Ok, maybe I'm an idiot...

[Jerry White]

but how does one search ning for networks of interest? At ning.com, there is no search box to search the system for networks. Am I up too late for an old man or is there really no way to search the system using keywords.

[Jerry White]

Didn't there used to be a search on the ning.com home page?

[Jerry White]

Only if it's '50s and '60s and blaring from the radio of an antique, classic or custom car or bike :)
www.cruiseinpix.com

[Jerry White]

Thanks Russell; I love car shows and so it was a natural. Not much happening during the winter but during the summer, I normally hit at least one a week and then share the show via photographs with others. The original purpose of the site was to showcase my car art and hopefully sell a few items to supplement my SS.

And Bob, I DEFINITELY have to agree with that.

[Garfield Creator]

At first I was like Uh oh shameless self promotion :-) then I check out the site and I was like "Wow, this guy knows that he is doing." Just viewing your site is an education. Nice work on the Member Search. I concur Great work!

[Vince]

Maybe for now, go to google search and add to your search this text "site:ning.com"

so, if searching for pets, use this:

pets site:ning.com

[Jerry White]

Thanks Vince, I'll give that a try.

[Jen]

Good grief, I love how you think. I would have never thought to do this - - and I'm the goog-ling queen, LOL. Not that I would use it, seriously. But, a lot of members on the NingDir will love this. Hope you don't mind me sharing. Truth is, this will probably produce betters results than any Search, that even Ning could install.

Thanks for sharing,
Jen

[Kate Lennon]

Some of us really, really, really don't want there to be a way to search for other Ning networks, because some of us got really sick of being spammed and having our members poached.
And some of us didn't sign up to be part of a network of networks.

[Jerry White]

I'm not sure I understand the reasoning. But that's because I have a very narrow niche site. (www.hinsonroots.org). I'm never spammed and really don't care if my members join other sites. I'm aware that I'll never earn any money from the site so numbers are not as important to me as content.

[Vince]

(Kate) Ask ning for webdav access. Then, put a robot.txt file in there to stop all search engines from indexing your site. Google will respect it. If that cant happen, then maybe you can try this code in Google box:

<script>x$("head").append(\'<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">\')</script>

What that does is adds META TAG code to your header (dynamically) and tells search engines not to index your site page and not to follow any other pages.

It "might" work (90% chance) because its appended at the end, but needs testing.

[Travis]

Ummm... Vince... (and anyone else wanting to edit the robots.txt file):

There's a much easier way to do this: Ning provides you with the tool to edit the robots.txt file-- see the help doc for the robot.txt feature for more info. No need for scripting or webdav access. :)

However, that said, Kate isn't wanting Google to not index her site, she's just wants her network to not be found in a search for networks on Ning's site. There's a huge distinction between the two. ;-)

[Vince]

Nice one