UPDATE: Addressing Sign-in/Sign-up Issues

[Sridatta Viswanath]

As I had posted a month ago, my team is hard at work completing the back-end development for Custom Network IDs, which will eliminate a member sign-in/sign-up issue, and also implementing Facebook sign-in.  We have made significant progress on both projects, but for technical reasons I’ll elaborate on below, we will not complete everything by end of October as I had noted in the previous post.  

 

We have entered the beta testing period for the Facebook sign-in project.  We have invited a small number of beta Ning Networks to enable members to sign-up and sign-in with Facebook, Yahoo, and Google.  If we don't uncover any issues, we plan to release this feature during the week of Nov 8th.

 

We have made significant progress with the Custom Network ID project, but the project is more complex than we had originally anticipated.  This project is a fundamental shift in the way user credentials and data are stored in the Ning Platform.  We have a number of features such as email notifications, friending, etc that are being updated to support local Custom Network IDs. As we unwound the issues and addressed them, we also uncovered edge cases that we plan to address to make it all work well.  We now have a much better understanding of the complexity involved. We are planning to enter a testing period in 2 weeks and finish end-to-end testing in 3 weeks.  Due to the complexity involved, we will continue to be cautious and not rush with the changes in order to avoid any disruption to your networks.  If everything goes well, we hope to release it by first half of December. 

 

Thank you for your patience with both of these projects.  I hope you appreciate the careful development approach my team is following. I will publish a date as we get closer to end of our testing for custom ID project.

 

[Eric Suesz]

Hi, Barbara. If you're having a specific issue, please submit a ticket from your Support link, and we'll try to help. One thing to note is that sign-in issues can have multiple reasons behind them. So it may not be one bug. I would advise members to reset their password as a first step. Also note that we'll be releasing additional sign-up options later this week, so your members could instead use their Facebook  or Google or Yahoo account to sign up. 

[Barnmice]

They have tried re-setting their passwords, but the site seems to be rejecting their email addresses. I have had some members re-join with a different email address and that works fine.

I have sent you two private messages.

Thank you.

[Ken Mawbey]

Hi Sridatta

Thanks for this update - I have a few queries.

One of the great features of Ning is that if you are friends with someone on one network, you are automatically a friend with them on whatever Ning networks you are both members on. Can you confirm whether this feature will be retained or lost when the December changes are made. If it is lost, are existing friend connections only retained on sites that the requests were made.

Is the Ning Id redundant after the change. Ning apps like our own app, Like2Link, currently use the Ning ID to uniquely identify users. Although this can be changed to use the email, it doesn't then allow users to have different emails across sites eg business / personal.

Does the Facebook login feature have an effect on Ning Id and Ning Opensocial Apps. JenSocial is a beta site, and it appears that Ning apps, including Like2Link do not currently run on the site. I know they've raised a ticket for this over the weekend. Please could you establish is this issue is caused by the change, prior to launching the feature.

Thanks, Ken

[Malcolm James]

I have had several new members who have given up on joining my site in frustration over this matter that I was unaware of. Even at this moment I still have this proble. I find that trying to report an issue on this Ning is terribly difficult. My own administator cannot report any issues as the site is in my name. Please ASAP. Thank you.

[Spring Fricks]

nyone else lost their Dashboard?  I also no longer have any edit buttons and a good portion of content is missing from the front page.

 

I get this error on the front page where content is supposed to be:Fatal error: Call to a member function raw() on a non-object in/apps/socialnetworkmain/widgets/profiles/lib/helpers/Profiles_AbstractFriendRequestUpdater.phpon line 61

 

I get this when I click on "Manage My Network": Fatal error: Call to a member function save() on a non-object in /apps/socialnetworkmain/widgets/index/controllers/DashboardController.php on line 239

 

Are these errors part of the update??

[Phil McCluskey]

Hi Spring,

 

This error is specific to your network and it looks like it's specific to your account; your members shouldn't be seeing any problems.  You will need to create a help desk ticket if you haven't yet so that we can investigate; let us know if you're having trouble doing that.

 

Thanks,

Phil

[Spring Fricks]

Phil,

 

We have members reporting that they cannot log on, so they are having a problem.

 

Also, since we didn't change any code from before if was working to now, what would have caused our specific network to no longer function?

 

I have created a help ticket, but haven't heard anything yet.  Last time we had an issue, it took Ning over 2 months to fix the problem they created.  I hope it doesn't take that long this time.

[Spring Fricks]

Also, I can't even "Sign out" to test signing in as a different member.  Clicking "Sign Out" takes me no where.

[Spring Fricks]

Here is a chat log from the front page.  People ARE having problems logging in.  Can you look at this some more?

 

Jess: I'm also having problems with logging in...It says I don't have an account... 1:05 am Dec 4, 2010 # 

DLynne: I've sent a message to Ning Help Center, but I sure hope someone can get Spring to email me if I can't get on soon. 9:59 pm Dec 3, 2010 # 

DLynne: Marilyn are yu there? 9:49 pm Dec 3, 2010 # 

 

DLynne: Hey can someone help me? I need to contact Spring! I've been closed out of CWTR and can't get back in! My email: [mail] Help me! 9:47 pm Dec 3, 2010 #

 

[Phil McCluskey]

Hi Spring,

 

I saw those and I did check the member who provided their email address there, and they don't have an account on your network.  I'm wondering if they are using the wrong email address to try to sign in.

 

Thanks,

Phil

[Spring Fricks]

We are seeing this issue with multiple people, not just one person not being able to sign in. What I copied above was just what was showing up in a chat box on the front page.  We've had 4 people, that are long term (several years) members email us that are not able to sign in.  I doubt very seriously that they have forgotten their email address.  This doesn't include the people that try to sign in and just can't and then not mention it.  

 

Also, I tried to set up a test member a few hours ago, and have not received the email telling me I have a new member to approve.  

 

All of these issues do not point to a random member forgetting a password.  

 

Please help me find out what the problem is so that I can get it fixed for our members

[Spring Fricks]

Phil,

 

Anything new on this?  I haven't heard from anyone at Ning in a while.

 

Thanks