News, discussions, and interesting stuff to help cultivate your community.

[NING Creators]

News, discussions, and interesting stuff to help cultivate your community.

A Fresh Coat of Paint As you've probably noticed, we've redesigned the Creators Community Digest. As with any evolving community, we're always aiming to try something new. We're not done — not by any means! The Ning Customer Community Will Soon Get a Makeover, too. Look for that in the coming weeks. Another Ning Superstar! Ning Superstars is our way of saying thank you to the wonderful people who continue to make Creators a vibrant place. Each Superstar gets a Ning Pro subscription for 3 months. This time around, we're honoring a consultant of sorts: Anthony Reardon. Thanks, Anthony, for all the great advice in this community! Whoa, Daddy If you own a custom domain through GoDaddy, you were probably affected by their outage this week. Needless to say, this was outside of Ning's control, but we know it was a big inconvenience. As always, you can follow the Ning Status Blog for updates about the Ning Platform. We'll always try to update with anything that we think might be affecting your site, whether it's related to Ning or not. Incidentally, there are a ton of companies out there who sell domain names. In fact, we offer a similar service: Ning Names. #Ning #Milestone We noticed @davinzinger tweeted a milestone about his community this week. He firmly passed 5,000 members in his Employee Engagement Network. Here's to 5,000 more, David! Need a Template? Some NCs on Creators have probably come across these HTML templates in the past, but if you haven't, they could come in handy. They're simple HTML files that even HTML newbies should be able to take and use for things like creating your own "about us" page.Get them here. From the Ning Blog We heard a wonderful story on the radio about Ning-hosted Nerdfighters talking about their massive success building community. Give it a listen.

Found on the Internet We regularly grab things we think you might like and pop it onto the front page of Creators. It's a combination of community management smarts, positive reinforcement that make us feel good, and things that make us think about how the Internet is changing the world. And just neat stuff that's going viral. Need some web surfing time? Go check it out.

Smart Tips from Network Creators This week, Superstar Nor Cal Social Media is talking about Social Authority— the kind of thing that comes from being recognized in the power of the moment. Kat has a really interesting way to Facilitate Member Content Creation with the + Tab. It's a way to create a members-only tab to get people to add more content. She took an old NC tips and had her tech-savvy boyfriend whip up some code to make it better. This is a really creative idea. Good one, Kat! She also has a great tip about how to Make Your Site's Home Page "Stranger-Friendly". This second tip might be a little more advanced, but they're both great. Superstar Bernard Lama shows you how to Personalize Your Forum Module. This is great because it replaces the stale old "Continue" link with a nice-looking (and probably more effective) button. Excellent tip, Bernard! Chloe Prince has a monster of a tip, She can completely Change Group Layout: Remove Sign-In Box, Change Column and Module O.... We haven't done this one yet, but this looks to be impressive stuff. Glenn Lynch has a Simple Yet Awesome Hover for Sub-Tabs. This creates a neat-looking almost 3-D-like tab with a drop shadow. He shows an example on his network, which is interesting in its own right. He's stripped nearly everything down to one big activity feed. Scott Davidson has some tough talk about Taking Control. He hates spammers and says the best defense is a good defense. Superstar soaringeagle shares CSS to Buttonize the Reply Link(if that's a word). Note that you can monkey with the CSS details to change the dimensions if you like making things like this. To try and keep up, we added our own tip about Getting Pretty, Wordy with Wordle. It's a free service that makes neat word cloud images for displaying text in a very unique way. Superstar JFarrow has A Few Words About CSS4. CSS4? That's right. CSS4. Eric DuPuis has some code to Wrap Your Add Buttons with a Design. George H. Compton IV has been working on kind of a super tip over time that Adds Styles and Animation to Your Whole Network. This tip has grown so much it is on version 5.1! He also shares a way to Dock Your Music Player for Members' Convenience. You may have seen Winter Wong in the past on Creators. He's been making an iPhone app and getting feedback from NCs. He is proud to announce that his Tapatalk for Ning App Is Now Available on iPhone App Store. Want more? Check out all the Tips from NCs