Introduction

Welcome to FirstVoices! The FirstVoices team is excited to support you in your language revitalization mission to create an online archive and learning environment for your Indigenous language.

In order for your brand new FirstVoices site to be created, you will need to decide on some basic details such as the name and URL for the site and confirm them with the FirstVoices development team. You will also need to set up user accounts for all your team members. This tutorial will walk you through the steps.

Overview

Sample timeline

Stage 1: Initial site creation

Confirm your language site name and URL

Steps:

1. With your team or community, choose the name of your FirstVoices site.

2. With your team or community, choose the URL for your FirstVoices site. The URL-friendly name must:

   • Have no special characters (only standard alphanumeric: a-z, 0-9)

   • Be all lower case

   • Only use hyphens (no underscores, no slashes, no spaces, etc.)

3. Email the FirstVoices development team at hello@firstvoices.com to submit the name and URL you have chosen for your new site.

Register for FirstVoices accounts and roles

Every member of the language team who will be active on the FirstVoices site will need to create a FirstVoices user account.

Steps:

1. Go to the FirstVoices homepage and click on "Sign In / Register".

2. Click on the link that says "Sign up".

3. Fill out the account registration page with the information you would like to share. You will need to enter your email address to complete registration.

4. When you have filled out all of the required fields, click "Sign up".

5. Check your email. You will be emailed a link to set your password. This should be done as soon as possible as the link will expire.

The team will also need to decide what roles they will have on the team. At least one person will need to be designated as the Language Administrator, who will have full permissions to edit content and manage membership on the language site.

Steps:

1. Read about the team roles on FirstVoices: Language Administrator, Editor, and Assistant.

2. Create a list of all team members, their account email addresses, and the correct FirstVoices role.

3. Submit the list of members, emails, and roles to FirstVoices staff at hello@firstvoices.com.

Your accounts will be linked to the language site with the correct role(s).

Stage 2: Add content to your language site

Newly-created language sites are not listed on the FirstVoices Explore Languages page. For your site to be listed on the page for community members to see, it must meet the basic content requirements:

•  Your site must have a Language Administrator
•  Your site must have an alphabet
•  Your site must have a logo
•  Your site must have some basic introductory/welcome text on its homepage and any pages available in the top navigation (e.g. Our People, Our Language)
•  Your site must have a starter amount of language content (Example: 50 words/phrases, a song, or a story)
•  You must decide if you would like your site to be listed as public or members-only

Once you’ve met these requirements, contact the FirstVoices development team at hello@firstvoices.com to request to be listed. Please include whether you would like your site to be listed as Public or Members-only. You can request to be listed as Members-only to start, and then request to go Public at a later time.

Prepare and submit your language alphabet

New sites will need to design and prepare the alphabet that they will use to write their language content. FirstVoices hosts custom, interactive alphabets with many useful and interesting features built into your language site such as an interactive letter-pronunciation page, custom alphabetization, approximate searching, and alphabet-related games. In order to make all of these features functional, we need some information about your writing system and recordings of the sounds that each character represents.

Follow the instructions here on: How to design and submit your language site alphabet.

Upload a custom logo

Your FirstVoices homepage must have a custom logo. If your community does not already have a representative logo, this could be an opportunity to work with a community artist to design one. It is important that you have the rights to use the logo on your site.

Steps:

1. Identify the appropriate logo to use, or commission one with an artist.

2. Collect a high-quality JPG or PNG image file of the logo.

3. Login to your FirstVoices site as a Language Administrator.

4. Read this article and follow the listed instructions: Add the logo to your homepage

Design your language site homepage

To launch your language site, the basic requirement is that the site homepage is not blank. Other custom pages linked in the top navigation (e.g. “Our Language”, “Our People”) should also not be blank.

Steps:

1. Determine what information you wish to share on your FirstVoices site.

2. Write the text that you want to upload to your FirstVoices site.

3. Capture or obtain any important images or video that you wish to feature on the site (such as a banner or other key image)

4. Add information to the Our Language and Our People pages

   • These pages are blank by default, so you should add some content.

   • Find instructions here: Creating and editing custom pages for your language site

5. Review your site homepage.

   • The page contains some content by default, so updating it is optional.

   • Find instructions to change the banner here: Upload or change your site banner

   • Find instructions to customize the homepage in this article: Customizing your language site homepage

6. Review your site to ensure that all links listed in the top navigation have some basic content.

   • To customize which links are listed in the top navigation bar, contact hello@firstvoices.com.

Upload starter language content

Before launching your language site, FirstVoices staff recommends that the team begin with a few test uploads to get used to the upload process and to ensure that the first visitor to your language site has something to find. This can be a small amount of content, such as 25 words or 2 songs.

Find tutorials for adding content:

• Add or edit words and phrases

• Add or edit songs

• Add or edit stories

Choose between a Public or Members-only site

When activating your language site, you must decide whether you would like to be activated as a Members-only site, only accessible to registered FirstVoices users approved by your team, or as a Public site that anyone can access.

• Public sites: are visible on the Explore Languages page, any user can visit the homepage, any user can view public content without logging in

• Members-only sites: are visible on the Explore Languages page with a locked icon, users must request to join and be approved by a Language Administrator before they can view the homepage or any content

Public sites can also designate any amount of their language content as “Members-only”. The homepage and public content are visible without logging in, but the members-only content can only be seen if a user is logged in and approved by the Language Administrator. Read more here about who can see your language entries.

Pros/cons list

Final steps for launch

Review the site activation checklist

•  Your site has been created
•  At least 1 Language Administrator has been designated
•  An alphabet is uploaded to the site (submit to hello@firstvoices.com)
•  A logo is uploaded to the site homepage
•  The homepage has some content - is not blank
•  All pages available in the top navigation have some content - they are not blank (e.g. Our People, Our Language)
•  Your site has a starter amount of language content (Example: 25 words/phrases, a song, or a story)
•  You have chosen Public or Members-only status for your site

Contact the FirstVoices team for launch

1. The Language Administrator should email hello@firstvoices.com to request launch.

2. Indicate the name of your site and the desired status (Public vs Members-only).

3. The FirstVoices team will activate your site! Congrats!