that you can use to save, organize, and share bookmarks of web pages. The bookmarks that you collect with the bookmarks component of developerWorks are stored in a central repository. You can share some or all of your bookmarks with others, and you can see other people's collections of bookmarks as well. For example, you can explore bookmarks by tag and by creator, and thus easily discover mutual interests and beneficial resources. Read more about using bookmarks to find content and people in the My developerWorks article.
New to files
The files application in the developerWorks community lets you upload files of any type and share them with others. You can share a file with people you specify, everyone, or no one. You can also create collections of files to organize your resources and watch updates to both your files and those of others. You may find it useful to upload files to your group (see details on groups below), keeping all of your resources tightly integrated for the benefit of your community. Another benefit of files: You can share information with your peers without having to send large e-mails. For more information on using files in the community, see the My developerWorks article.
New to forums
Forums offer a great way for you to add to and benefit from the collective expertise of the developerWorks community. Instead of struggling to locate that one last problematic line of code or that setting that will let you finish an install, why not put it front of a group of people with experience with the same tools and technologies? You'll find plenty of forums to choose from, both for products and technologies.
New to groups
Groups are communities of people with a common interest or focus. You can join or start a public group with open access. You can also start a public group with invitation-only access, allowing you to control membership and moderate access to the group's resources. And you can start a private group with membership restricted to a particular set of users.
Groups provide an excellent way to connect people with a shared interest, expertise, or goal, so that the group members can benefit from and build on each other's knowledge and contributions. Read more about how to find, join, and start groups in the My developerWorks article.
New to profiles
As a member of the developerWorks community, you have an online persona, or profile, that describes you: your roles, skills, and interests, as well as your contact information. You can add as many details as you like to personalize your profile. You can also control the personal information that your peers can see about you.
Others in the developerWorks community can view your profile to learn about you, just as you can view others' profiles. It's easy to find other members of the community who share your interests or are solving the same problems you're working on, because you can search profiles in many ways, such as by name and by the tags you assign to your profile.
Profiles help you mine the collective knowledge of all the other users of developerWorks and build a trusted network of colleagues. Read more about personalizing your profile in the My developerWorks article.
New to wikis
Wikis let you collaborate with other members of the community to develop content related to a specific interest area. developerWorks wikis make it easy for you and your peers to share information on topics of interest to developers. Similar to groups, you can make a wiki public or private, and depending on your setting, wiki members (or signed-in users) can edit or comment on the wiki pages, or add their own pages. Teams can use wikis to create a central place to collaborate on a project. We encourage you to share your knowledge and expertise to help make wikis a valuable resource for the entire developerWorks community. Read more about wikis in the My developerWorks article.
Which offering best suits your needs?
Use this table to determine which offering best suits your needs. The items along the X axis are the developerWorks community tools. The items along the Y axis represent your goal, or what you want to accomplish by owning or participating in one of our community tools. This chart denotes the best use of each tool, and should be considered a guide, rather than the rule. Many of our tools can be used in multiple ways, to accomplish multiple goals, so the key is to find which one(s) best suits your specific needs. If you can't narrow down to just one, don't worry. Sometimes, a package of tools is best.
| Activity | Blog | Bookmarks | Files | Forum | Group | Profile | Wiki | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Learn | • | • | • | • | • | • | ||
| Self express | • | • | • | • | • | |||
| Troubleshoot | • | • | • | • | ||||
| Find | • | • | • | • | • | • | ||
| Network | • | • | ||||||
| Share knowledge | • | • | • | • | • | • | • | • |
| Aggregate resources | • | • | • | • | • | |||
| Personalize experience | • | • | • | • | ||||
| Collaborate | • | • | • | • | ||||
| Discuss | • | • | • |
Next steps
You can get started on your own with most of our tools by simply signing in to developerWorks via the Sign-in link in the upper right of any developerWorks page and navigating to the tool of your choice.
Refer to the following chart for direct links to each community tool—just be sure you're signed in first.
| Next step | |
|---|---|
| Activity | Start an activity. |
| Blog | Browse blogs and apply for your own. (on the "My blog" tab, click Create a blog.) |
| Bookmarks | Begin bookmarking! |
| Files | Upload a file. |
| Forum | Browse and contribute to forums. |
| Group | Browse groups and start your own. |
| Profile | Build your developerWorks profile. |
| Wiki | Browse wikis and start your own. |