1. Go to Ning.com
2. If you don't have an account, create one. It's pretty straightforward and takes only a few minutes. If you already have an account, click Sign In on the top menu.
   
3. Once you're signed in you'll be able to create a network. Just enter a name for the network, and a web address. The name will be what your community see when they login, and the address is what people type in to get there
   
4. Wow! How easy was that. You now have a social network. Now let's set it up.

Next step is setting the privacy level and descriptors.

You should see this at the top. It'll help you know how far you have left until you've finished your social network.

Decide whether your network is public or private. Even private networks are sometimes visible. You'll be able to make it completely private in the settings later on.

Add the tagline. This appears under the network name when people come onto your site.

The description is a roughly one-paragraph description of your network that appears on the site, and in emails you send to your network. For example:

The virtual home of SimonYoungWriters, a team of talented writers from all around the world. Discuss the art and science of writing, the writing life, how to write more betterer, and anything else we want to talk about.

Or something shorter, like

A network encouraging Indigenous people to see their cultural celebrations as a legitimate part of worship to the Living God.

This is also something you can change later, so don't worry if it doesn't look perfect first time.

Okay. Now you're about ready to press "next".

You can drag page elements around to suit. Super easy. Just click and drag.

Press next.

Now you can choose your colour scheme, and in fact customise the entire look and feel of the site.


Choose how you want your page to look, and press "next".
Now it's time to choose the questions.

These are important. They're the questions you want people to answer to join your network. The answers to these questions will be available on their profiles for everyone else to see.

You could stick to the traditional social networking questions of location, age, gender etc. You might also want to add something that's specific to your network. For instance, in the SimonYoungWriters network, we asked writing-related questions.

Once you've chosen the questions, and how they'll be answered, click next.

You should see that everything is now complete, and then this button.


Press it, and you're live! Then it's just a matter of maintaining your network.