After Your App is Submitted

We here at Ning thought it would be useful to let you know a bit about the policy and usability processes we have in place to review your Apps.  These processes are in place to ensure you are putting your best foot forward to in providing a quality product for all of our 1.4 million Ning Networks and 30 million members.

What happens after you submit your App?

Technical Criteria

We first examine your XML for the technical criteria needed to make sure it will appear correctly in the App Directory, and that it can be added successfully.  We look for the following criteria in your XML file:

1. The file must exist in the location specified.
2. The file must be a well formed XML file.  It must parse correctly
3. <ModulePrefs> tag must have the following attribute.  It can have other attributes as well, but these are necessary.
   1. title:  This is the title of the app
   2. description: This is the description of the App, and will show up in the about view of the app, which is accessible through the App Directory on any network
   3. author: This is the author of the App, and should correctly reflect the name of the developer
   4. author_email: This is the email of the author. This may be used as a way for users of your Profile App to contact you in a future release.
   5. thumbnail: This is the location of the thumbnail image which is used in the directory and must be a .jpg, .png, or .gif (NOT animated) exactly 120 x 60px big. Your thumbnail acts as the logo for your application and we suggest that you choose something that people will associate with your application.
   6. screenshot: This is the location of the screenshot, also used in the directory and must be a .jpg, .png, or .gif (can be animated within reason) no bigger than 502 x 1000px big.  We suggest that you choose a screenshot that is an actual image taken from your application. Ideally, your screenshot should be a crisp, clear image and that people will recognize once they begin using it.
4. The ModulePrefs tag must contain <Require feature="opensocial-0.7"/> or <Require Feature="opensocial-0.8">.

Your <ModulePrefs> tag should look something like this one from our in-house App, Now Playing:

As you can see, there are a few other attributes in the openning <ModulePrefs> tag. But so long as the App meets the above technical criteria, we pass it to our Policies Team to take a look at your App based on our Policy Criteria.

Policy Criteria

Does your app allow members to download, view, listen to or otherwise access or distribute third party content? If so, we require a copyright policy, which you can read about in Section 6 of the Third Party Application Developer Terms of Service (http://about.ning.com/thirdpartyappdevtos.php). Elements of a copyright policy can be found in our sample policy (http://about.ning.com/samplepolicy.php). For additional info about the developer obligations, check out the Third Party Application Developer Terms of Service (http://about.ning.com/thirdpartyappdevtos.php).

When the Profile App has passed through the Policies Team, we pass it to our Usability team for the final check of an Profile App's usability.

Usability Criteria

The last -- and admittedly most subjective -- criteria in accepting a Profile App is usability.  This is very difficult to quantify, but is necessary as it ensures that we grow and maintain a great directory.  We make sure the user experience makes sense, is relatively straight forward, and delivers the developer's intention as the design indicates.  The most important here is that we make sure is that any member of a Ning Network adding this app will have a good experience when adding and using the app.  This is to quality check your Profile App for your benefit as well as the benefit of members using Ning Networks.  The quantifiable factors we look for are as follows.

1. Is the application Hello World, or Weather Sharer, or any other application based directly off of a tutorial?
2. If you have ported your app from another OpenSocial container, does your app retain branding or images from that container?  Weverify that a Profile App that was previously ported from another social network container specifically works for Ning Networks and only has container-based messaging specific to Ning.
3. Is it suitable for every network on Ning? As the application is displayed in the Profile App directory of every network on Ning, we need to make sure it doesn't have any obvious sexual intention, violence, etc.
4. The app must be in English.  If an app is in a different language, there should also be an English option.
5. Does the Profile App do everything it proclaims to?
6. Are there any significant bugs?
7. If an app requires an account to use, we may make a test one or ask you for test credentials to try it out.

If everything is in order and we believe your Profile App is within our Third Party Application Developer Terms of Service (http://about.ning.com/thirdpartyappdevtos.php), your Profile App will be forwarded back, and accepted.  If there are any issues at any point in this process, we will note them, and let you know.  We can then work with you to resolve these issues, and get you ready to resubmit and be entered into the Profile App Directory!  That wraps things up -- if you have any questions about this, feel free to let us know in the Ning Help Center as always.