Introducing New Sign-up Options

[Phil McCluskey]

Our Product Roadmap this year is rolling along smoothly. Today, we're happy to be releasing another project that we think will be very useful: a whole bunch of new sign-up and sign-in options. Let's get right to it.

Let Members Join with LinkedIn and Windows Live

We've heard a lot of requests from Network Creators who want additional sign-up/sign-in options. You'll be happy to hear that Social Sign In now includes both LinkedIn and Windows Live, which will be great news for business-focused networks and many international networks (e.g., Windows Live is huge in Brazil). The set-up for these will be very similar to Facebook and Twitter options; as the Network Creator, you'll need to create an app for this purpose by entering your own LinkedIn or WindowsLive credentials.

Ready to create yours? Here are the Help Center articles for LinkedIn and for Windows Live.

Sign-up redirection

Want to send new members somewhere besides the Main Page — where they currently land after signing up? This is another request we've heard over time — to be able to redirect members to their own profile page or to a very specific page that a Network Creator has created to serve as a welcome landing page. Now, Ning Plus and Pro Network Creators have the option to send new members to either the Main Page, their own profile page (MyPage), or a custom URL.

This custom URL can be an external URL if you need to integrate your network with another web property. For example, Pro networks may want to send new members to an external web application that makes use of the Ning API to retrieve that new member's information and register them before sending them back to the network.

We hope this will give you a few added options for customization of your new-member experience. Check out this Help Center article about these new redirection options for all the details.

Mix, match or remove sign-up / sign-in

You will now see that your options for sign up and sign in are split, and that "native" network sign in and sign up are included as options. This will allow you to turn off specific services for new members while allowing existing members to continue to sign in to the network, or to do things like limit all new members to Facebook or LinkedIn if it better matches your network's theme and aims, or if you'd like your members to be a little less anonymous than they otherwise could be.

There's an additional option here, one that won't appeal to most Network Creators but that can be powerful for sites that are, for example, less about socializing and more about publishing. That option is to completely remove all sign-ups. If you make this choice, all invite options will be removed and no new members will be able to sign up. This might be an attractive choice if your network is focused on publishing, for example, and not social networking.

Want the full skinny on this new sign-up/sign-in split? Read all about it in this Help Center article.

[Ali Meehan]

Be warned... if you change the sign-up redirection page you lose the tools to change it back!  I was just told by the help desk that

"This option goes away once you turn on member moderation. We're looking into making some changes so that this is more clear. To disable member moderation to get the sign up controls back, click "Controls" under Members on your network's Dashboard, uncheck the box to approve new members and click "Save."

I have always had member moderation on because I want to approve each Member before they join.  This work around certainly doesn't work for me and should have been made clear when this modification was rolled out :(

[Phil McCluskey]

Hi Ali,

The redirection controls don't apply to networks that are using member moderation, so any settings you had made there would not have been applied. We recently removed the controls for networks using member moderation to avoid confusion.

Thanks,
Phil 

[Ali Meehan]

Thanks Phil - would have been good to know that at the beginning ;)

Ali

[Phil McCluskey]

For sure; apologies for the confusion :-)

[Pat Howlett]

Phil, Why does one have to give up moderating members in order to redirect them after signup?

Sure wish this had been made a part of the original announcement as it's something I had been waiting for in order to launch some paid membership options. 

[kopper]

It's surprising to me that ANY networks would not have member moderation turned on. Every day I have to decline membership to (obvious) spam accounts. So this redirection control is worthless, as far as I'm concerned.

Just my two cents.

[Eric Suesz]

Hello, Ali! To be clear: 

You do NOT lose the ability to change this back.  

If you enable member moderation, sign-up redirection is disabled. If member moderation is not enabled, sign-up redirection is available. Basically, you can't use member moderation and sign-up redirection together. I'm hopeful we can make this more clear directly in the interface to avoid confusion. 

To be clear, again: You can CHANGE THIS DETAIL AT ANY TIME.

[Dr. Sohiniben Shukla]

Dear Phil,

Good decision....

Thanks....

Sohiniben.

[Dr. Sohiniben Shukla]

Dear Phil,

As I am not much interested in any Business ...I joined Linkedin but so not much useful for me...

Dr. Sohiniben Shukla.

[Ruthie Pople]

Excellent! Social media is everywhere and if we want to keep our competitive edge we need to be the trendsetter in getting as many social networks that we are able to to sign up directly.  - Ruthie Pople

[Alexander]

Whats with these links in your post?

LinkedIn

http://www.ning.com/help/cgi-bin/ning.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p...

Windows Live

http://www.ning.com/help/cgi-bin/ning.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p...

this Help Center article

http://www.ning.com/help/cgi-bin/ning.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p...

[Eric Suesz]

Looks like some bad links. We'll fix 'em up. Thanks!