Topic: Ning.com Migration Tool (NMT)

Ning.com Migration Tool (NMT)

3047445
Inactive

14 years, 10 months ago

I currently run several NING (ning.com) social networks and, due to some changes in their policies over the last year, I want to host these communities on my own server using BP. I cannot imagine that I am the only person in this situation. So, I am looking for like minded folks to help build a NING Migration Tool.

In the simplest form, this tool would parse a NING site and extract users, blogs, groups, forums and all related data & posts for each. Think of it like the Blogger/MT import tools for WP, but at the social network level.

If you are interested in working on this toolset, msg/friend me. When Groups go live, I’ll start a group for the project and we can work from there.

Thanks,

Doug

PS: If a similar initiative is already underway, I am more than happy to jump in and help.

Viewing 25 replies - 1 through 25 (of 34 total)

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3215850
Inactive

14 years, 10 months ago

+1

I’ve been running a ning network and wordpress blog in parallel. Slightly integrated by way off rss feeds, but nowhere near enough. Likely to jump onto buddypress at some point.

3047445
Inactive

14 years, 10 months ago

I have formed a group for this project here:

https://buddypress.org/groups/migration-tool-development

5863108
Inactive

14 years, 1 month ago

Is this still active? I am very curious to see how this would turn out, but I see that the group has not been active for a while.

Brian Hanifin
Participant

@bjhanifin

14 years ago

We desperately need movement on this project now! Today Ning announced they are moving to force all networks to either pay up or leave! I help run a very content rich network for arcade collectors, and BuddyPress is a strong contender for our next platform. However, it would be disastrous to walk away from all of the helpful content our users have contributed via hundreds of Forum discussions, hundreds of niche game specific and area specific groups, and even the blog posts!

P.S. I joined the Group for this project, but I have been unable to the discussion area. Please direct me to it if I missed it.

Boone Gorges
Keymaster

@boonebgorges

14 years ago

It’s just a start, but after I heard the news about Ning I wrote a plugin that will import users from Ning to WordPress: http://teleogistic.net/2010/04/importing-ning-users-into-wp/.

Sadly Ning doesn’t offer easy export of the rest of the content. But I think some folks out there are working on ways for you to get your forums, discussions, blog posts, etc out of there as well.

José M. Villar
Participant

@el_terko

14 years ago

Gee Boone, I wished I could write plugins as swiftly as you do…

Boone Gorges
Keymaster

@boonebgorges

14 years ago

Heh, to be fair it was an adaptation of an existing plugin. I probably wrote about half of it

abcde666
Participant

@erich73

14 years ago

I am just waiting for you to write a plugin to port over all facebook-content to a BuddyPress-install

stwc
Participant

@stwc

14 years ago

Wow. I considered Ning briefly, but didn’t want to have all my users’ content locked up in a third-party system. Glad I didn’t pursue it.

José M. Villar
Participant

@el_terko

14 years ago

And I am waiting for Boone to write a plugin that will build my BP community, fill it with thousands of members that will click on hundreds of ads which in turn will make me billonaire.

Sorry for the OT, but I really think Boone can do it…

UPDATE: getting back on topic, wpmu.org will start building a Ning Migration Tool: http://wpmu.org/ning-to-buddypress-wordpress-migration-plugin/

Will it be free or not ? Place your bets !

Derek
Participant

@derekbolden

14 years ago

Well it’s hard for me not to be a little smug about this Ning stuff. I moved 2 of my Ning networks over to BP with cut and paste technology and in the process have lost most of my members. However it forced me to concentrate more on the content side of my site and not the whiz bang features and I needed to do that. Ning was and is a joke and people who thought they were gonna be able to stay and suck off the Tet of Ning for free were sadly misguided.

This is a great opportunity for the user base of BuddyPress to grow but to do so there HAS to be some real discussion and debate about CORE functionality. If we are to scoop up some of those disgruntled former Ning Network Creators then the base feature set should be comparable with what they could get with Ning.

Darfuria
Participant

@darfuria

14 years ago

This useful blog has just been launched, so we should all do our best to support and contribute

http://ningtobp.org/

Boone Gorges
Keymaster

@boonebgorges

14 years ago

For those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter or on my blog (btw – what the heck is wrong with you? I rule), I just updated the Import from Ning plugin to support BP xprofile fields: http://teleogistic.net/2010/04/more-import-to-ning-goodness/

Hugo Ashmore
Keymaster

@hnla

14 years ago

If only you had done that 3 months ago, you have no idea the agony I went through

Aaron Edwards
Participant

@uglyrobot

14 years ago

I worked nonstop this weekend to finish up our own advanced importer we started a few months back. Allows you to do a full import of a Ning network’s users, their custom profile fields, and avatars to BuddyPress! It reallywas a bit of work to scrape avatars from the profile pages but looks real cool while importing. Full support for very large member lists via optional FTP upload and batch processing so it won’t timeout on you.

http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/ning-to-buddypress-user-importer

Hugo Ashmore
Keymaster

@hnla

14 years ago

Aw shame thought for a minute it might have been made available to all to further the Ning to Buddypress cause

Andy Peatling
Keymaster

@apeatling

14 years ago

While I can respect the effort, I can’t see a reason to pay $79 for it when there’s a free version available. Most of the people coming from Ning are those who don’t want to pay to upgrade in the first place.

Mike Pratt
Participant

@mikepratt

14 years ago

Please tell me the WPMU “change ‘happy’ to ‘glad’ and charge $79” crew did NOT take Boone’s plugin and re-brand it

MrMaz
Participant

@mrmaz

14 years ago

Yay?

Mike Pratt
Participant

@mikepratt

14 years ago

Oh, and @Aaron Edwards – we’re looking forward to the day you guys join the bp.org community to help, answer questions and provide insight instead of just shilling product

Aaron Edwards
Participant

@uglyrobot

14 years ago

People should be able to choose what’s best for their needs/price. Many network creators will want professional hand holding for their migration. It ok to let them hire a developer for lots of cash instead of pooling their money with others in the same boat to get excellent support for low cost?

I started the WPMUDEV plugin 3 months ago, but we delayed it as we wanted to wait for Ning to provide a full export. When we saw the Ning announcement they asked me to push it out asap, and that was before Boone released his. There is no shared code.

I think it is completely fair to give users a choice of what features they want to have. 60% of my dev time was spent on the plugin supporting large member lists without timeing out and scaraping Avatars from Ning to import into BuddyPress. And considering what it cost Incsub to hire me to develop it $79 is more than fair when you get access to support and 8 premium BP themes along with 100+ other premium plugins.

Mike Pratt
Participant

@mikepratt

14 years ago

@aaron you weren’t “censored” that I can tell, just called out. I do have to give you credit, wpmu seems to have more Google SEO juice than even bp.org. witness:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Ning+migration+buddypress&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Bowe
Participant

@bowromir

14 years ago

Not to be rude or anything Aaron.. but this is the first time you’ve been here and imo it for one reason only: Promotion and SEO purposes.. Google for: Ning Migration BuddyPress and this is the #1 hit.. Convenient If you were around daily it would not be strange, but I’ve never seen you around until there was a chance to make some money..

Aaron Edwards
Participant

@uglyrobot

14 years ago

@Mike, thought my post was deleted. Just edited. Sorry Andy!

FYI – I really respect all the work you put into BP Andy and others. I submit patches whenever I find something. I can’t speak for WPMU DEV but our members are very happy to have the instant support we provide and always updated plugins/themes.

People who are trying to put together a professional site see the worth in paying a relatively small fee (compared to hiring a private dev) to get support and plugins they can depend on not to break with each WP/BP update. Professional work costs money, and people who want it know that. Nothing wrong with giving people that options.

It furthers BP and it’s popularity even more!

Hugo Ashmore
Keymaster

@hnla

14 years ago

If the plugin was available for anyone to download, but with an option for support for $79 then that’s a different story

Which is why I made the comment I did earlier, this is a viable and far more honorable model to follow, a lot of those escaping Ning will not be developers and will look for support and I’m sure delight in finding a premium support model to give them a feeling of reassurance.

I can’t support the model WPMU runs on I spent some company cash to look into what was provided in the paid subscription and I wasn’t that impressed and as a frontend developer the themes left a lot to be desired and if I had used any it would only have been after heavy correction of the many errors found throughout them, and to find that out of the box I had to do a fair bit of work didn’t really leave me that impressed.

On reflection I actually find it in slightly poor taste that you posted to this forum a link to a premium plugin behind a paywall and if it were down to me perhaps would have considered pulling the link.