Mobile Version Upsetting More Members Each Month

Hi Ning,

First off, thanks for the wonderful platform that you have built and in which I have enjoyed for almost 4 years. Ok, on to the post...

My site is closing in on 5,000 members and a good chunk of them visit the site via their mobile devices. Right now, the default is for the mobile version is: Activity | My Page | Members

Our site is a news site, so without an option to get the news on their device, they email, chat and call me - weekly. We just had 4 deaths (3 homicides and suicide) in our quaint little town and we were one of the lead stories picked up by international news agencies...lots of traffic from mobile devices meant more frustrated users - they couldn't find the news.

All we need is the ability to choose the mobile navigational options. In my case, the default would be News (blog list: http://www.ecoronado.com/profiles/blog/list). The work-around is to have them bookmark the 'News/blog list' page on their device or scroll down for the 'desktop version' but most never get that far and just click away to another web destination.

My ask is that you provide NC the option to either pick and choose the categories and what the default is from their control panel. I know that this feature might be tied to all Ning sites, but I'm very hopeful (fingers-crossed) that you can give us more control over our individual sites.

Mobile is huge and getting bigger each week. Any feedback on this request per the roadmap would be great.

In related news, I would pay for Ning to allow me to develop an iPhone/Android app that members could download for free with a lot more control and usability.

Thanks for listing Ning.

Tags: mobile

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Permalink Reply by Eric Suesz on January 5, 2012 at 2:54pm

You'll be very happy to hear that our mobile project (/m) is coming along nicely. What I've seen so far is very impressive to me (I'm biased, but I was blown away by the prototype). I hope we'll be able to share more soon about what it will look like. You'll have some options about what is displayed when people land on it, and you'll have a completely different way to navigate than what you currently see.

We are going to do a roadmap update, and I'm hopeful we'll be able to roll out the mobile beta in the same way we did with the new version of chat -- with lots of looks and time to try it out and provide feedback in a dedicated group before it's completed.

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Permalink Reply by eCoronado.com on January 5, 2012 at 3:03pm

Great....thanks Eric for the quick reply!

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Permalink Reply by Emmanuel Ace on January 5, 2012 at 4:58pm

Coolio:)

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Permalink Reply by Writer Chick {Diane} on January 6, 2012 at 1:35pm

When you say "mobile" are you just talking about iPhones and Androids?

Will this project help improve the way our sites operate (and look) on iPads and web accessible e-readers, too?

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Permalink Reply by Phil McCluskey on January 6, 2012 at 2:38pm

Hi Diane,

Primarily iPhones and Androids, yes; they make up almost 95% of our mobile traffic. But other smartphones will see this version as well. iPads will continue to be served the regular version of the network; I'm not sure about specific browsers in e-readers at this point.

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Permalink Reply by Chloe Prince on January 10, 2012 at 12:53am

Not serving a different version for iPads, IMO, is missing the boat. I work in the industry, and the number one device flying off the shelf is iPad and other smart tablets.

One of the most frustrating things about NING was that it uses FLASH for somethings, which APPLE and Adobe are not on speaking terms still.

I seen that the new chat feature is in HTML5, which is awesome. I am hoping that in the /m version you please please please remove all flash usage and make it all HTML5, for everything new coming out.

I can't imagine that it would be that much more to have native iPad support.

Last question: Is this going to be another feature that is a pay service, even if you have a pro account. The pay feature was such a disappointment - something that was promised to us for a long time, and then it became something yanked away and made to pay for.

Is this going to be the same?