Merging NING websites

[David Price]

I've read and was likewise shocked when the news came out about the end of Free Services. I run a website for writers that has been a destination for writers around the world for about 2 years now. In that time I've also helped develope other writer related websites on NING.

 

To be sure NING wants to keep as many people coming to their sites as possible. Losing traffic helps no one. These upcoming changes will surely close the doors for many of those sites so I have posed this question to those who might know.....

 

Can members of a closing site transfer their membership to a similiar NING site without being forced to create another account? 

 

and if that isn't possible.........

 

Can two exisiting NING websites merge into one under a new name?

 

Someone with the answer to these question please contact me.

 

Best regards

 

Dave

[Phil McCluskey]

No, the members aren't involved at all; apart from assigning them new passwords and communicating that, the process can be transparent for them. As the NC you get a series of files that contain all of the data from the network. What you move over is completely up to you (perhaps you only want to move all of the photos for example). When I say that member ownership is intact, I mean that you can easily determine that Photo A and Forum Post B were created by User XYZ, so when you move the content onto a new platform, you can recreate items with the correct attribution for the author, creation date, last updated date etc, presuming the platform supports that.

[Phil McCluskey]

So you are saying the Creator get's to take a members information, in tact, transfer the member and his data to the new site, create a password (assuming the platform allows) for the member, and whether or not the member signs up, his data is there on the site?

Yes.

Of course, that doesn't work on Ning since you don't allow the creator to create a password.

Well, technically the password is unnecessary, since the members already all have an account on Ning; they would just need to sign into the new network with their existing credentials.

In terms of David's original question about merging networks, I'm not sure how technically feasible that is, but it's certainly something that we'll take a look at.

Thanks,
Phil

[David Price]

But aren't you talking about migrating data from one site to a brand new site? If so would this exclude two NING sites from "blending" if you will?

[Phil McCluskey]

Hi David, as I said above in response to Bob, I'm not sure how feasible that might be, but it's something we'll look at.

Thanks,
Phil

[Kris]

We would like to know if this is possible to has we would like to merge our regional sites to one if anything just the member data but ideally member data and photos