New Site & Pages options for Ning 3.0 Networks

[Alex]

 

Since launching Ning 3.0, we've been heads down killing bugs and sneaking out minor yet important improvements. We now have a big update that will give you even more power and flexibility on your networks. The options we released today give you the ability to customize feature instances and run ads (or any HTML) on every page in your network's header and footer.

Adding content to Feature Instances

Head to the Site & Pages page in your network's Dashboard. Click on a Feature Instance page (Photos, Blog, Members, Forum or Social Channel) and you'll notice the 'Add Content' button is now present.

You can now add existing content to a feature instance, just like you are able to do on Custom Pages.

New layout options for Feature Instance pages

To increase flexibility with this new functionality, we've also added a couple of column layouts to the Feature Instance pages. In addition to a single column, you can now choose a 2-column or 3-column layout.

What's that? You want to change the width of the right hand column? Don't worry—we thought of that, too. If you choose one of the 2-column layouts, the sidebar size drop-down will appear: 

Important note: Adding content or applying a layout to a feature instance will also add the content or layout to detail pages of that feature, but not to the feature's content creation or edit pages. For example, content added to a blog instance will show on the Featured Blogs page and individual blog posts, but it won't show up when you're drafting a new blog post.

 

Below Header and Above Footer HTML Boxes

On both Custom and feature instance page types, you will now see two new fields: Below Header HTML Box and Above Footer HTML Box. Here you can enter text, HTML or Javascript (perfect for leaderboard ads!).

 

 

For each of these boxes, you can click the "default below header/above footer HTML" link, which will present you with a lightbox where you can enter code that will run on every page that has the box checked. This option is designed for those of you who want to run leaderboard ads on all of the pages of your network without having to re-enter it on each page. It's also useful if you want to get the word out about a contest and have a sweet banner that needs to be seen on every page. Either way, you're covered.

If you don't want what you've entered in the default below header or above footer box to display on certain pages, simply uncheck the checkbox on those pages.

 

 

Bonus!

Finally, we snuck in fixes for some of the bugs on our Known Issues page:

• Network Like doesn't "stick" for photos
• Photos don't rotate in the correct direction
• Birthdays display one day earlier than actual birthday
• Unfeaturing photos doesn't remove "Featured Photos" category

We'll continue to smash bugs and release updates to Ning 3.0, so stay tuned!

[SweetPotato]

Is there any reason why the Ad/HTML boxes below header and above footer won't run jQuery script.

Basic script doesn't run, e.g

<script>

x$(document).ready(function() {

      alert("document ready occurred!");

});

</script>

<script>

x$(window).load(function() {

      alert("window load occurred!");

});</script>

Any ideas?

SP

[Allison Leahy]

Hrrrm, tested this out with a few different scripts, and have confirmed that this is a bug. It does appear something is preventing jQuery from loading properly in the ad boxes. The bug has been filed for our engineers to resolve. Thanks for finding it!

[SweetPotato]

Can you also try this out with header area code in custom code. A while back I had a similar issue.
Thanks

[Phil McCluskey]

Hi SP,

You need to wrap it in xg.addOnRequire() in order to make sure our copy of jQuery has been loaded, like this:

<script>
xg.addOnRequire(function () {
  x$(document).ready(function() {
  alert("document ready occurred!");
  })
});
</script>

[SweetPotato]

Thanks Phil, I'll try that.
SP

[SweetPotato]

Phil, just out of interest, why is this required for these boxes but not the bottom of page code in custom code?
SP

[Phil McCluskey]

Hi SP,

I suspect that at that point in the flow it's much more likely that jQuery has loaded, so it typically works, but it would be best practice to wrap that code in  addOnRequire() as well.

[SweetPotato]

Thanks Phil, I've learnt something new there. Cheers!
SP

[SweetPotato]

Thanks Alison, I thought I was going mad, hence the trying of two methods. Hopefully this can get fixed very soon :-)
SP

[mobile.ning.com]

On regular Post at level of Forum I have notice that the LinkedIn Button does not rendered either. It is a small script in javascript. 

Just for you to know.