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Open Message to Transitioners Re: Ning New Pricing Policies

Open message to Transitioners,

You've heard by now that Ning is upgrading its website offerings. Starting in July will charge $20, $200, or $500 per year depending on the level of service each of our Transition sites elects.  Read about available pricing plans.

Here is my advice for making these changes a victory for our hundreds of Transition sites, large, small and international.
  • Rebrand http://transitionus.ning.com to be an international Transition site -- better thought of as "Transition US!" (as in "we," "our," and "all of us" rather than "United States".  The site already serves an international membership.  
  • Smaller Transition Sites  Less complex websites that have grown more slowly and are not able to raise $200 to maintain their individual sites are encouraged to move their members into a GROUP on http://transitionus.ning.com  This option essentially guarantees that small, local sites would continue to be free, since the $200 annual charge would be borne by the mother site. The mother site currently has 142 groups from around the world -- http://transitionus.ning.com/groups -- each group having its own identity, member roster, administrators, discussions, comments, RSS feeds and email broadcasts.  In addition, each group demonstrates its clear affiliation with the 2,150+ members already active on the mother site.
  • Larger Transition Sites  Larger localities (such as Colorado, Arizona Homegrown, District of Columbia, Midwest Permaculture, Minnesota, California, Wellfed Neighbor, Ohio, Texas, Vermont, Whatcom, HyperLocavore Yardsharing, New Zealand, Community Exchange, Oooby, Intersect and many more) are encouraged to find 4 donors willing to split the $200 annual fee for NING PLUS. Four donors, $50 each and the site preserves its assets as they are today for a full year -- [drumroll!] with the elimination of obnoxious ads and Ning promotions.

Feel free below to REPLY to this discussion.

Les Squires
Transition Ning Social Network
Skype Address:  LSquiresSkype
+1 303 926 5159


HOW TO REGISTER LOCAL SITES ON THE TRANSITION US SOCIAL NETWORK

  • Check the list to see if your state, country, locality is already on the list.  Use Search to facilitate this task.
  • If not on the list, add it to the list. We will review and confirm your addition is not a duplicate.  We will meet you at door to make sure everything is working perfectly.
  • If it is already on the list already, start inviting your members to sign up on the new venue. A few personal calls to your best acquaintances are also in order.  
  • Modify sample letter below drafted by Albert Johnston of Haiti and ask your Admin to send a broadcast message to current members explaining the changes and inviting them to participate in the new venue.  
  • Copy & paste information your group considers essential from your original site to the new venue. Remember that your original site will cease operation in about two months.

SAMPLE LETTER EXPLAINING CHANGES TO YOUR MEMBERS
Drafted by Albert Johnson, Transition Haiti


Creating a Pattern for Abundance

A message to all members of Transition Haiti

Please don't respond directly to this broadcast message.

The Transition Haiti Group is moving to the Transition United States social networking website.

In July the Ning Network will begin requiring a small fee to continue individual Ning websites.

To improve the effectiveness of the Transition US website it has been suggested that it be named the Transition International site for the project.

I am in agreement with this and I hope all you will take the time to become members of the Transition Haiti Group  currently listed under Transistion US.

[[[Paste here the address you are issued after setting up your new group on Transition US Social Network.]]]

If you have any questions please contact me via my personal email account.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com

Or visit me at Facebook

Tags: TUSOHtbd, ning, ning charge, ning pricing

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by André Angelantoni on May 16, 2010 at 8:38am
I actually don't think Ning is a good long-term solution. Their feature set will never include what an open-source community project can create on its own.

Check out Transition Drupal (TD) to see the beginnings of that sort of project.

http://groups.drupal.org/transition-towns

Ning is fine for now and the next year but after that I expect TD to be the platform of choice.

-André
PostPeakLIving.com
Permalink Reply by Heloisa Dinsmore on June 4, 2010 at 8:41pm
I'd like to suggest Wiser Earth as another option. The software and information generated by WiserEarth is created under open source standards as governed by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
More info http://www.wiserearth.org/article/About
Permalink Reply by Sandi Brockway on June 16, 2010 at 2:57pm
NING now has just completed a full export tool that GROU.PS can use. So far it is simple, but the importing takes time because of backlog. Make sure to follow instructions carefully.

http://help.ning.com/cgi-bin/ning.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faq...

Grou.ps now has feature to accept each file, then they will program it into your new grou.ps site. As far as I can tell, this includes just about everything.

Wiserearth has a new groups section. I discussed many options last year in a brainstorming forum that included mostly UK TT folk. The wiserearth tech in charge of the group suggested to me he liked grou.ps the best because it was Open Source completely, and a good model for their own development on Wiserearth for groups.
Permalink Reply by Les Squires on June 14, 2010 at 9:26pm
Editor's Note: Messages placed elsewhere on this site by mistake.


Reply by Judith Broadhurst on June 6, 2010 at 12:00am

I simply don't want us to do this, because we value having groups within our own site, not having our whole TI being just one group here. We also value the autonomy in structuring our own site, the look and feel (including using our own logo), and all of the other features that we get with our own setup but would get by what you propose, Les.

What I don't get is why some people can't see that the people who create software and host online networks deserve to earn money to feed themselves, too. To say everything needs to be free carries the implication that what some people do has value, so they have a right to earn incomes, but others don't. Unless we revert to living in caves, everything costs. It's merely a question of whether you pay in time or money or make other tradeoffs, such as the numerous ones that this offer from Transition US would require.

Judith Broadhurst
Transition San Lorenzo Valley

Reply by Sandi Brockway 3 hours ago

I have always encouraged people to work with existing local and regional groups to form coalitions and collective events. It would be very hard to give up an independent platform that provides the tools for doing so.

I suggest using wiserearth for greater coalition building, certainly. I have been experimenting with grou.ps and grouply as possible independent sites with all the same bells and whistles.

http://grou.ps/transitiontennessee/
http://transitiontennessee.grouply.com/login/

it is though, near impossible to move everything. grouply is half there, but grou.ps so far is not committed enough and can barely transfer the members. though, i am not up to date, it has been a few weeks and i am now too busy with health and legal matters. grouply, last i looked, had ability to transfer half the materials with promise they would do the rest soon. i will check. the grouply import tool work exceptionally well.
for people who might want more or something more independent, but i a still stress the wiserearth needs to be the wider catalog or guide. they have a new GROUP section or tools they just created. I have not checked it out close enough to fully comment.

Reply by Judith Broadhurst 1 hour ago

Thanks for posting those links to check, Sandi. One of our volunteers exported our Ning site to Grouply, and it worked, but it seems extremely intrusive to me -- too many objectionable things (including the name, but I wouldn't decide on that, of course). I've been a member of WiserEarth, myself, for a long time. It's never had much activity, and although I like the looks of it, it would pretty much negate the "Transition" connection. At best, it would be really confusing.

Does anybody know where to look the other options for exporting Ning sites to that were supposedly going to be available?

There are definite drawbacks to Ning, especially with all components crammed onto the main page, basically. But I've manged or moderated so many different kinds of sites or forums like this since as far back as CompuServe days that I've never seen one that didn't have drawbacks and didn't draw complaints --- except CompuServe, in fact, which was excellent (they tried to trademark "forum," with some justification). So I lean either toward just staying with Ning or switching to an independent website with forum software, preferably Simple Machines Forum (SMF), which is second only to Invision Powerboard (IPB) in flexibility, great features and so close to IPB that the difference in price -- free vs. at least $60) makes the decision easy. Some people will still say they can't figure it out, though. Even so, I've heard that with Yahoo groups, too, which is about as simple (and simplistic) as it gets. GoDaddy hosting is only $5.99 per month, and you can get SMF installed free. But you'd have to contend with Drupal, which I dread. GoDaddy's tech support is good, though.

Judith Broadhurst
Transition San Lorenzo Valley

Reply by Sandi Brockway 31 minutes ago

goDaddy supports the porn industry. i found a cheaper site that is run on green energy. as a nonprofit, i get free service at thinkhost.com. if i think of the green domain provider's name, i will post here later. i forget their name.

using established SOCIAL software has its advantage for reaching people and getting traffic.

here is green hosting
http://b2evolution.net/web-hosting/green-hosting-renewable-energy-p...

http://webhostinggeeks.com/greenwebhosting.html

some offer FREE DOMAIN names with paid month accounts, not to mention free install of whatever programs you want from their collections.

i am trying out b2evolution.net on global-villages.info

Reply by Sandi Brockway 31 seconds ago

if you want to go fully independent, and stay 100% green, and cheap, iPage.com seems best bang. $3.50 a month, domain is free, unlimited everything. only thing, you would have to like their sitebuilder. though, i believe they were listed at b2evolution site, so they might supply that too

Reply by Sandi Brockway 2 hours ago

How to transfer your NING creation to another person?

to here and fill out form

http://hc.ning.com/ning_login.php?p_next_page=%252FTransferOwnershi...

Reply by Sandi Brockway 1 hour ago

Kathy, there are lots of free sites, but as of yet, the only ones with import tools is Grouply, or grou.ps (minimal). Ning promises they can EXPORT, but you have to fill out all these forms and then they will send you all the import stuff later, and there is then no guarantee it will work. Did you not get the page of sites NING recommended? No will import though, but grou.ps, and so far that is a rocky import of members only. Grouply is the only one that can import smoothly. I am, apparently, the only person who has thoroughly looked into all the best possibilities. grou.ps looks better and feels more private. the TN site i did looks and feels great. Wish they would finally fix the import tools, but there is no guarantee. they might do it, they might not. i like them the best

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