A Design Studio for member pages: Now Live

Update: This is now live!

I'm incredibly excited to report that we are putting the finishing touches on profile customization for the Ning Design Studio. We're looking to release it early next week.

Since launching the Design Studio in February, we've been working to revolutionize the way your members customize their pages. With this upcoming release, members can have as much flexibility over their pages as you do over your entire site:

What's really cool about this is that we're giving you control over exactly how much power your members have. The profile Design Studio has three panels: Theme (for picking a new theme), Customize (for customizing the theme), and Advanced (for adding CSS). It's up to you which of these panels to unlock for your members.

For example, Ning Creators who want their members to go wild will enable all three panels. Ning Creators who want a more unified-looking site will just enable the Customize panel (that's the default setting). You can change these settings any time on your Member Controls page in the Dashboard.

This kind of flexibility reflects the diversity of sites created on Ning. We can't wait to give your members the same creative control over their profiles that you've got on your site today.

Finally, along with profile page customization we'll be releasing a batch of fixes to the Design Studio. As we continue to zap any remaining bugs, we'll look to take the Ning Design Studio out of Ning Labs. This won't mean any changes to your site, it will simply mean that the Design Studio is no longer in beta. You can enable it directly from your Appearance page. Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by solo on April 1, 2011 at 11:54am

NC for HirePermalink Reply by Jen on April 1, 2011 at 12:00pm

Incredibly awesome!

Permalink Reply by Scott Bishop on April 1, 2011 at 12:02pm

Will this new profile customization be only for those who chose the Beta Design Studio to change their main site look or will it be available to those of us that didn't choose that option?

Permalink Reply by Nick Barr on April 1, 2011 at 12:11pm

Design studio for profiles only applies to sites with the Design studio — folks who haven't switched will continue to get the same exact experience for profile customization.

Permalink Reply by Scott Bishop on April 1, 2011 at 12:20pm

Well that really sucks. The options we have are pretty lame!

Permalink Reply by Eric Suesz on April 1, 2011 at 12:31pm

Sorry that you are unhappy, Scott. I don't think we're taking anything away. We've always been clear that we won't be developing a way to edit Classic themes with the Design Studio. You still have the option to just keep doing things the way you're doing them and have your members keep customizing their profile pages in the same way they always have if change isn't an option for you.

Permalink Reply by Scott Bishop on April 1, 2011 at 12:36pm

I didn't mean for such a harsh statement. It's just a slight let down.

Some of my members like to change up their profile page and 100% only use the themes option with is very limited and pretty much lame.

Permalink Reply by Eric Suesz on April 2, 2011 at 2:38pm

No.

Permalink Reply by AMZ on April 1, 2011 at 12:11pm

Yes members finally get the design studio now they can change their pages with no prob.

Permalink Reply by Chris on April 1, 2011 at 12:15pm

This is great news. I haven't activated the design studio yet, as I will lose my site's design, and all members will lose their customisations. What's the story now - will we be able to keep them, or does it still mean starting completely from scratch?

Permalink Reply by Ed on April 2, 2011 at 2:33am