Homestead Connect

A hurdle to start a business is not always resources but connections. To make it easier for someone to launch their big idea, we created Homestead Connect. Invite members of your community, organization or even company to add themselves to the visual directory. They can label themselves with the categories you choose. Then, when someone is looking to connect with a developer, manager, mentor or another category, they can easily filter and find that person.

With a Facebook integration, this visual directory makes it easy for you to connect your community and help them connect with one another.

Background

Homestead Connect was developed as an open source tool with the Small Business Association’s Start-Up in a Day Competition. Brookings, SD was a winner of that competition and our goal was to help creatives in Brookings find and connect with one another. We also wanted to make our community more welcoming to newcomers, so this tool was created with that goal in mind.

Now, Homestead Connect is open to anyone. We invite you to use this tool and share with us the unique ways it can help people connect. Visit YourHomestead.org to share your stories and find more tools that help build community.

1. Upload the homestead-connect folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
2. Activate the Homestead Connect plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
3. Configure the plugin by going to the Settings menu and clicking on ‘Homestead Connect’

Or, upload via WordPress plugin dashboard.

1. Click New plugin
2. Search Homestead Connect
3. Click Add plugin
4. Click Activate plugin

Customizing the Plugin

The Homestead Connect plugin uses three pages:

1. Members page – The Members page will show all of your members in a visual grid. The photos are pulled from Facebook if they connect with Facebook or show an uploaded photo.
2. Join page – The Join page is where a new user connects their Facebook account (optional), uploads a photo (if they do not connect Facebook), chooses their categories and finalizes their account.
3. Update page – The Update page is where a new user can change their photo or categories.

Create a page and then assign that page to be the members, join and update pages under Settings > Homestead Connect. On each page, add the respective shortcodes: [homestead_members] on the members page [homestead_join] on the join page [homestead_update] on the update page

Connecting Facebook

A Facebook app ID is required to integrate with Facebook. Learn to set up a Facebook app here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/register

Receiving Email Alerts for Opt-In Question

An organization can ask users a specific yes/no question. By default, this question is: Do you need help starting a business/project?” The email address will receive the submissions of users checking the box yes.

Edit your question by going to the Homestead Connect settings page and editing the “Opt-In Question” field.

Who built this?

Homestead Connect was built by Dave Medema and Scott Meyer as a project of Homestead. Learn more at: yourhomestead.org

The project was funded through the SBA’s Startup in a Day initiative.

Coming soon.