We launched Ning 3.0 just over two weeks ago. While the overall market response has been really awesome, we have – based on the feedback here on Creators – somewhat underestimated the confusion and potential pain this new generation platform could create for some of you.
We value and carefully consider your input, and have decided to offer more flexibility and appreciation for you all as existing Ning customers.
Grandfathered in at 2x Member Limits
Rather than differentiate plans by features, storage and bandwidth, we set member limits for each plan. Number of members is a visible and intuitive measure of Network Creator success. We believe that you deserve a break when the time comes to upgrade. Therefore, existing Ning Networks will be grandfathered in at 2x the member limit of the new plans.
When you upgrade from Ning 2.0 to Ning 3.0, the Basic plan will support 2,000 members and the Performance plan will support 20,000 members. According to our data, this means that less than 1% of all our existing customers should see any price increase.
3-Month Post Upgrade Grace Period
We have also decided to give you an extra three more months after you upgrade before applying any member limits. And we will provide you with tools during and after the upgrade process to remove long-time inactive members from your network and clean house.
Limitless Moderators
Several of you voiced concerns with limiting the number of moderators. Recruiting active members to help moderate is a powerful tool for NCs to effectively manage their community and reward their most engaged members. We agree and we will be changing our pricing plans to reflect this. All Ning 3.0 subscribers can have an unlimited number of moderators (capped by your members plan limit). Moderators can be given full moderation privileges (approve, feature, edit, delete or suspend) for multiple features, content type and/or members. However the Ning 3.0 plans include a limitation on the number of Administrators—those with full access to the design, layout and settings of your network— Administrators will be limited to 2, 5 and 10 respectively.
'Powered by Ning | Mode Social' Footer Requirement
As we have shared in our FAQs and in several discussion topics, displaying "Powered by Ning | Mode Social" in network footers is important for the health of our business. While we recognize that some of you will decide to leave the platform on account of it, we will not waive this requirement. However to mitigate the impact for some of you, we do intend to put an affiliate program in place that will allow you to gain some value for clickthroughs and referrals. We’ll also provide more flexibility in terms of where and how to display the logo (options such as centering it).
Ning 2.0 Upgrade, Migration and Retirement Timeline
As we have announced, we are working on a seamless upgrade process for Ning 2.0 Networks and plan to release it this summer. Once the upgrade process is available, Ning 2.0 Networks will have at least one year to move to Ning 3.0. We will confirm the exact schedule for the Ning 2.0 retirement when we officially release these migration tools. Before we officially release these tools, we are planning to work with many of you on a beta program for this key feature to make sure that it works as well as can be expected and minimize all changes and concerns for the vast majority of our existing customers.
We hope these changes address most of your concerns and give you a bit more confidence in our own ability to listen to you all. We appreciate the time and energy you pour into your communities, and are committed to delivering you a great and viable platform for years to come.
Thank you all for your feedback; we couldn’t do this without you. If you haven’t already, please take advantage of our offer to create a Ning 3.0 Sandbox Network. We would love for you to experience the redesign firsthand and get a jump-start on developing your Ning 3.0 Network. Don't forget to drop by and let us know how it's going!
NOTE: Post Edited on 4/29/14 to reflect Glam Media's name change to Mode Media.
Replies
Yes, I bought the software and and a few plugins, migrated my membership over and am on my own dedicated server. I am running both sites temporarily until the end of this year so my membership gets used to how the new site works. That in itself is expensive but it's what I need to do for members. Daggone shame I don't make money at this....
What server are you using? Do you mind sharing that information and how you moved your membership?
Migration tool....2.0 NOT 3.0. I never did much of anything with my 3.0 "sandbox" site. Please send me a PM and I will give you the name of the hosting company where my server is located.
I just sent you a friend request ;-)
hostforweb.com is who i use because the excelent support and very competative prices
and you will also need a managed server unless you are an expert at server adminning without managedserver u nbeed to do all the server config yourself diagnose crashes etc etc i tried an unmanaged server once and it literaly crashed evfery 15 minutes.. it was hell i switched to hostforweb and the managed servers and they take care odf literaly everything..
Donna I sent you a PM...
Not even sure why I bother posting this when it seems so obvious, but..
When I pay good money month after month, year after year, for a service or for a product that I critically depend on, and the provider gives me misleading information -like my product is going to be discontinued and replaced by a whole new and different version in 6 months, ...but 18 months later that has not happened and they won't even update or talk to me about what the problem or delay is or what the new outlook or plan is...well that's a problem. And that problem has not been caused by me.
Changing or migrating from this platform and moving my network and its content is not as simple as just selecting a different brand of peanut butter from the shelf, how I wish it were! It's a huge amount of work, it's costly, time consuming, problematic, and is a very stressful process. So yes, I and many other customers are concerned and are unsatisfied with how Ning is handling this whole issue.
Ning customers have shown an extreme amount of patience already. Continuing to tell ourselves everything is gonna be just great is simply naive. Berating others for expressing customer dissatisfaction and even worse, blaming them for this whole disgraceful situation is nuts.
My concerns are not with any other Creator here, but are rather with my network, and with my provider (Ning/Glam), to whom I pay good money every month. Yes I'm fed up with this whole situation- faithful customers should not be treated this way by a company, ever. period. I and others have every right to express our frustration here. If not here, where?
But to my point- my aim is not to spend hours of my life engaged in endless circular arguments with YOU soring eagle, or with any other creator here- I am not here to argue with or denigrate other Ning customers nor spend my energies in personal fighting. I'm willing to spend as long as it takes here on this site to find the best solution for my network and its members. The fact that I am even still here is a testament to how much I love my Ning 2.0 site, how hard and long I'm willing to fight for my network members, and to the fact that I still cling to a shred of hope.
Apparently there are a few Ning employees who DO still read here, at least occasionally. So when i write of my concerns and worries and my struggles in all this, I do have hope that it will be at least read by those who have some influence on the inside, in some manner.
I have no problem with people here who post about why they are confident 3.0 will be wonderful- but hey they need to have the same respect for others who are not so confident, instead of going on and on discrediting and bashing other customers here (and that's really where the WORST negativity is). Hey SE, I have no doubt at all that you could write endless novels about why you think I'm to blame for this whole mess, why I'm terrible and negative and wrong about everything I post. You can continue to list by name which Creators you think are 'good', and which are 'bad'. But what good does all this really accomplish?
We should all be concentrating on 1) trying to find out what the hell is going on from Ning, and 2) exchanging helpful info on possible solutions and alternative routes if Ning won't help us. And yes if we are fine with the situation we should express that, and if we are not fine with it we can express that too. Talk about how you feel and why, rather than talking about why you think others shouldn't talk about why they feel their way.
I say to all of us- let us engage in those activities without constantly turning things around to unproductively bully and personally berate or discredit each other ...instead of addressing the real problem at hand.
Well said Strumelia. Spot on.
LOL right?! It's all been said. It is what it is. Another thread I'm unfollowing.
The reality of the situation is such. Ning was taken over by Glam and then by Mode, and from that point on, there has been little in the progress of the platform and a cut off of information to site owners. The last time this happened to me was when I was with Grouply, which was purchased by Oddle and then folded. Many times larger companies will buy out smaller ones to eventually sell off the pieces or close them down and take them as a loss for tax purposes. Now please don't get me wrong, I am not saying that is definitely what is going on here, but it is a possibility, given the lack of communication and lack of progress with the platform. This isn't negativity, but as an owner of a group, it would be unwise to not be taking backup precautions. When Grouply closed their doors, I woke up one morning to find no site. I had to scrabble and opened on Ning within a day, with a half baked site. Learn from my mistakes. BTW, this also happened to one of the ad companies that I was using, Adbrite and I loss all that months earnings and had no ads... so apparently this is the way internet companies function.
http://www.social-networkreviews.com/content/grouply-no-more
http://marketingland.com/adbrite-ad-exchange-will-close-its-doors-b...
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