Ning and the future

[Transition Ottawa (/jd)]

It's been a fine ride on the Ning platform for Transition Ottawa. We set up the site back in July 2009. And, apart from some inflexibilities here and there, it has pretty well given a lot of what we needed -- part wiki, part social network -- and it hasn't been too technically demanding.

Ning, however, announced last week that they will no longer be offering a free (or let's say advertising supported) service after July 2010.

Dozens of transition initiatives are running on the Ning platform, and it comes as a bit of a shock to most of the site administrators that the free ride is coming to an end. Understandably, there's a bit of a scramble going on as folks start to suss out the various alternatives.

One of the problems we face at Transition Ottawa is the time frame: July is scarcely more than 2-months away as I write this, and that's a mighty short window in which to migrate to a new platform. So we've decided to stay with Ning, and find the $19.95 a month somewhere, for the short term -- all the while scouting around for other, longer-term alternatives.

As a member, you'll notice some changes when the July switch occurs: for one thing the ads you now see on your right will disappear, freeing up a column either for our own use or for our own managed advertising programs. And the references to the ning network will be removed. At that time, we'll also be free to use our own url, without a 'ning' component, such as transitionottawa.org .

The alternatives
There's an informative blog on the Transition Network site (link below) about the alternatives available to site administrators. But here's an initiative that holds particular promise: a group of transitioners are already hard at work to come up with a social networking platform built specifically for Transition Town initiatives. They are doing so using the Drupal content management system -- a very powerful open source software that is used by many groups and organizations and is growing in popularity. Drupal is not for the technically faint at heart, but what the group hopes to come up with is a set of modules that a site administrator with more modest technical skills will be able to use to build his or her transition site.

For those more technically inclined, there are articles and blogs about the alternatives and the Drupal initiative, and anyone is free to join the Drupal Transition Town group. They hope to have a platform up and running by September or October 2010. Although I'm no Drupal expert, I'll be following developments there with interest.

For further information, here are some relevant links:

The Transition Network's perspective on the Ning situation:
http://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/ed-mitchell/2010-05/ning-sit...

Drupal Main SIte:
http://drupal.org

The Drupal Transition Town Group:
http://groups.drupal.org/transition-towns

I'll post here as and when further developments take place. Meanwhile, I'd welcome any comments.

[christopher tidman]

Think of the site as a business and open an account with Clickbank so you can advertise all the nice things that are offered by companies selling their products on the net and you get paid a commission to your Paypal account, also free. Then open a free account with Google called 'Adsense' They choose appropriate ads and pay you part of the advertising revenue that they get. Once you start earning money from your site, you will probably want to quit your day job. There are many school drop outs who earn more from internet businesses than you can imagine. It is a whole different industry that is growing from nothing. How about advertising the light pipes that have a dome which is a lense that collects light from all over the sky and directs it down a 10 inch tube lined with a material manufactured by 3M and ensures 95% of light gets into house? It makes a room feel like all outdoors. Or how about promoting Graham Fraser's (think that is his name - why isn't he here?) Powerball windmills? They are the only windmills that make sense in a 3 mile/hr average wind zone.

[Transition Ottawa (/jd)]

Ron, thanks for your offer to help out with Drupal. The Transition Network network Drupal project is going ahead, but they are waiting for Drupal 7 to emerge from Beta testing before going live, and that seems to be taking longer than expected. So in late July, I took out out a one-year subscription with Ning. Meanwhile, I have registered www.transitionottawa.org and have put up a rudimentary Drupal (6.17) site there so that I can start playing with it. I have to confess I haven't progressed much -- the one-year account seems to have taken the heat off! / jd

[Ron Rancourt]

I agree in paying for a service, but TO still hasn't developed a revenue plan. Money doesn't grow on trees and in this day and age every penny counts to most individuals. I also shudder at the thought of converting to a new site and porting the last x months of events and data accumulated here over to a new platform.

IF the group goes to a new platform there are still costs involved even if the software is free. Other benefits exist too, like knowing where the data is, owning it and having comeplete control over it as opposed to hosting it on some Ning server. Lots to consider but I do see your point that Ning provides a service that we currently benefit from, now ad-free.

[christopher tidman]

I have decided to leave the North America Party with ning so I have paid the fee. I truly can not believe that I am living in a city with so many free loaders. Any internet provider has costs to manage, and if they are providing a useful service they deserve to be supported. Any free site will eventually have to charge something to cover costs. (onlinenap . ning . com )

[Ron Rancourt]

I have some experience running Drupal if that's what the group goes with.

[Hugh Campbell]

A search for "transition" within existing Groups yields 76 hits on the WiserEarth site at http://www.wiserearth.org. Their suite offers: bulletin board, events calendar, discussions, file library, links, etc.

Hugh

[Les Squires]

JD, If you need an alternative as the time gets closers, please consider the following....

[TRANSITION OTTAWA] Reminder -- TRANSITION OTTAWA Moving to New Location

Greetings,

Reminder that http://transitionottawa.ning.com/ will be moving to http://transitionus.ning.com/group/linktotransitionottawa in the next couple of weeks.

The website http://transitionOTTAWA.ning.com/ will be deleted by August 20th due to changes in Ning's pricing policities. (If TRANSITION OTTAWA has taken steps to pay the US$200 annual fee for continuing without interruption, please make sure that the persons in charge of the fund raising get in touch with me as soon as possible so we can make proper arrangements.)

We hope you plan to continue your involvement with TRANSITION OTTAWA. To do that, please follow 3 steps:

Step 1: Register on http://transitionus.ning.com/ if you have not already joined this site. (Note that this site will soon be renamed with a geography more global than "Transition United States".)

Step 2: After registering in Step 1, click on http://transitionus.ning.com/group/linktotransitionottawa to join the new group.

Step 3: If you have valuable information on the original site that you wish to preserve, please move it to the new site or make copies to keep on your local computer. Otherwise the information will be lost when the original site is deleted.

Here's to your continued involvement!


Les Squires
http://transitionus.ning.com
LSquiresSkype
[e-mail]
[phone]

[Transition Ottawa (/jd)]

We have less than a month now before ning start charging for what has been up to now a free service. We're making progress vis-a-vis alternatives.
As a first step, we've secured a domain name -- www.transitionottawa.org -- and have put up a marker page there.
In a week or two, we plan to install the Drupal content management system onto the site and begin experimenting with it. The Transition Drupal group, which is developing an ambitious content management system design specifically for Transition Initiatives, seems to be on target for surfacing something in the fall.

[christopher tidman]

When you pay the $20 the site is yours so you can sign on with Google Adsense and then you get paid for the ads which are presented by Google to suite the content of the site. I see no reason why we can not offer to collect donations and funding for selected projects. As long as all the accounting is done in the open, there is no reason why we could not charge a $10 a year membership. Do not exclude people who do not pay but acknowledge the ones who do. If transition Ottawa had a few dollars in the kitty, we could put up a solar collector or something to provide a hot shower for homeless people - something fun that would get us some publicity.

[Transition Ottawa (/jd)]

Thanks Katherine,

Quite a few Transition sites are already running on the Drupal platform. Here's a list (below) to demonstrate the kinds of modules they offer. 'Transition initiative'-specific modules could include such things as a 'ride-share' module which would allow people to sign up for and self organize ride-share programs, backyard sharing, resource sharing and so on. One aspect that particularly interests me is bilingualism: an assurance that a platform can be built that allows for participation by either English or French-speaking members with equal ease and comfort -- including each member being able to choose the language for all menus and navigation. We've already had some discussion about this over on the Drupal Transition development site.

Some sites now running Drupal:

- http://transitionnorth.net
- http://transitiontowns.org.nz - meta site
- http://www.transitionsheffield.org.uk/ - this is for all the transition groups in Sheffield
- http://www.transitionus.org - this is the hub site for the US
- http://www.transitionsc.org
- http://www.transitionsebastopol.org
- http://www.transitionpdx.org
- http://www.apple-nc.org
- http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org - Totnes in South Devon
- http://www.transitionhouston.org/ - Houston, TX (just started, not a lot of content yet).

/ jd