I am new to jamroom and would like to open a jamroom site.
I have been using ning.com since 2008 and running a hip hop social network based in Germany and covering all the German speaking areas including Austria & Switzerland.
I have been on ning 1.0 since 2008 until ning 2.0 was introduced in 2010. Since the beginning of this year ning introduced the 3.0 after being bought last year from Glammedia.com
Ning 2.0 was good although it was not tailored to the need of musicians or media networks like hosting music or video website it was still good. With the release of 3.0, ning dropped the ability of music and video upload thus making ning.3.0 just a publishing network and the drop of the media options is a loss that people like me who run a music network and not a bloging network cannot take.
It was a big loss and a bridge of contract to most people who have dedicated their time and money from day one building great networks and making ning what it is today, so that is when i like most other people started looking for alternatives.
In the past months i have started looking and finally came across jamroom and from all the alternatives i have seen jamroom seems to be the best that meets the requirement of the kind of network that i want to have. Although my ning 2.0 network is still online, ning will force people late summer this year to migrate to 3.0 which means all the songs, beats and videos which members uploaded on the networks will be lost.
In as much i am glad to find jamroom and excited to set up a network here, i am being careful and skeptical because once bitten twice shy. Now am looking at jamroom and its features and i am like damn why did i not see this before, because it is not easy take ones time and revenue to build a good network and then loose it because ning. com changed it TOS after being bought by Glam.
I could start singing a joy song 'cos i found an alternative called jamroom but i am skeptical 'cos i have been here now and then and a look a jamroom official blog most of the topics has been years ago and there doesn't seem to have recent blog posts, so i am hoping that everything is still running. Most of the members networks that appears on jamroom home as spotlights are no longer current or available. So why is that jamroom blog has no current blog post since the last 2 years or more?
However, i have much more important questions than the actuality of the jamroom official blog and i need some infos before settling down with jamroom.
The most important Questions i have is about the server choice, i have gone across a topic here on user support forum which has a list of servers that are not good or not worth the effort. Thanks for the warning but what will be more useful to a jamroom newbie like me is a list of servers that have been tested and trusted or found good, so ladies and gents i will be very happy if you could point me out to such servers that i may have some options before i settle for one. I have read about the JBServers on jamrooms official blog about Quality web hosting. I have taken a look there and checked the price and i really need other alternatives before choosing. Currently i have 2 Servers at the moment beside my ning network. One is hosten by 1und1.com and the other by Godaddy.com Have any of you heard or used any of the both mentioned server? Apart from JBServers are there any other servers that are dedicated to jamroom?.
What are the important factors when choosing a server, i mean except the storage, bandwidth, backup, jamroom support, etc? What increases or leads the need of a bigger or dedicated server, the number of members or the volume of visitors that one gets?.
At the moment i have no knowledge of php, or MySQL but i am willing to learn. It took me 2 years to learn about everything i need from simple html to CSS & JQuery which is mostly need to run the ning network.
What do i have to learn on Jamroom, can i hire somebody easily from here to set up the jamroom network for me? Hence ning did not provide a possibility to migrate to other network hosts i will have to start everything new and have to ask all my members to re register when the jamroom network is set up.
Thanks for reading and i would appreciate any hints, infos or tips
I'm not a blogger, never have been really. I do like the forums though, so I think you'll find the forums to be far more active than the blogs.
Not sure how far you have read, but a lot of things have happened over the past year or so. Jamroom all the way up to JR4 was declining in users and was looking like it was going to end.
At that point Brian, the main Jamroom developer since the beginning asked a few of us to come on board and help build JR5 which is due to be released this month after almost a year in development.
JR3 was a music system.
JR4 was a music system that you could add modules to.
JR5 is a module system that you can form a music system if you want to.
So the focus is moving toward making JR5 a more versatile system so it can have a wider audience.
You wont find many hosting companies saying "Hey we have Jamroom Specific Hosting!!!" because there is not such a big user-base. And hosting video and audio takes more power than normal hosts want to provide.
I'm sure you've read the stories of "My hosting provider advertised UNLIMITED EVERYTHING for $5 a month, but now says my site is getting too big." JBServers is active here on the forums and knows jamroom, thats why its the top pick for hosting. Its actually really great to have someone who knows hosting AND knows jamroom.
I wonder if its possible to build an import script to import your data and users from Ning? Do you know if they have any sort of API that could be used to import your stuff. That would benefit You, your users, jamroom, but not ning.... probably not eh?.
If your finding dead links in the links to members sites, I'd love to know which ones, so i can get them cleaned up.
We're all so focused on getting JR5 out of beta that general stuff like that aren't being looked for. Your help is appreciated.
Joined: 30 Aug 2005
Posts: 8792
Location: Ultrabubble
Posted: 07/10/13 18:26
Shame about ning going down. It happens. Less likely with an open source system though.
JBservers was the best option for jr4, and I expect that it will be for jr5 as well - hte proof will be in the pudding, and DJ (of JBservers) makes a consistently good pud.
As Michael says, look to jr5 rather than jr4 - you've found Jamroom at the best time possible, so jump on it.
_________________ Kulshi Mezian!
"Stranger from another planet, welcome to our hole. Just strap on your guitar and we'll play some rock and roll"
