Improved Members page view and Sitemap Generator are now live on your Ning Network!

[Ning]

We’re excited to announce that the following improvements are now live on your Ning Network:

* A new-and-improved display for Members & Friends pages
* The ability to display a featured profile question on the Members & Friends pages
* A Sitemap Generator for Network Creators

Check out the Ning blog to read more about these improvements: http://blog.ning.com/2009/12/an-improved-grid-view-for-members-page...

Let us know if you have any questions or feedback about any of these updates! Please send us a note through our Help Center (http://help.ning.com) if you are seeing any issues on your Ning Network.

[Jen]

Overall this is a great update, thank you. I hate to say I'm disappointed, but I think you'll understand why. I couldn't wait for this feature, so I could feature the profile question for Ning Network URL (on the NingDir). This would have changed everything, in a positive way, for our members. I see that all questions can be featured, except URLs. Is this on the roadmap in the future?
Thanks,
Jen

[Evan]

Hey Jen!

It sure is. Hopefully in a matter of days/weeks, we just wanted to make sure we do URLs right, and that was going to add a few more days. We decided to launch first with the other profile questions, then figure out how to best display URLs after that.

/Evan
Ning Product Manager

[Jen]

Awesome news!
Thanks Evan!

[Jen]

On no! We no longer have the "feature" link next to member icons on the member page? Was this intentional? If it was discussed in other forums, forgive me. Somehow, I didn't know this, until I just went to use it. I will miss this greatly. I used it to change the order of "featured" members, by clicking "stop featuring", "feature", and so forth. It was really a handy tool.

I have another wish for the member page, and not sure it warrants a new Discussion. It seems to me the featured member photos are way too large, compared to the regular member photos. I think it's unattractive and takes away from any web 2.0 look. They overpower the member page too much. I would remove them if I could. But, I got caught up in "featured members" being a special spot on the NDir.
Thanks for the consideration,
Jen

[Melissa B]

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for the sitemap generator. I've tried for months to get access to upload a sitemap without success. This was so easy and a great tool.

[MusicRVA]

I only have 3 out of 10 options to feature, and 2 are already the top preset ones, and I can also only feature one at a time ????? seems hardly worth it

[Jen]

Are your remaining 7, all URL fields? It appears that URL profile questions cannot be featured. And on your question about "...feature one at a time?" That was the plan since this was first mentioned.

Although I had wanted to use this to feature a URL field, I'm making the best of it for now. I'm featuring the "Ning Network Category" profile question. And, on the NDir, this will be most welcome.

Best,
Jen

[MusicRVA]

No, only 1 is, the others are 5 long answer, 2 multiple choice, and 2 one line answers, where one of those is an option. So I guess one line answers would work.

[Jen]

Yeah, that would make sense.
:-)

[FedMedic]

At first I didn't get what you were talking about, then I went to check my profile questions and it hit me like a Mack truck ! BAM! I can't feature any of my profile questions either and for the same reason as yours! LOL! Oh well, at least we have the upgraded grid view of our members and the site map right? Can't hit it on the nail every time and the latest roll outs have been a tad above outstanding!! Keep up the great work Ning!
Cheers!

[Melissa B]

I was just looking at this feature, too. I'm always going to display the location and was hoping to be able to feature at least 2 items. Is this going to be possible?

[Evan]

Hey Melissa!

At the moment, you can only feature one question. We'll definitely look at expanding this to multiple questions, but it presents a myriad of product problems that we weren't yet ready to tackle.

/Evan
Ning Product Manager