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

I received an email last night asking how to setup the Community Server 2.1 SDK and realized I never stepped this off.  Dave Stokes wrote the grand-daddy of all Community Server SDK setup documents, of course, which you'll find in his Downloads library.  If you want the Unabridged New Oxford English Dictionary version of the SDK setup process, go see DaveS, otherwise, I think there's a place in the Community Server world for my Funk & Wagnall's version as well.

What I wanted to cover was how to setup a web project on its own http://site, not converting the /sdk/source/web directory to a virtual IIS application directory as is most often described. 

So we've downloaded the Community Server 2.1 SDK from the cs.org Downloads Current Releases area.

1. Setup the IIS site for ASP.NET 2.0.  May want to add a temporary default.htm just to ensure everything is working.  Be sure to get your ASP.NET 2.0 and Application Pool settings correct.
2. Copy the /source/web contents to your new IIS site root folder.  Our site is called "CSLOVE" and its root folder is d:/inetpub/cslove.
3. Open up /source/Community Server ASPNET20.sln in VS2005.  Remove the Web project. 
4. Add the Web project in d:/inetpub/cslove to the Solution.  Screenshot 1.  Screenshot 2.
5. Make the CommunityServerWeb20 project you just added the startup project and its default.aspx the start page.
6. Open the web project's References folder where you'll see several broken links.  Add the broken linked library files from /source/lib/Framework2 and from /source/lib.  No more broken links.
7. Create a SQL database.  (We're calling ours "cslove.")  Add a user that you'll be using in the web.config Connection Strings.  We'll use "cs_dude."  Make sure he's an owner of the database.
8. Open MSQuery (or SQL2005 manager.)  We're going to execute CS_2.1_CreateFullDatabase.sql and cs_ASPNET2_Membership_Schema_Update.sql.
9. The final thing we'll do in MSQuery is execute the SQL "Create Community" stored procedure.  More information is in /SQLScripts/HOW_TO_SETUP_DATABASE.txt.  Mine looked like this.  exec dbo.cs_system_CreateCommunity 'cslove', 'dev', 'daveburke@dbvt.com', 'admin', 'admin', 0, 1
10. Copy the /source/ASP.NET2_config files to your website root directory.
11. Update the two Connection Strings in your website's web.config.  (c:\inetpub\cslove\web.config.)
12. Rebuild your web project in VS2005.
13. Load your beautiful new Community Server site.