Social Site Manager
Dashboard
Your Ning Network’s Dashboard provides at-a-glance statistics about your Ning Network. It highlights recent announcements, showcases top content and is your gateway to customizing all of your Ning Network’s features.
The Dashboard breaks out various types of content into graphs. The Members section gives you a snapshot of information about members who have recently joined your Ning Network. It includes a table which shows members awaiting approval and members who have joined in the past 10 days.
You’ll also see graphs for Blog Posts, Photos, and Discussions with content pending approval and content added in the last 10 days. Under Ning Announcements, you’ll find messages from Ning Team about upcoming features, company updates, and other communications.
General Settings
Your Ning Network’s general Settings allows you to change site name, community description, add Google Analytics, Network Timezone, Favicons or set Network Icon.
Activity Feed Settings
The Latest Activity feature is a stream of up-to-the-minute activity across a Ning Network. It shows off what’s happening on your Ning Network, from new photos that have been uploaded to new friendships that have been confirmed.
Domain Mapping
To use your own domain, you’ll need to purchase a domain name from GoDaddy, Yahoo Domains, Register.com etc. After purchasing a custom domain, you’ll want to set up the appropriate DNS records on your domain registrar or host’s website.
The basic thing to know about domain mapping is that you will be “pointing” your custom domain toward Ning’s servers. Once you’ve pointed your custom domain to our IP address (208.82.16.68), anyone who types in or clicks on your custom domain will be seamlessly presented with your Ning site in their browser. Voilà!… whateveryouwant.com.
Tabs and Pages
The Site & Pages Social Site Builder is the place to go to build your network. From here, you can add features such as forums and blogs for your members to add content to. You can also determine who can add content to, and who can view content in, a particular feature page you create here.
You can create a Blog, Custom, Forum, Member, Photos, Social Channel or URL page. You can create as many pages of each type as you’d like, with up to 500 custom URLs. This is also where to go to organize your navigation menu’s structure. Move a tab to a different location by clicking on it and dragging it into the desired position.
The placement will be saved automatically. Creating sub-tabs can be done by placing the tab beneath the desired top-level tab and then checking the box next to “Make this a sub-tab”. Be sure to save your changes when you’re done!
Custom Code
You can use these boxes to add any JavaScript or HTML code to your Ning Network. The most common use of these boxes is for adding your own web analytics software such as Google Analytics
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Support
If you are the Network Creator or an administrator of a Ning Network, you can contact us without having to leave your network
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Design Studio
You can use the Design Studio to customize your network’s appearance. Select a theme, insert your header or background image, or choose a color scheme, all at the click of a button. You can see a preview of your changes in real time on the network below.
Themes
The “All” tab includes growing collection of themes that can be applied to your network. “History” includes your last published themes which you can revert back to if need be.
Background
Choose from one of our 1400 high-resolution background images for your network, or upload your own, to act as the backdrop for your network
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Name/Logo; Navigation; Background; Account Bar;
This feature gives you an easy way to create an elegant header. Upload a logo or background image, drag each component around, and see it all live previewed below.
Page (Modules; Buttons; Effects)
Change the default colors of the text and background of tabs and subtabs. Select from a variety of vibrant color palettes to find the one that suits you!
This section allows you to make changes for heading, body and navigation font as well as setting your paragraph spacing. Once you’ve made your design changes and like the way it looks hit “Publish” to put them into effect.
You can always hit “Cancel” to exit the Design Studio without saving.
Members Management
Members
As a network creator or admin, you can promote, suspend, and remove members who have joined. You can also promote members to administrators to help you manage the network.
Broadcast message
As a Network Creator or an Administrator, you can send a Broadcast Message to all members of your Ning Network or to members of a member category, if you’ve created categories and assigned members to them.
To get started, navigate to the Member Management tab and clicking the “Broadcast Message” link. This is a great way to update members about your Ning Network or promote new features and content.
Settings
Set up member-to-member messaging, set default profile or cover photo and control spam prevention by requiring new members to verify their email address or filling out a captcha.
SignUp / SignIn
With the Social Sign-In feature you can allow your members to sign up and sign in to your Ning Network using popular services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Yahoo!, and Windows Live.
You can also choose whether you’d like to use Ning’s native sign up and sign in tools, or if you’d prefer to only allow members to access your network with their existing third-party credentials.
Invitation Settings
Once you’ve posted some content, invite your first members. The best people to invite are those you already know. Directly invite people your friends from Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, or other channels. You can do this automatically by going to your Member Management area, then click "Invite More People.”
You can also invite people to join your Ning Network by manually typing in their email addresses, or you can import your contacts from an address book stored with your email provider or on your computer, Gmail or Yahoo. You can also share an invitation link in an email or on a website.
Approving Content
In addition to moderating membership on your network, you can also choose to approve Photos, Videos, and Discussions before they are posted on your Ning Network. Head to your dashboard and click on the “Site & Pages” tab.
Then, select your Photos, Videos or Discussion page to edit the page’s settings. For each page’s settings, respectively, check the “Approve content before it appears” box, and then click “Save” at the bottom of each page.
Add content
Forums
Let’s start by initiating a few interesting discussions in your Forum. The best discussions ask a question. They prompt people to respond. If you’re not sure what to write, search Twitter to see what people are talking about in your topic. Ask a few questions based upon this.
Blogs
Ning 3.0 gives you plenty of options to express yourself in blogs. Besides entering text, you can upload a lead photo to give your visitors a nice visual summary of what’s inside the rest of your post. In the main body of the post, you have the option to add more images, attachments, and formatted text—or switch to HTML mode and paste the code in directly if you’re composing in an external HTML editor. HTML mode is also where you can add embed codes for photo slideshows, videos, and music.
Photos
The Ning 3 photo uploader allows you to add multiple photos at a time. The following formats are supported: .jpg, .png and .gif. Once you upload the photo, you can add a title and caption. You’ll also be able to delete, rotate and apply tags if you’d like. By default, we’ll generate a link for your new photos, but you will have the option to change the URL to something else.
Videos
You can easily embed a video from another web source into your network. The Videos feature on your Ning Network allows you to upload videos and share them across the web. You can use the bulk media uploader to add up to 30 videos at a time to your profile page or embed videos from popular video services like YouTube and Vimeo.
Events
Events are a great way for members to connect, whether in person or virtually, at a designated time and place. Use the Events feature to let your members know about upcoming meet-ups, concerts, parties, conferences, or gatherings related to your network. You can invite anyone to an event, even people who haven’t yet joined your network.
Groups Hub
Groups are a great way to increase member engagement and enable members to find other members with similar interests. Groups are also a powerful solution for Network Creators with a business model or community concept based on multiple sub-groups of members.
Each group operates almost as a full-featured network or supergroup. You can add multiple instances of features like Blogs, Forums or Photos to each group.
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