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

[Rev. O.M. Bastet]

I profoundly appreciate the feedback, Bruce!!!

[Seth]

Om, there may be a bit of a misunderstanding to what I was trying to write. Maybe I'm confusing a feature that SocialGo offers that may not be offered here. The light blue background which I find a nice choice is what I'm referring to, but only the very top part directly left and directly right of the header. Can that be changed without changing the rest of the background? Basically what I was making a point of, and I'll lead with an example, is if you made that section orange to match the left side of the heading, then the right side of the heading with the blue (now) contrasting orange would look whacked. I think due to the nature of the heading and light background choice most color choices for that section would look whacked. The only alternative I could possibly see working other than keeping it the same as the rest of the background (the light blue) would be to match the color of the dark gray strip that rests directly above the heading. So if that's what you understood me as saying then I guess we do have an opposite view on this.

I really like the light blue background, and I also believe other color choices would work well for the background with the same header. I am also inclined toward the lighter shades.

[Edward theurj Berge]

I appreciate the addition of the term "participatory" to this forum, given our recent (and old) criticisms of authoritarian leadership and guru abuse. Those mentioned above in this line of inquiry add much more to the debate that the strictly kennillingus paradigm.