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

I said a few times that I was sticking with Community Server 1.0 and planned to migrate to CS 1.2 when it became available.  I guess the pull of CS 1.1 just sitting out there calling my name was too much for me. 

I don't know if my blog is still "pimp worthy," as that studcake Brendan Tompkins once described it, but I did add a few homey touches to meet my basic needs.  I downloaded CS 1.1 on Wednesday and this is Saturday (a beautiful day in Vermont, I might add), and so over a 3-day migration session to the vanilla CS 1.1 I made these mods:

1. Added a new skin similar to my previous skin, but different enough to know it's new.  I started from scratch and used the CS 1.1 Hover skin as a basis for the skin you'll find at my site.
2. Used the new CSGallery skin configuration (improved from 1.0) to create a Photo Gallery theme similar to my blog
3. Added MultiImageAdd support to CSGalleries.  Some method parameters changed (smarter and cleaner, I think), and for consistency, GetConfig() methods were replaced with Instance(), but the mod went smoothly.  How we got to version 1.1 with no MultiImageAdd baked-in is quite beyond my feeble understanding.
4. Once I had MultiImageAdd working I had to add a CSGalleries Image panel to the CSBlogs PostEditor app.  I like adding images to my posts and didn't want to be without that little mod I've come to use quite a bit.
5. I replaced the standard ArchiveList and CategoryEntryList controls that display the entire post contents of all items with controls that display titles only.  Faster and more efficient to view all posts.  I added this in CS1.0 as an optional view, but it is now the default view.
6. Miscellaneous little changes.  Display user friendly name rather than anonymous or daveburke.  I always hated that in CS. 
7. I couldn't change the display of images of CSGalleries from Date Ascending (oldest shown first) to most current shown first.  The admin setting didn't seem to work.  Hardcoded the default SortType from Ascending to Descending. 
8. Added an email on new comments, like I added to CS 1.0 and which was part of dotText.  I guess this still isn't part of the package, at least I didn't see it.  I've always had auto-emails in dotText and added to CS 1.0.  I couldn't imagine staying on top of comments without it.
9. Replaced the CS Home Page with my own page using the same CSS style guides as my blog and gallery.
10. Added CAPTCHA support.
11. Broke out the categories as a separate panel on the Blog PostEditor page.

There were a few things I didn't add that were part of my CS 1.0 site and don't know if I'm going to add them:  direct navigation to the Add Comment form and expand-collapseable post contents are two things that come to mind.  I updated CS 1.1 enough to content me for now. 

How do I like CS 1.1???  To tell you the truth, I'm not seeing much different yet.  I do hope that CS1.1 fixes the double feed bug I had in CS 1.0, so subscribers shouldn't see the occasional duplicate feed spew any longer.  Another reason for moving to CS 1.1 is that it seemed prudent to migrate from CS 1.0 to CS 1.1, then to CS 1.2 instead of directly from 1.0 to 1.2.  I wouldn't expect Telligent to support that migration in SQL Scripts and so forth from 1.0 on a CS 1.2 release.  I don't think I would if I were in their position.

All-in-all the migration was VERY smooth.  I was very impressed, especially with the SQL upgrade.