Achievement badges: sharing ideas for best use on our sites

[Holly Dilatush]

Kyryl suggested I start a new post.  This link should take you to the discussion where I asked:

I hope other site creators will share brainstorming ideas of how we might use these badges... what are you assigning them to? 

• point total milestones?
• contest winners?
• voted most helpful?
• most improved? / showing strong improvement?

Kyryl wrote:

"Personally, I think achievements are a pretty cool thing. I've been the member of one site in the past which has been using the sort of badges (they called them "medals") which could have been earn for lost of the activities on the site. The main idea of them was that they were just funny badges on the profile of the member, and sometimes a bit offensive but the members of the site haven't been thinking about them in such way, well most of them.

As usual, they have been given manually by the administration for the certain deeds of the members. So let's imagine you have created the post related to the sheep, and after that, you could receive the medal called "herdsman" that's been created especially for you and because of the post you have made. This approach made me think that my medals are pretty unique and not easy to earn.

That's the experience I had with the badges/achievements etc.

By the way, Holly, I think this question deserves to be the separate discussion :-) I'll tell you more, it would be even featured, at least I think it's a pretty good thing to discuss and to hear the opinion of the other NCs.

Best wishes,"

- - -

I'm still struggling with understanding how to set them up properly, but will continue to play with them as I find time.

Meanwhile, I'm considering one badge for all members (in full color) and then others that will show in gray tones until/unless activated/earned.  I appreciated this tip! 

Other badges I'm considering = 

Diamond member (not sure how to establish criteria that could be 'automated' or easy for me to calculate; I used this on 2.0 and it was a popular badge to earn)

Contest winners (Periodically our prior site offered contests = they were a lot of work for me, but greatly appreciated by members)

Members of the Month (We used to use Members of the Week, but one week was not long enough, and our site is still small and growing, so Member of the Month would be easier to implement, once I get how it works = can I assign a badge for one month only for one member only and then remove it and assign it to someone else?).  

Member Milestones (still pondering this one)

I would love to hear YOUR ideas, too.

Have fun with these new tools, everyone!

~ Holly

[Bizz]

I just added the tip and codes need for changing or adding the images here https://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/tip-custom-achievement-badges

[Bizz]

Justin I have figured a way out for you to have custom images ( not the little badges in the avatar though, still working on that ) Will add it on another post so we have a fresh one to start with. It does involve a little custom code to add for the images but will try to simplify that bit.