Warning!- avoid importing your 'suspended' Ning members!
Ning To Jamroom
I just started browsing through my 4000 members on my new Jamroom site (which is not live yet), and I began to see suspect user names and upon investigating, some of these profiles were obvious spammers. Their join dates were from various times in the past however, including from years ago. I could not figure out how they slipped by my joinup approval on my Ning site and wound up in my JR site.
Then I went on my Ning site and checked my Manage Members area... OMG these were the 250+ members that had TRIED to join but that I had prevented them from joining with Ning's "Ban for Spam" function, which put them all in Ning's "Suspended Member" list that would then save their IP addresses and not let them try to join my site again. They had all been banned for spam by me while their membership was still pending approval, which puts them in that list. All 250 of those suspended/banned spammers now had active profile pages on my new Jamroom site and were listed right in with my regular member list! Accckkk!! =8-0
I took screenshots of my Ning 'suspended member' list and must now punch in each of the 250 names in my JR site and delete them one by one.
After taking the screenshot in Ning, I totally selected everyone on that 'banned' list and DELETED them altogether so they wouldn't get re-imported next time when I do a real import to make my site switch live.
JR ALSO imported and re-positioned all the ning members who had 'LEFT' my network and were in the "Left" list of members, gave them their profile pages back and their joinup questions, info, etc...including some who had parted from my site on sour terms. =8-*
It's all very weird, but the main point here is to learn from my oversight and CLEAR OUT all your lists of SUSPENDED or LEFT members in your Ning site's member management area, BEFORE you make your Ning archive of members that you are going to import into JR. Delete them all or they will wind up getting imported as actual members of your JR site!
Have you ning admins ever actually looked at those drop-down member catagories in your member manage list- the categories for Suspended and Left members? The people who leave your site actually get put on that list automatically without you doing a thing. And when you "ban for spam" they wind up in your Suspended list.
Go check your Ning site and then look for those rascals in your JR member list!
Consider yourselves fairly warned.
updated by @strumelia: 07/09/16 09:21:02AM
