Topbar and its features for logged out users

If you're logged out, the topbar doesn't make that much of a difference, it simply allows you to login, or register. When you enter your username and password, and click the login button, you'll be taken back to the startpage - but now with a bunch of new features, especially in the topbar.

Topbar and its features for logged-in users

This is when the topbar becomes extremely handy - when you're logged in. Suddenly, it opens a whole new world of features. When you're logged in, and have access to SignCut Social, you have a forum, you have a community, and you have some of their features in the red navigation-menu.

But this menu does not contain all features - not at all. It contains only some of the most commonly used features, but to access all the features, you need to look in the topbar. Here, you can find features such as Video upload, image upload, blogging capabilities, and so on. Virtually every single feature can be accessed through the topbar - you can even navigate the Main Site through the top menu.

Summary

The topbar is your key to navigating the SignCut website and get the most out of SignCut Social, once registered and logged in.

What is SignCut Social?

SignCut Social is an integration of the OpenSource community platform elgg, the OpenSource Content Management System Joomla!, the forum platform SimpleMachines Forums, and the standard SignCut system. With these powerful platforms combined and integrated with the SignCut platform, we can now offer our members abilities such as:

• Community: Chat with other users in real-time, without installing anything on your computer
• Community: Create and manage a blog
• Community: Facebook'ish status-updates, activities and general overview (Dashboard)
• Community: Find and add friends
• Community: Find other users blogs, files, images, videos - community is all about sharing!
• Community: Invite friends to join
• Community: Join groups related to your interests, and make new friends
• Community: Send private messages to other users
• Community: Share files, images, videos (Files, Photos, Videos).
• Community: Read other users blogs - and let them read yours
• Forums: Discuss with other users on the different forum-boards
• Forums: Discuss with other users on the different forum-boards
• Forums: Search for topics to see if somebody has already posted what you're looking for

So how come you differ between Community and Forums?

Since the community and the forums are actually two completely different platforms that we've optimized for seamless integration, they are in reality two completely different sites. Actually, the whole website is a complex joint of several platforms, and can be seen as four different websites - the eshop, the forums, the community and the start-website. 

To make this integration as smooth as possible for the end-user, we've decided to integrate the forums and the community into what seems to be a single section of the website, sharing the same looks with eachother (the green background stripes, representing SignCut Social), utilizing the same navigation menu, and so on, whilst the eShop and the main website each have their own menus and slightly different looks (gray stripes, yellow stripes).

How do I know if I'm on the community or the forums?

Most features in SignCut Social comes from the community - only the forum and the forum boards belong to the forum-section. However, you're not supposed to be able to tell the difference between the Forums and the Community, only between the features they offer. And, you really don't need to tell them apart either - see it as one section; SignCut Social - forums and community in one.

Summary 

To put it short, SignCut Social is the combination of two platforms, a community and a forum platform.