There are several features to a Ning that you can access, both during the 3rd step of the creation process, as well as through the Manage Tab's Feature setting.
We've mentioned many before, including forums, photos, videos, events, activity, and RSS. Here are some of the others:
Members - this pane shows the thumbnail picture of each user, which people can click on to go to that user's personal page.
Description - this box displays whatever information was typed in during the creation stage
Text box - this box allows you to add some simple text in a pane. It works well for general directions, such as a welcome message that will always stay on the Ning, and that people don't really need to interact with.
Notes - this feature is a simple discussion board, the difference being when you make a note, there are no comments that go along with it.
One thing to keep in mind. There are some Nings that subscribe to the "if it is available, throw it in" theory. This is not a good idea! You really want to take a minimalist approach, not offering more features than your community will actively use to collaborate. If you throw in other features like notes and blogs and chat, it can distract community members with many different options, causing them to go less often to the critical ones (and crimping discussion).
To choose the right features, keep in mind what the vision for your collaboration space is, and the nature of the topics you will be collaborating about. Feel free to have a discussion forum about particular features to see what your community would prefer.
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Date last modified: October 20, 2009.
Heartland Area Education Agency 11
