Great News!

I am officially starting to work on building a Hugs Heal Online Community! I have bought the domain name and am currently setting up the hosting account. I've also decided to take on a few volunteers to help run the Hugs Heal Myspace. I will still be reading and answering all comments and messages, posting bulletins, and updates myself. These things will not be done by volunteers.

I'll be posting periodic updates as I go through the process of building this social network. Until then, I'd like to share some ideas for the community with you.

Here are some of the ideas I have:

Members should be able to

• Send each other “hugs”; i.e. “Click here to hug Michael”
• Invite friends outside Hugs Heal to become members
  
• Earn points that can be used to buy items in the Hugs Heal Shop
• Members can earn points for: friend referrals, organizing/participating in Hugs Heal activities, donations they collect
• Create unique avatars
• Post challenges for themselves and other members
  
• Submit ideas for Hugs Heal activities
  
• Participate in or organize activities
• Create profiles
• Add friends (buddies?) with details about how they know them
• Suggest things to be featured on site; i.e. quotes, people, organizations, pictures (site section)
• Plan and invite each other to events and activities (make sure mass invites can be sent, make sure members can disable this feature if desired)
• Keep a blog?
• Build their own groups within Hugs Heal Community
• Search for friends by name/email/zip, etc.
• Enter in contests
• Vote in contests
• Block members they do not wish to communicate with
• Report spam/abuse
• Vote in polls
• Ask for support from other members in the peer support center

Other Ideas

• Polls (all members invited to vote)
• Private chatrooms
• “Hug of the Day” - featured hug; could be any person, picture, organization, type of hug, i.e. comforting hug, affectionate hug, friendly hug, loving hug, etc.
• Automatically feature a welcome to the newest member
• Show how many member are online
• Spirit Lifter of the Day
• Randomize quotes through out site
• Members will be called “Huggers”
• Points Earned = Different Huggers Status, ie. Bronze, Silver, Gold Members

Contests - Winners get item(s) from Hugs Heal Shop, all Hugs Heal community members will be invited to vote for each contest

• Hug Photo Contest - members can enter any photo depicting a hug
• Hugs Heal Story Contest - members can share any experience in which they have witnessed a hug help anyone in anyway
• Donation Contest - Competition who can collect the most donations for a specific project or in a specific amount of time.
• Hug Visual Art Contest - members can enter an image representing any visual depiction of a hug or hugs, except photos go to the photo contest

Possible types of art medium including but not limited to (may be categories of contest, depending on number of entries)
Drawing
Painting
Sculpting
Graphic Arts

• T-Shirt Design Contest - members can enter a design to be printed on a t-Shirt (show printable area to members). Design can be a drawing, a graphic, and/or words that has a positive message in keeping with the spirit of Hugs Heal. Prize will be a T-Shirt with their design printed on it and their design will be featured and make available for purchase in the Hugs Heal Shop. Understand all profit from sales of items bearing the design will go to Hugs Heal.
• The Greatest Inspiration Contest - members share stories about how they have helped others in any way, members vote on who is the Greatest Inspiration

Sections of Site

• Home Page
• Help Section
• Suggestions by members
• Challenges (Daily? Weekly?)
• Search/Browse members (name, email, zip code, group membership)
• About Hugs Heal
• Why I Started Hugs Heal
• Peer Support Center (members can post about problems or anything they need support from other members for, get support, advice, and answers to their questions)

Please share some of your ideas!