One of the most amazing tools that I uses on the web these days is Ning. Ning is an online tool that helps users create online communites. Many people in the tech industry don’t really like Ning and some do.
Mainly developers/creators who use Drupal to create online communities may have issues using Ning. Some of the negative reasons I have heard, have been that the network creator does not really own the data of the community. When you sign up on Ning you don’t host it on a server like you would with Drupal. The network creator has less control than one would have with Drupal, and this is concerning to some.
I started using Ning first and then others drew my attention to Drupal. After getting to know Ning like the back of my hand, I decided to dabble with Druapl. I have decided that Drupal is a great open source tool for online community building. However, a team of people is required to make a decent functional website. Unless you are a master coder and artist, it would be very difficult to achieve a good end product that was both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
With Ning ANYONE can join up and start their own online community. Ning is very easy to use and the documentation on problems and ideas is endless. If you ever have a problem you can go to http://networkcreators.ning.com/ and post your question in the forum. Someone from Ning’s online team will reply back based on urgency. This comes in handy when trying to learn and move forward with your network. Other network creators are also there to give advice and learn from one another.
Ning offers network creators a number of different tools. These include forums, events, groups, photos,videos and much more. This allows members who join the network creators site to really participate and contribute to the site. The time it would take to make a drupal site as functional as a Ning site does not compare. Unless you are a drupal guru developer. With Ning you can have a community within a matter of minutes.
Even though Ning is not really open source , other developers have been creating widgets that make Ning communities even better. At http://widgetlaboratory.ning.com/ - this site allows creators to have even more control of their network in these areas:
For people who are not that familar with html or css these are great tools to make your online community even more unique. Advanced users can download the sources code to their network and go wild!!!
Everyday on
Ning’s Blog they post unique website that people are creating with their software. It’s a great place to what people are doing. Some networks that use Ning have over 40,000 members some have just a few hundread. Ning hold over half a million networks and who knows how many members total.
A few of the networks I have created with Ning are:
More on Ning Soon
