NING vs Alternative Solutions- Comparisons?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Magic Happens on April 22, 2010 at 3:53pm

Honestly, l have not found a site like Ning, and l like ning compare to some l have seen.

Permalink Reply by Magic Happens on April 22, 2010 at 4:06pm

It hurt me to say it too, but Ning is great

Permalink Reply by TheSoulProprietor on April 22, 2010 at 4:59pm

I joined Grou.ps and was very impressed with their Free offerings. Very similar to what we have here at Ning. However, their network is still in Beta, and I found a few items that are causing problems. So far I found that you can't delete music albums once you create them, and there doesn't seem to be an allowance for deleting your main account either. Most probably, some other minor problems exist. With input from it's members, these issues shouldn't be that hard to resolve, so I think it would be worth the investment of time, for those of us how need a more detailed service!

NOTE: Their Free version does allow for a lot of HTML coding, but not sure about CSS. I believe, I read, they are currently working on installing the capability for it. (I'm not that experienced with CSS)

Grou.ps does have language editors, member controls & the whole shabang. Not to mention a generous amount of Storage & Bandwidth. When this network gets up & running it should be very nice, indeed! I already put an account over there that I plan to keep. I will wait to see what Ning is going to offer, before moving my other accounts there.

Permalink Reply by Magic Happens on April 30, 2010 at 12:17pm

l have thoughts of moving to Spruz. They are bending over backwards to helping the Ning crowd. They have add updates in a little time since being there. l feel that given time, Spruz can be a great network site.
It is not as users friendly , but learning a new way is not all that hard.

Permalink Reply by HomesteadMommy on May 4, 2010 at 11:44pm

I haven't used a lot of different places. I tried dolphin and had trouble getting it running. So moved on to jomsocial.
It has groups, each group can have it's own photo albums, videos, wall and discussion. You can turn these on or off from the admin. The discussion area isn't the greatest but not bad. There is a new version coming out this year that will add more features.
Videos can be uploaded or embedded, you can have both or one or the other. Again full control from the admin.
I like the photo layout and slide show. What I don't like is you can't rate, tag (you can user tag but not description) and their is no description box for the photos. You have to put it in the title or the first comment. Some of the new features in the next version will be drag and drop sorting and I think tagging.
Blogs, this doesn't come with it but you can buy their myblog program. It integrates well and is easy to use. Also their are a few people who have made K2 plugins that would work for this.
Forum, doesn't come with one. But integrates well with kunena a free forum for joomla. Same user profiles and activity stream sharing.
You can install apps for twitter, facebook, rss feeds users can chose to use on their profile pages.
Privet message system works well. Also user gets email notified when they receive a pm, forum/group reply.
Their is no chat, but you can use free or paid plugin ones.
Over all I like it very much and I'm looking forward to the new features in the next version. :-) So is it perfect, no but I've never found one that is. I had quite a bit of trouble with my ning site (down time ect.), I can say that I've received great support from the forums and email at jomsocial.