How do I create pages for my network like Govloop.com?

[Pastor Donald C. Garner Jr.]

Hello NC's, I was recently looking for design ideas for my site, and browsing other websites on Ning and around the wen, and found http://www.govloop.com/. I was thrown back by it's clean/organized/professional design on EVERY page. If I could implement code and styling's like this on my site http://www.artztre.com I could take my networks design to another level.  

     How Do I:

          1. Create the tab's I saw on MULTIPLTE pages?

               Example: http://www.govloop.com/communications

          2. How do I create these effects and codes?

               Example: http://insights.govloop.com/ 

          3. How do I create a page with functionality like this, notice the triangle ext. of content?

               Example: https://data.govloop.com/  

How do they get that tab module on EVERY page! I see that the tab titles never change. Would love to know how to do these things listed, also and HOW to create tables (Any size) to put any content I want into them, no matter what the size with or without a border, always center and aligned properly. Can anyone help me with this. Post here, and also inbox me. Thanks, Blessings.                             

[Patrick Chappelle]

They're using Ning API, and obviously working with developers who are really good at their jobs. 

[Patrick Chappelle]

Those tabs you can install on your network by following the instructions at this discussion, Pastor.

[Pastor Donald C. Garner Jr.]

Patrick, I'm going to take a look at that discussion tonight, and test them on the test network on my site. Thanks!

[Pastor Donald C. Garner Jr.]

I kind of thought about that, but wasn't sure. But even still, their site is Banana's!!! I love it. Gotta take that class, it's calling my name..."Donald, Donald.....What are you waiting for?" lol

[Jeff Ribeira]

Hey Donald. Thanks for the props! The user experience and information flow of our site is pretty high on our priority list so we've been pumping a ton of work into GovLoop to beef up that piece of the site. Overall we take a pretty agile approach to our site's development so we're always looking to improve and iterate on a regular basis. Here are a few quick thoughts. Responses to your questions inline:

          1. Create the tab's I saw on MULTIPLTE pages?

               With a bit of html, css and jquery it's not terribly difficult, but can take a decent amount of work to customize to your specific network, especially if you want to bring in and display dynamic content. The guys who helped us out initially gave a pretty awesome write up here on creators after we launched, here (look for comment from Mal Jones). Like I said, it was quite a bit of work, but Mal offers some helpful insight into exactly how much effort a project like this takes.

There's also a pretty decent write up from a NC here from just last month. He walks you through how to set up the jquery tabs on your homepage to save space. I'll also give a shout out to Jen who runs JenSocial and is super active here on creators. She's got awesome walkthroughs and tips for NC's looking to add helpful elements like jquery tabs and a ton more.

          2. How do I create these effects and codes?

               So insights.govloop.com is actually hosted on a different platform and then skinned to look like GovLoop proper. It's a bit of a juggling act to manage content and design across platforms, but 100% worth the extra effort to maintain continuity and navigability for the user. In general though, whenever we undertake a new build of a new resource or offering on GovLoop, we always ask ourselves how can we build this on ning? As was the case with our major redesign launched earlier this year, you can actually do quite a lot, perhaps even more than we as NC immediately assume. It just takes finding the right folks and being able to articulate a clear vision.

          3. How do I create a page with functionality like this, notice the triangle ext. of content?

               Similar to insights, data.govloop is actually not a ning hosted site, but Socrata. It's basically a site where you can host, organize and display large amounts of data. You can then embed or iframe it into your site, but I believe they also have an option to skin your entire socrata profile which is what we've done here. Or at least attempted to do... I actually appreciate you pointing this out because it looks like we still need to get our updated header/nav up on there as well! lol! It's a pretty small piece of GovLoop, but for all the data folks in government, they really love it.

As for your question on tables, I saw you had another discussion going on that actually had some pretty good info in it: http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/how-to-add-text-photos-in-a-v.... I've definitely feel your pain though, man.

Tables in html are inherently finnicky and convoluted to work with so I would be more inclined to say it's not a ning issue, but just a matter of setting all your table properties correctly which can take some experimenting. I'd definitely recommend using w3schools.com as a reference if you need some help: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_table.asp. Also, using an in browser wysiwyg editor is a pretty quick and easy way to get started organizing your tables if you're not too comfortable operating in plain html. Jen from JenSocial has a pretty awesome one that I have used in the past a number of times that is geared specifically for Ning sites: http://jensocial.com/page/wysiwyg-html-editor.

Anyway, hope something in all of that text helps! Feel free to message me if you have any other questions! Good luck!

[Pastor Donald C. Garner Jr.]

WOW! Jeff, man that was right on point of what we needed. I've been saying for months, "I'm going to take a class on Css/Html" and haven't quite got to it yet. Summers classes Coming in 2 weeks, I'll be in one for this exact purpose. lol I really thank you for going the distance with this discussion, because not only did it help me get info and direction, it has helped others who had the same or similar ideas/questions. Give me about the next 2 or 3 months, and I'll have one of the top Ning Entertainment Sites here. We have worked with a developer in the past for our Splash Page design, but had MANY problems with his work ethic! He had done greats thing in the past and for us, but the relationship had to end, so we could move forward. Having a talented developer/coder/designer is the first thing to have when you don't know coding. It rally can make the difference between a cookie cutter site, and a site that stands out from all the rest. That's the direction we are heading towards. I'm going to figure out the tables thing ASAP, with a little playing around, and creating some dummy pages, I'll have it in no time, I'm a quick study! I look forward to heading Jen's she has help me a great deal back when I 1st started in October. I'll also go read those past post's, and get more insight on what I've been asking tech support. I really appreciate ALL of the NC's and Ning folks here at Creators who "Go That EXTRA Mile!" To help those of us who are a little code challenged...lol But I learn something NEW everyday from here. this is a great community! I love the focus, the level of concern and professionalism, and of course, the WEALTH of Information that streams through here on a daily. Thank's again Jeff for your reply, it's going to make a big difference on our network. BIG Difference!...Blessings Brother.