News/Updates

• The Ningbar has been updated with notifications for messages, OpenSocial application alerts and new friend requests.
• On profile pages, we are now showing five rows of friends instead of two.
• HTML links will now be supported in your message center. HTML is still not available in broadcast messages in order to prevent the potential for spam, but we are still looking for ways to enable HTML in broadcast messages.
• On the "Share" page, Network Creators and Admins will have the option to share something with all members of our network.

• Prospective members who have signed up to join a network and are awaiting approval will be able to revoke their request.

• "Add as Friend" and "Send a Message" options will be displayed in more places, such as beneath the title of a photo in the Photos section.

• Outstanding group invitations for members will be shown in the right column.
• When Network Creators or Admins receive a message from banned member, it will now include the banned member's email address.
• Joining an invitation-only group is now simpler. Group Admins can approve members immediately after they request an invitation.
• Network Creators and Admins can approve a pending group/video/photo directly from the group/video/photo's page.[if using approval method
• On the Main page of our network, the "Random Order" checkbox for "slideshow" mode on the photos will be replaced with a "Random" option in the "From:" options.
• Trying to change a theme when you have custom CSS will generate a warning message.

• You can now use the "Quick Add" easter egg to add videos from any network on our site. [This is incredible, just enter the address if there's no embed code and it will get it for you]. See below for information on this.
• Clicking on a blog comment in the Latest Activity feed will bring you directly to that comment, not the top of the blog post's page.
• We're also making a number of very minor improvements to handle very long names and titles across our network.

While you anxiously await tonight's Chat feature updates, I thought I'd point out a hidden feature of our recent "Quick Add" release.

As you can see above, it's easy to bring in videos from an external service using Quick Add's "Add a Video" option, but if you simply paste in the URL (not even the actual embed code) to a YouTube clip that allows embedding, the video will be added to your video post along with its title and description.

Give it a shot by pasting this example URL into the "Add a Video" popup via Quick Add:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMbGFWz9who

Happy faster YouTube/Video embedding!

Scan below for other news.


Hi all! We’re excited to announce our upcoming release, currently scheduled for Thursday, October 9 at 6 p.m. Pacific. This release will usher in full OpenSocial application support for all social networks. OpenSocial replaces and improves the “Gadgets” beta functionality and enables you and your members to add a variety of great new applications to your profile pages. This release isn't just about adding applications — it's about creating them, too. That's why we're completely revamping the Developer Network to highlight OpenSocial for application developers. With the new Developer Network, everyone will have the opportunity to create applications using the updated OpenSocial framework. We'll continue to post updates here and in Preview, so stay tuned as the release date nears! Downtime: We’ll be taking a quick, 30-minute downtime at 10:30 p.m. Pacific tomorrow night, Saturday, Sep. 27 to update your social network on Ning with our latest release. Initially, we didn’t think this release would require downtime, but, given its size, we want to add a quick maintenance window to ensure that is works as planned. We thought it would be better to hold off a day — to make sure your networks don't go offline without adequate warning. We appreciate your weekend flexibility and look forward to a great new release for your social network on Ning! Our next release is now slated for Saturday, Sep. 27 at 10:30 p.m. Pacific time. We've talked about this release already here, here, and here. In the last week, we've made a number of other changes, detailed here. Update: We're working on squashing a few final bugs and hoping to launch this release sometime around 8 p.m. Pacific time tonight. Also, we wanted to flag a few things for you: * There is currently a known issue with all "Sent" messages folders. If you view your sent messages, it will appear in the list as if you were the recipient on all your own sent messages. If you click through the message itself, however, everything will appear as normal — with your correct recipient. We hope to fix this bug tomorrow. * In this release, we are making some changes to member theming/appearance. In the past, members "My Settings," Blog and My Friends pages had the theme chosen by each member for their My Page. This resulted in an inconsistent and sometimes confusing experience, as traveling between a member's blog, your My Settings page and your network's main page could result in three different network themes. After this release, the only page that will display a member's theme is their My page itself. * At the moment, there is a bug with the count of discussions each member has participated in. When replies are deleted, they are not removed from the member's count. This bug is fixed in this release — but the number won't be updated for a member until they post a new discussion or reply. In some cases, a member's discussions count may drop significantly, so we wanted to make sure Network Creators are aware of this issue. In this release, you'll notice two major improvements to the way you and your members communicate:Update: With so many new, improved and modified features coming, we are going to take another week to do further testing and polish it up. As a result, this release is now tentatively scheduled to take place on Thursday, Sep. 25. This will allow us to tackle outstanding issues before — not after — this release goes live on to our network. We want you, our members to have a flawless transition to this new release, and hopefully you understand the need for the delay. We'll continue to update you as we get closer to the new release date. [Postponed] Upcoming feature release Thursday, Sep. 18 — 6 p.m. Pacific Our next release is currently slated for Tuesday, Sep. 16 at 6 p.m. Pacific Time. We've talked about this release already. Your networks will not be offline during this release.

In this release, you'll notice two major improvements to the way you and your members communicate:

• A New Message Center & Friend Request Interface — Your Network Inbox and Friend Requests are moving out of the Ningbar and will now be integrated within your network. Members will now be able to send/receive messages and review pending friend requests on full pages on your network. Screenshots are below.

• New HTML Email Design — An updated design will make your invitations and shared content look better than ever. Screenshots are below.

You'll also find some more subtle changes that will optimize your network's layout and speed:

• Simplified Main & Profile Pages: A number of CSS changes — will streamline the different modules across your network and will pave the way for OpenSocial. Notable changes include more space between columns, standardized text size across modules, and the introduction of a blog tab.

• Removal of Dojo: We'll be replacing Dojo with the newer, faster JavaScript library called jQuery. This is an under-the-hood improvement that will bring faster load times to your network.

Finally, this release includes an iPhone interface for your network. Sleek, compact, and easy to navigate, this new mobile version will enable you to take your network with you — wherever you go. Screenshots are below.

For a screencast and further details, check below. Network Inbox
Here’s a screenshot of the new Network Inbox:

The Network Inbox will now be directly in the network and accessible from your Admin Box — the box that appears in the upper righthand corner of every page. Today the Inbox link opens the Ningbar. After this release, it will take you to this full page Inbox in your network.

Message Detail
Here is a screenshot of the multi-threaded message detail page:

On the message detail page, you’ll be able to see the threaded discussion 25-levels in, and it will now be viewable as a full page as opposed to a microscopic panel. I, for one, am super excited for this change. We will continue to provide detailed previews of new messages in email notifications which will take you to this page to view the entire thread.

Compose
Here is a screenshot of the compose page:

The compose message page will have the option to search your friends on your network to add to the message and is otherwise a pretty straightforward compose page.

Friend Requests
Here’s the new friend request page:

The new friend request page will be accessible from your Admin Box (also known as the sign in/sign up box, which appears in the top right corner of your network), which like your Inbox, currently opens the Ningbar to your friend requests. After this change, it will open to a full page in your network directly and will show only friend requests that are specific to this network.

While you’ll still be friends with your friends on this network on any network across Ning that you join, this new page will have a quick link to the person’s profile on this network. You will also have the ability to send them a message before you make them a friend. This incorporates a ton of feedback we’ve heard from Network Creators since we launched, and we’re excited to (finally!) put this in place.

Your Member Ningbar Panel
One other key change we’re making to the Ningbar won’t be visible until you click on your Member Ningbar tab — the tab in the Ningbar that currently displays your profile image and name.

Rather than open to a panel that shows your friends across networks and the networks you’re using, we’ll take you instead to your My Social Networks page on Ning.com. We will also be working to ensure that this list updates faster than the current lagtime.

UPDATE: We’ve made the decision to link the Member Ningbar tab to your network profile vs. the Ning.com My Social Networks page. As part of this release, we are also going to add a link to Ning.com from a member’s My Settings page so that the Ning ID for authentication is clearly communicated.

We’ll still be back with a greatly improved way to manage your friends and networks across the Ning Platform in early winter. In the meantime, you’ll be able to continue to manage your own networks from one view on Ning.com and, by mid-September, see all your friends across the Ning Platform from Ning.com.

New HTML Email Design
One last thing we’ll launch in early September is a simplified HTML email invitation. Here’s a sample:

We want your feedback More Space Between Columns:
The first important change is that the space between the columns will go from 5 pixels to 15 pixels on your Main and Profile pages. This means that the modules in the center columns will be 20 pixels narrower. The width of the Main center column will change from 512 to 492 pixels, and the width of the Profile center column will change from 559 to 539 pixels.

If you are using a text box in the center column, your text will automatically adjust to the new column width. The only potential issue is if you have manually set the width of, say, a video player or photo slideshow. If that's the case, you may need to adjust it to the new column width after this launch.

Profile Page Design Changes:

• The page titles on member profile pages - which are editable by the members - will move to the middle column and each member page will gain a standard "[name]'s page" title up top. This will help simplify navigation while continuing to give you and your members a spot to make a statement.
• The list of members' discussion, photos, etc. will now appear directly underneath the page title — and it will appear in a horizontal, not vertical list. If the member hasn't contributed to a specific feature, then the navigation will still show up but be grayed out until they add content. To allow room for this redesigned navigation, the number of items (i.e. "Discussions (34)") a member has added will no longer be shown on their profile page — but it will appear on the actual discussions page for that member.
• We've standardized the text size across modules. This should help pages with a number of different features feel less crowded.

Main Page Design Changes:

• All networks that have a blog module on their main page will now have a blog tab, which will point to "networkname.ning.com/profiles/blog/list" on your network. This tab will appear on your network automatically after the release — so long as you have fewer than 13 tabs and a blog module on your Main Page — so if you already have a blog tab, simply remove the duplicate tab after the release via the Tab Manager.
• We’ll have more details shortly on the iPhone interface included, but I wanted to give a little sneak peek (definitely influenced by recent announcements)