Current status of the Ning Platform is always available on the Ning Status Blog.

Make Ning Great Again!!!

Here's my goal with this post. To show you the many things holding back v3.0 from being alright to Great. Now this is from a developers perceptive, so if i go on a future proofing rant don't mind me.

Intro/Rant
Lets start with me. I've used Ning starting back in 08 when I was only 12yrs old (Currently 21). Now this is something that MUST be stated. Back then we used the Developer's community until Creators was pushed to the forefront. During those times we still had many DEVELOPERS on the platform. Problem with today Ning is you've forced all your developers out. The only option we have to work with is JS... This was alright in 2010. But in 2013 when you guys announced 3.0 and still forced people to use JS as the ONLY way to make an interactive uqnie platform was crazy. Hence why my team had to leave and just build our own platform. Looking at the current status of Ning you've still failed to see the importance of allowing developers access to PHP. In 2017 going into 2018 we have people STILL talking about injecting codes via Jquery into their websites... We still have to HACK ning to develop complex features (which are still being injected via you know the name already).

OMG Loading speeds O_O!!!

I took some time to view the current 3.0 sites created by users here and man theses sites are still slow... because of the same old 2010 problem. Focusing users to use JS to make their sites more complex. Ning went from a Wordpress competitor to a glorified Wiki.com rival.More options to make our platforms unique is key. No one wants to walk around looking the same. Believe me, CSS only goes so far.

My platform at the time www.zincview.com ( I'll just say this, we were easily the most customized Ning site. Having tons of custom features built into the platform rather it was a Slider with an off site CMS (Content Mangagemnnt System). Point system ,Custom Notifications, Custom content activity feed, and more. Guess what! Load Speed became a problem. Now this was old times so the minimalist styles weren't fully standard, but pretty much closing in. Now what's worst than Loading speed? Not being able to customize the site. ^ After all of that work we still were limited to what our platform was capable of. We couldn't do anything other than EDIT what was already there.

So this begs the question if Ning doesn't want to allow PHP edits nor go open source then who's the platform for? Oh it's for for the freelancer who wants to quickly put up a platform for a cilent. No can't scale the project for cilents nor do any real customizing.(I mean look at that nasty site  "Thisis50" that used to be a good designed website at on point). Or is Ning for the small guys to jump in and work on things right? Yet your price is pretty high for what they need. Also why go here when there's other companies that do the same thing but actually updates and manages the platform faster and better. If you're trying to help people grow their business shouldn't you help them load their site faster? Oh they can't do that with the loads of JS. They MUST now paste into their website just to add a few images or text onto their website. Your top competitors allow PHP edits btw. 

Don't worry rant is done. Here's some things I've seen on my testing of v3.0.

Improvements

Groups: Looks like groups need some work Same old comments are here for some reason. That doesn't promote social interaction. If anything a status system would be better. Hell even allowing for Latest activities would be nice. Communities with thousands of users can't handle simple static Comments. We need dynamic stuff. (Or do your communities only consist of small user bases less than 100 people?) Groups  are communities within a much larger platform. Therefore you need to give them the right tools to build a great community. Notice how I said TOOL and not feature. Lets build things that they need to make their mini platform standout and pop within their network. 

  • Status System + Latest Activities (Some of us have really active communities)
  • Wiki (Allowing communities to build wiki's and guides for what ever reason) 
  • Monetization features: Allowing for CSS design would be interesting or some type of background uploader (This can be set as a premium feature for users allowing creators to make money off of that) You could actually use Text boxes with a Css link code in the past; and actually have your entire group display it's own custom CSS separate from the site.

Forums: You don't have categories for some reason... well you do but you don't really display them with descriptions so you can explain to new users what categories are for. You can set this all up with Jquery or even better using the HTML text boxes. But why do we need to do that? Just code one out. Speaking of categories... Do you know how many community forums have announcements or site news on the forums where only authorized personnel can create. We no longer have this in 3.0 forums. Fix that. No reason for us not to be able to do what many would require mandatory.

Now about this html box. Why does it travel to all forum post pages and not just the main forum page? Well we would like the option to simply display it only on the main forum page or on forum thread pages. If you can't do that then there's no point in having the HTML boxes, when Jquery can handle just that fine.

btw

Why are categories displayed on top right next to the All Discussion link? I mean shouldn't it be displayed on the side or something. This can all be fixed with a little coding, but shouldn't you guys have this looking decent by default. Descriptions are better than just names. Forums are worst than 2.0 forums. And 2.0 forums where bad already.

Chat: Allowing creators to remove or close the main group section off would be nice. As in having 40 people in one chat would be crazy ( Not sure of the limits of the current chat, but in the past i've had up to 50 people posting in one chat on here and that was nuts). Allow for a facebook like method and just display friends.

Blogs: Blogs aren't forum post. FIX IT. You pretty much just copied the same codes for both of them, and slapped on a worst main blog page with minimum detail and information.

I'll come back to work on this post later until then cache and reload.

You need to be a member of Ning Creators Social Network to add comments!

Join Ning Creators Social Network

Votes: 0
Email me when people reply –

Replies

  • Hi there!

    Thanks for the ideas, and constructive criticism. I'll create several suggestions based on your post in our task tracking system. Regarding the forum, if you wish to grant the ability to post some specific information only to the certain group of members you can create the separate forum instance and choose the category of members who can contribute.

    Personally, I would love to see the ability to customize the network deeply with the injections of the PHP code (I would even start to learn it in that case :-)), hope our management think the same way.

    I'll be waiting to see your updates on this post.

    Best regards,

    Ning Team.

    • No problem. I've updated the group suggestions. I'll be working on the others later. But i feel like groups are much more important than any other feature if i'm being honest. 

      • Hi there!

        Thanks for the update. However, there is the possibility to create the custom page and the blog inside of the group, also you can add HTML boxes (which are the equivalent of the Text Boxes from 2.0).

        Regarding the categories, are you talking about the categories of the groups, or the categories in modules like forums, blogs etc created in teh group itself? If you have more categories that could be displayed at the top of the module there will be the button "More" clicking on which will present the full list of categories.

        Regarding the wiki, are you talking about it like the list of articles which are cross-linked? Or maybe you have meant something else?

        Added the suggestion to add the ability to use the design studio for the groups as well, and make it possible to activate this feature after the payment has been made, however you still may use CSS in HTML boxes to customize the group's appearance.

        Best regards,

        Ning Team.

        •  However, there is the possibility to create the custom page and the blog inside of the group, also you can add HTML boxes (which are the equivalent of the Text Boxes from 2.0).

          Great stuff .Didn't see that. Welp that takes care of like 2 or 3 points.  

          Regarding the categories, are you talking about the categories of the groups, or the categories in modules like forums, blogs etc created in the group itself? If you have more categories that could be displayed at the top of the module there will be the button "More" clicking on which will present the full list of categories.

          Once again you've surprised me. Typical Ning would of just loaded that stuff on a separate page if it got too long or just keep adding on. Yet another thing removed from my list. 

          Regarding the wiki, are you talking about it like the list of articles which are cross-linked? Or maybe you have meant something else?

          Was hoping we were on a roll, but it's alright. So I've never truly got what Article's were (just seems like blogs to me), but from what I'm seeing they aren't Wiki's. Granted you can turn anything into a static wiki page, but what makes a wiki is the fact users can edit each other pages.(If i'm missing something let me know). On top of that having them organized into their own custom subcategories would be nice as well. Saving users hours of work linking everything together.

          Added the suggestion to add the ability to use the design studio for the groups as well, and make it possible to activate this feature after the payment has been made, however you still may use CSS in HTML boxes to customize the group's appearance.

          Nice, but why don't you guys just allow the creators to block <link> or <style> tags?  Don't want to be blocking that stuff with JS...

          Overall so far thx and good job to the Ning team so far. PHP is just that one step I'm looking at to push a network to a higher unique level. 

          • Hi there!

            Just haven't thought regarding blocking tags, that's a wonderful idea, I'll create the suggestion in teh system and when it would be reviewed by the management I'll let you know, however, we already have the plan till the end of this year so I guess they will take a look only next year.

            Right now I see what you mean by the wiki, you know when you are working with the people there is always some place for misunderstanding so I have decided just to specify to make sure :-) I have posted teh suggestion to add such functionality, well we actually have almost teh same suggestion, maybe I'll merge them we will see. 

            And thanks a lot for your help!

            Best regards,

            Ning Team.

  • yes, to php please.

    • Hi there!

      I have added your vote to the suggestion regarding PHP custom code.

      Best regards,

      Ning Team.

  • This reply was deleted.
    • Hi Tim,

      Your vote has been added to the suggestion regarding the PHP custom code, regarding the other ones, you can check my reply to your comment under this post

      Best wishes,

      Ning Team.

      Overview of Q3 and Ning Q4 2017 plan.
      Better late than never - here is the product plan Q3 overview and Plans for Q4. As you might have noticed, all the promised features have been releas…
    • That'd be a good direction for Ning to take. Licensing their platform so we can just host them our selves. I wouldn't mind paying a few hundreds for that. 

This reply was deleted.
 

Some interesting articles related to community management, digital marketing etc. could be found in our digest. Don't hesitate to leave a feedback so we would know that we should continue :-)

Latest Activity

LEO Mobile App Builder updated their profile
Tuesday
Aase Lillian replied to Aase Lillian's discussion
Community - activity page
"Ok, thank you. Please send me details as I have no idea on how to do it. "
Mar 19
Aase Lillian and ⚡JFarrow⌁ are now friends
NC for Hire
Mar 19
⚡JFarrow⌁ updated their profile photo
Mar 18
⚡JFarrow⌁ replied to Aase Lillian's discussion
Community - activity page
"Yes you can add emojis to your community pretty much anywhere you like.
If you need some help…"
Mar 18
Aase Lillian updated their profile
Mar 18
Aase Lillian posted a discussion
Hi all. Is it possible to add emojis to the community? I also wish the activity page to include…
Mar 18
Donna MacShoe updated their profile photo
Mar 6
Adul Rodri is now friends with ANGE.L LUAR and Margarida Maria Madruga
Feb 14
Shweta Sharma updated their profile
Jan 26
catherine martin updated their profile
Jan 16
Donna MacShoe updated their profile photo
Jan 15
More…

Meanwhile, you can check our social media channels