Dave Burke - A Case for Community Server (The name, not the game)

A Case for Community Server (The name, not the game)

I was communicating with my good friend Keyvan Nayyeri out of Tehran this morning who made a very good point that we should consider about how we talk about Community Server. Keyvan's point, and I completely agree, is that we should try to use "Community Server" when we blog about Community Server and not "CS." CS is easier and we know what each other are talking about, but we can promote the product with more Google Juice and Syndication Muscle if we get in the habit of writing "Community Server."

If you read the [DailyNewsShort], you'll observe that I rarely write "CS," even though I know everyone knows I'm talking about Community Server. Another point regarding the Daily News and promoting Community Server content is that I have a bunch of feeds that I use to scan the globe for both popular and obscure Community Server information alike. Posts with "Community Server" will find their way to my desktop, as will "CommunityServer" and "Community+Server," but if anyone wants to get some Daily News Love, writing about "CS" isn't going to show up on the syndicated map or in the Daily News.

I felt this way about dotText, as my long-time online buds may remember. I wrote "A proposal to change the name of .Text" in January, 2005 for similar reasons.

So get in the game and use The Name. That lovely name that we'll hear sung to the tune of Melancholy Baby by the Norma Zimmer and the lovely Lennon Sisters here on the Lawrence Welk Show. And a one, and a two, and a...

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Posted on 11/3/2006 10:54:41 AM by Dave Burke
Categories: Community Server
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11/3/2006 11:27:08 AM Permalink

Great food for thought, Keyvan is a true thinking machine!

I will do the same with all of my posts from now on and after all we can just add a snippet to our Community Server blogs so we can just type [cs] for us lazy types.

The Wizard |

11/3/2006 11:33:00 AM Permalink

Good idea on the [cs] snippet, Wizard!

daveburke |

11/3/2006 12:09:13 PM Permalink

Good thoughts...

The snippet idea is great, and I use it as well, but I realized that it is blog specific. This may be a good time to request the option for global snippets...

ASB |

11/3/2006 12:10:09 PM Permalink

Hey, Dave... You really need to upgrade to SP1 so we can see some normal URLs...

11/3/2006 12:23:07 PM Permalink

Global snippets.... Nice!

As for the Urls, I sinned and touched code I shouldn't have to customize this site. I could use ScottW's Live Writer CSModule to name the Url, I suppose. I should check it out. Funny, I just read-up on it again last night. Scary coincidence, Logik!

11/3/2006 12:42:25 PM Permalink

I always use Community Server in titles, and the first time I mention it in a post I spell it out. Subsequent mentions get shortened down to CS...I'll try to get in the habit of always spelling it out though

jayson knight |

11/3/2006 12:43:25 PM Permalink

+1 on the global snippets and the SP1 upgrade!

11/3/2006 1:43:30 PM Permalink

One time at the beginning oughta do it, Jayson. Remember, it's Keyvan's idea, not mine. You'll have to answer to him.

11/3/2006 8:12:24 PM Permalink

Rick, I'm a vaccine machine now :-P

Jayson, yes, probably more than 90-95% of our regular visitors know what "CS" is but what we was talking with Dave about is general visitors (such as those who come to our blogs/sites via incoming links or search engines probably don't know what is that.  Also Search Engines, themselves, can't understand the relationship between "CS" in a Community Server site and "CS" which sometime stands for "C#" in .NET sites and ...  Using "Community Server" has a good effect of rank in Search Engines.

For example, there are many guys who search for "Dev Guide" and thank to my newly improved pagerank they come to my site but don't know anything about "CS".  Yes, of course, I agree that it's not possible to use "Community Server" everywhere because sometimes it's too long.  For instance I can't use "Community Server Developer Guide" as my tag name because it's too long.  Here I can't do anything except using "Community Server" in first lines of my CS Guide posts.  This is one of reasons that I always try to use short and special names for open projects which make them unique.  "Alabaster" is probably unique for everyone who lives in .NET and Community Server communities and also "Cyclone".

However, we just say, it's really worth to try to use "Community Server" instead of "CS" as much as possible.  "Community Server" is a great name for this product but apparanetly has a drawback: IT'S TOO LONG!

Keyvan Nayyeri |

11/6/2006 5:46:06 AM Permalink

But, if you really worried about Google Juice, then wouldn't "CommunityServer" but even better?

James Curran |

11/6/2006 5:59:49 AM Permalink

James, You gave me an excellent idea. I realized I didn't have Google and IceRocket feeds for "communityserver" where I do for most tag-based services. I just added them and will see what different content I get from the "communityserver" feeds. Thanks!

Dave Burke : Freelance .NET Web Developer specializing in Online Communities

A Case for Community Server (The name, not the game)

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