Hub users

How to use a hub as a member: your profile and dashboard, the groups and projects you belong to, the resources, publications, and tools you use or contribute, and the places where the community talks.

Every hub is configured differently, so some features described here may be switched off or named differently on yours. Where a page refers to a menu or tab, it means the one on the hub's site, not the administrator interface.

The words this book uses

A hub is one Hubzero site, with its own members, content and settings. You are a member once you register.

Members work together in groups, which are collaboration spaces with their own pages, files, forum and membership roles, and in projects, which are private workspaces where a team prepares files and data before releasing any of it.

What a hub publishes is a resource: a tool, a dataset, a presentation, a course. A publication is a versioned, citable resource that has been through a curation workflow and carries a DOI. A tool is a program that runs on the hub's own machines and appears in your browser, without you installing anything.

Start with what you came to do

"I have just been given an account." Read Getting started. It walks the first hour end to end: register, confirm the email, fill in enough of a profile to be findable, arrange a dashboard. Introduction explains how the site is laid out before you start clicking.

"I need to work with other people." A group is a standing community space — a lab, a course cohort, a working committee — with its own pages, forum, calendar and files. A project is a private workspace for one piece of research, where a team keeps files and data while the work is still in progress. Most members end up in both.

"I want to release my data, code, or results." Publications is the guided route from a project to a citable version with a DOI. Resources is the lighter route for contributing something to the hub's library. Citations records the literature behind it.

"I want to run something." Tools covers launching a simulation or analysis tool in your browser, and your quota and session limits. Usage summarises what you have contributed and how much use it has had, and simulation usage definitions explains what the tool figures on the hub's /usage page count.

"I am looking for something." Search covers the hub's search and says plainly what it can and cannot reach. Tags gathers items of any type that were labelled the same way. Collections are boards you assemble yourself.

"I want to ask, answer, or write." Questions and answers and the Forum are where members talk; Blog, Wiki, and Knowledge base are where they write things down. Events, Newsletters, and Courses cover the scheduled and taught parts of a hub.

"Something is wrong, or I am stuck." The frequently asked questions answer the common ones. Anything else goes to Support, which is how you reach the people who run your hub. Wishlist is where you ask for something that does not exist yet, and Storefront covers hubs that sell things.

Your own account

• Member dashboard — the page of panels you land on after logging in, and how to arrange it.
• Member profile — what other members see about you, and who can see each part of it.
• Registration — the sign-up form, field by field.

The Tools book covers running simulation tools in more depth. The Hub managers book covers the administrator side of every setting this book says "depends on your hub".