Community Server is an award-winning solution for setting up online communities. It includes a suite of integrated applications, which includes blogs, discussion forums, photo and file galleries, reader, and roller, which together can help you create your community presence. Community Server is the trusted solution for many organizations including Microsoft, Dell, Conde Nast, Match.com, and others. You can learn more about Community Server, and see it in action, at http://www.communityserver.org.
Written in a clear and concise manner, this book will guide you through the installation, administration, customization, and deployment of a Community Server solution. With the help of this book you will be able to start using your Community Server site within minutes of its installation. The book kicks off with a brief overview about the evolution of Community Server, its various editions, and installation procedures, and then delves deep into the creation and management of its integrated applications.
The later chapters of the book explore the different ways you can customize your Community Server site along with comprehensive coverage of add-ons and modules. You will also learn how to manage your Community Server license and other related settings.
The Community Server platform is introduced in Chapter 1 and we look into the evolution of Community Server and various applications available with it. Keeping in mind the nature of tasks that lie ahead, this chapter also discusses various editions and licensing options that will help you to choose the right Community Server platform for your use. Finally it outlines some of the key features of the upcoming Community Server 3.0.
Everything that you require to execute Community Server on a development machine is discussed in Chapter 2. The steps required for download and installation of Community Server are explained in depth. The chapter also lists the steps required to configure your installation and describes the various options found in the Control Panel.
One of the greatest features available with Community Server, blogs, is explored in Chapter 3. It examines how to create and manage blogs to publish content with the help of a sample blog. It also explains how to configure blogs for registered users.
Community Server has a fully featured discussion forum. Chapter 4 teaches you how to create forum groups so that you can file each forum under the appropriate group and create a sample forum. After creating forums the chapter covers making posts and also how to manage and administer these forums.
Chapter 5 shows you how to add a gallery to your Community Server. You will learn how to create photo and file galleries and manage them with the help of sample photo and file galleries.
Chapter 6 explains the powerful reader and roller features of Community Server. By implementing reader and roller functionality in your site, you can keep track of content of the other blogs using RSS feeds.
Chapter 7 looks at management of site members, their profiles, resetting passwords, and managing roles, cookies, and avatar settings.
The standard look and feel of Community Server gets a face-lift in Chapter 8. It gives you a run down of how attractive Community Server can be through the use of themes and also explains how to make important modifications to your chosen theme. It also teaches you how to use add-ons and modules, and to include custom links in the navigation bar of the site.
Chapter 9 gives you the edge when it comes to managing various Community Server settings. It explains the management of different settings associated with RSS, post, date, time, and email. At the end of the chapter you learn how to track the IP addresses of visitors to your Community Server site.
Chapter 10 takes you one step further by looking at the reporting functionality. This chapter shows you how an administrator can generate and view not only user, blog, and forum activity reports but also different types of exceptions and jobs reports.
Chapter 11 delves into monetizing your site by advertising through Google AdSense and Amazon affiliate programs. It further discusses the management of licenses, word filters, spam blocker, member points, emoticons, and IP addresses.
Appendix A walks through the steps followed for deploying Community Server to a hosted server. Basically it provides a sound process for taking the finished product and making it available for public consumption on your host site.
The prerequisite for this book is a working installation of Community Server. To run Community Server the typical environment consists of IIS (5.1 or greater), .NET Framework (1.1 or greater), a Database System (SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, or SQL Server 2005 Express Edition) and a Development Environment (Visual Studio .NET 2003, Visual Studio 2005, or Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition). We cover the details of prerequisites and installation of Community Server in
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