Inviting 2000+ Ning members to log in - anything I should know before jumping in?
Ning To Jamroom
Strumelia:
Yes!-
1) assuming you have tested 1 email address thorugh your Mailgun tools to make sure mailgun is set up right.
2) Assuming you have checked the validity of all your member emails using the Kickbox validator tool, so there won't be a lot of bounces which could trigger a Mailgun preventative action. Invalid email members can be filtered into a separate quota- and you won't select that quota when sending invitations.
3) In your JR Email Core module, under Global, set the Max Send Rate to "5" or at most "10" per minute. This will throttle the emails going out so that Mailgun does not view it as a spam sendout and shut you off. with 2000 members, it'll take 6 or 7 hours to send them all out...not a big deal. You can WATCH the number of remaining invites slowly go down to 0 in your "Queue Viewer" TAB of your Dashboard....cool to do.
Be sure to set the MaxSendRate throttle back to "disabled" when you are done sending out all the invite emails.
Remember there will be members who cannot manage to log in for one reason or another with their temp passwords- be prepared to reset their account to a NEW easy PW yourself, and then email them your instructions and the pw you manually created for them...they can then log in and change thier pw again if they like.
In addition to these three steps, what have other site owners done about the display of profile information that was previously on public display in a Ning network?
In my case, after importing, all the Ning profile data went into the private Account fields of each member, regardless of whether it had been designated public or private in the Ning profile field settings. This left all the Profile fields empty in the new JR-based network.
With some early help from JR, I was able to add profile field templates to my NingJa skin so that Profile content is published in the public profile page sidebar, but since the migrated data are all in the Account fields, the public profiles of most members are empty by default.
The result is that nobody can learn anything about anyone else in the new network, which makes it very uninteresting. "People Watching" is one of the main entertainments of social networks!
When my former Ning members do login, they (1) will see their own empty profile page (discouraging even to them, I imagine), and (2) should follow instructions in the Mailgun invitation to rebuild a public Profile page (by adding data to the Profile fields), even if they can see their old data sitting in their Account fields.
This second technical hurdle, after the new login process with new passwords, may be what stops many members from rejoining the network - along with the fact that the network looks like a ghost-town, with all the empty profile pages showing.
I have not yet sent out a second Mailgun message to remind members to login to the new network, because the response to the first round was not impressive.
I need to improve how the site works and looks before I send out the reminder message.
Any suggestions about the issue I describe here would be welcome. What have other site owners chosen to do with old profile data from the former Ning network, and how did their members respond?
Thanks.
updated by @researchcooperative: 11/19/16 08:10:00PM
