Announcement: Staying Put at Ning (After All!)

[Balder]

Hi, Everyone,

 

Thank you for putting up with my deliberations around whether or not to relocate this forum, and for the feedback several of you have offered.  Now that Ning has made a cheaper option available -- $20 a year instead of $20 a month -- I have decided it is worthwhile just to stay here for the time being, especially since the forum has begun to become a bit more active recently, and because it is rather disruptive to have to move again (even though the chance for a "fresh start" at SocialGo was attractive).

 

The Ning Mini option will allow us to have 150 members, and a limited but likely sufficient amount of storage and bandwidth allotments to sustain the sort of posting activity we were used to back on Gaia.  Or so I believe.  That is why I wrote "for the time being" above:  I want to see how well the Ning Mini version performs and serves our needs, and I decided it was worth the $20 to test drive it so we can see for ourselves.

 

Here are the Ning Mini stats:

 

Up to 150 members
1 GB storage
10 GB bandwidth
* Go ad-free or run your own ads
* Blogs, forum, photos and video
* Basic member controls

Some of the old members here may remember the (relatively minor) steps I took back on Gaia to help get the forum back on track, regarding keeping the posting and contributions on topic, reducing the amount of contentious bickering, etc, so I will be making some similar adjustments here, especially in terms of trimming out non-related content and asking members to be mindful of the intent of the forum (and also of our space limitations).  Because of these limitations, I will be removing some of the photos from our photo section, since those are real space-eaters.  And some reduction in content will be automatic -- the new version will not include a video upload feature (though we can still embed them in posts), so all videos that have been uploaded will disappear.  I also plan on redoing the design and layout of the forum somewhat, time permitting.  That may give us some semblance of the "fresh start" I've been desiring.

 

I do plan on keeping the SocialGo version of the site I created open for now, as a "life raft" in case the Ning Mini version proves to be less than satisfactory.  But my hope is that we can just stay put.

 

All the best,

 

Bruce

[Douglas R Wallack]

Sounds like a good plan, Bruce.
See you in a week, eh?
Cheers,
Doug

[Seth]

I tried my best to keep your inner split alive as long as possible, Bruce. :) Your choice sounds like a wise course to sail!

Seth

[Rev. O.M. Bastet]

I'm glad you are staying on Ning, Bruce. The Mini has no Groups, but I see there are no Groups here anyway. Whew!!!!!

David Marshall has tutored me how to turn a Forum page into a whole new Forum, complete with top tab, and with 5 categories per Forum page, and if you'd like to have that level of organization added to the basic, I can turn around and teach you that if you don't already know the trick.

And we've had a rather lengthy discussion about photos in the Forum at anewgaia.ning, there is an easy way to EMBED them rather than uploading them, but only in textboxes, not in the photos section. Embedding them, they don't use any storage or bandwidth, same as embedded videos. But to embed a photo it has to be hosted on the Internet and you need the URL for it.

YAY Doug! I'll be lookin' for ya! When are you arriving? I'll be around on Thursday.....

Blessings, OM

[Balder]

Doug, thanks! Yep, see you soon! I'm looking forward to it.

Seth, LOL. I've appreciated your feedback throughout.

OM, thank you for the tips about embedding photos as well. I believe the Ning Mini site will still have a "photo album," so people can still upload photos, but as you point out, embedding them in a post is a preferable option (to keep from eating up our allotted space).

Concerning your questions on the other post, I haven't yet converted to Ning Mini or paid for it, but I will do so soon. I believe I'll have an option to keep ads or drop them; I'm not sure about the "About" box, though! We'll see if it sticks around... :-)

I look forward to seeing you at the conference as well!

[Rev. O.M. Bastet]

Unless the folks here are as photo-philic as anewgaia folks, you should be OK on your storage space. From my reading in the Creators Network, it's not easy to get to the limits they set....

Yes, looking forward MOST eagerly to the conference and meeting so many old friends for the first time, haha!!

Love, OM

[Balder]

Y'all like the new facelift here? Any feedback? I switched over to Ning Mini yesterday, and we did lose some of the videos, but apparently ones that were loaded as "embeds" have been retained. As part of the fresh start, I decided to redesign the look of this forum along the lines of what I was setting up over at SocialGo...

[Rev. O.M. Bastet]

Yeah!! I adore the header photo, so awesome. I must learn how to do one sometime!! The font could be blacker, for my taste, and the pale blue works as a background but not as a section-headings color, it doesn't guide my eyes well.

Dunno if I've seen all the tweaks yet, but that's what I have seen so far. And the new subtitle is intriguing, but the phrase means nada to me: participatory spirituality. I go "WHaaaaaa?"

Love, OM

[Douglas R Wallack]

I think you have it OM. Although you may want to add a second word for a complete expression of "participatory spirituality" --- WHaaaaa Sapening!
Cheers

Rev. O.M. Bastet said:

Yeah!! I adore the header photo, so awesome. I must learn how to do one sometime!! The font could be blacker, for my taste, and the pale blue works as a background but not as a section-headings color, it doesn't guide my eyes well.

Dunno if I've seen all the tweaks yet, but that's what I have seen so far. And the new subtitle is intriguing, but the phrase means nada to me: participatory spirituality. I go "WHaaaaaa?"

Love, OM

[Balder]

Thanks for your feedback, OM. I tried experimenting with a few brighter colors (on the title, on the header and footer, etc) but they proved a bit distracting. But I'd be happy to experiment a little with the background color for the headings -- finding something that maybe stands out better, without being too dark or bright or disruptive.


About the phrase, "participatory spirituality," it's a topic we've discussed and explored in a number of threads (which I realize you might not have read), particularly threads on the work of Skowlimowski, Swimme & Berry, Panikkar, Ferrer, and others. I don't intend for the subtitle to suggest identity with certain postmodern participatory approaches -- which I think Wilber has ably critiqued -- but I still wanted to bring in the term to expand the focus of the forum somewhat, to include a broader concern than just 'postmetaphysics.' I think an enactive approach, for instance, suggests not only a postmetaphysical understanding but a 'participatory' ethic and sensibility, and I'm interested in exploring that more here. Hopefully future threads will make the meaning clearer to you.

[Seth]

The new look looks good to me, Bruce! It will probably be a little difficult to find an appealing background to the header due to the headers multi color variance. A thing I could see possibly working is maybe matching the dark gray of the strip right above the header, but I also think it looks fine the way it is. It definitely gives off the feeling of a new start.

Cheers,

Seth

[Rev. O.M. Bastet]

You're right Bruce, I am re-activating here to some small extent after a time of being totally inactive, so I didn't see any of those discussions. So just letting you know, from a marketing standpoint, the phrase means nothing to a Newbie who might be checking this place out, IMO it conveys no meaning and I personally don't find it intriguing either. So it means something "to those who know" but to me the subheading for a Network needs to be a marketing tagline, one that people "get" right away.

I'm sure everyone would enjoy some color experimentation. The pale aqua I chose for the section headings at anewgaia seem to be well-accepted, and be dark enough to serve the purpose while light enough not to capture and hold the eye obnoxiously. So perhaps any color of that intensity would serve.

And from a purely practical standpoint, the links need to be a different color from the text color, and here they are all gray! It's confusing. Link colors used to be in Manage, Appearance, All Options. Where the heck they are now is anyone's guess, haha.

I think the multicolors of the header photo enable many many options for the rest of the site. My view is the opposite of Seth's view; I think a background color of any color would match. And the pale blue for that is perfect IMO.

Love, OM

[Balder]

Okay, thanks for the feedback. I'm honestly not interested in marketing to the public, so I'm not worried about the wide appeal of the phrase; at least, if I change it, it won't be for that reason.

I did try a number of different colors for the subheadings this afternoon, including pale aqua, but didn't find one that really appealed to me yet. I think the grey looks non-obtrusive, but I'll experiment a little more to see what else might work. I do like the softer colors you've got on ANewGaia right now; a few days earlier, I thought the colors were a bit too much, and the softer tones are an improvement.