It's been a great week of latenight geek sessions getting cozy with Community Server 2.0. It was one of those weeks as described by Andy Smith's old MetaBuilder site subtitle: "Sleep. The best 10 hours of the week." I always loved that line. (Sidebar: Where did
Andy Smith go? I mean, other than to Telligent? His last blog entry Star Date 09.05.2005.)
To report on the migration status, we're not online yet. Nope. Still playing on my office network sandbox. Probably a couple of weeks out before dbvt.com/blog is rockin' with CS 2.0.
A few bullets to describe my CS 2.0 experience and the issues I plan to blog more about later:
- I'll be running CS 2.0 in .NET 2.0, one of the prime incentives of upgrading. The lovely display of CS 2.0 in a VS2005 Solution Window is below. Creating the web site, opening the solution and compiling in .NET 2.0 was a snap. Debugging is tricky in VS2005 since the solution consists solely of Class Libraries, but not a problem.
- A world of fun and flexibility await you in the Master Pages, Themes and Skins on the Off-World Colony! As I have observed by other CS 2.0 Blogonauts (Jayson Knight, for instance), I will be using the default CS themes, skins and master pages for my home page, blog and photo gallery. I appreciate the effort that went into creating shared default themes in CS 2.0.
- When I go online, it will be with Home, Blog and Photos. Files Area to come later, but the source isn't available in the free version, I'm limited to 25 files (which should be enough, but still...) and because I would primarily use it to share CS mods, my enthusiasm isn't too high for File Module Deployment. An Open Source paradox of motivational angst.
- Setting up for a single site blog was still way too hard. It was the most frustrating aspect of the week. While certain Telligenti (Dan and Ken, specifically) have made a sincere effort to help users with single blog setup tools and support, Telligent still hasn't gotten this right. I found CS 2.0 to be more difficult to configure for a single user than any previous version, in fact, and I've done this dance a few times now.
- I am really enjoying using CS Utility Controls (FormLabel, Href, etc) and CS 2.0's even more extensive approach to inheriting from base objects than earlier versions. Adding Sidebar Links, which are CS Class objects inherited from a BaseBlogLink object for example, is an interesting process that I'll describe later. Makes for very clean presentation layer code, that's for sure.
- I'm doing something different this time around: checking on whether the current page is the blog home page, turning on and off sidebar controls accordingly to avoid 10 inch sidebar length and 4 inch body goofiness.
- CS 2.0 is not your father's Community Server code base. Definitely a major increment release. Lots more electronics under the hood in this baby.
- Lots of fun control properties to finesse the UI, thanks to ComponentArt inclusion. Something I want to spend more time with. Certainly a more sophisticated UI than previous versions. Nice.
- I've gone about as far as I want to go (though not nearly as far as I'll end up going, I'm sure) in code inbreeding with the source. I've spent some time working with ScottWater's CSModules sample package and reading about CSModules on the CS Wiki and Docs. CSModule coding is at the top of the latenight CS Geek Queue. I like the CSModules concept where you can theoretically drop a DLL in a \bin directory and add an HTML string to a skin and be done, but seriously, there's no way to make Community Server your own unless you start mixing blood with the host. Still, I'm going to take CSModules as far as I can take them, if for no other reason than to reduce migration time on future CS releases.
- Last bullet point for the day is that from a developer's perspective, this Community Server package is the cleanest, smartest, most interesting set of CS code ever.
Yet to do:
My custom UI needs are pretty much done, but there's more functionality I still have to add. Specifically, I like the
Titles Only list display control I added to my CS 1.x sites, so I want to add that yet. I also need to add my
iTunes Module, and I suppose my
Netflix Queue page as well. I want to add my
Technorati Tag builder, too, while I'm at it. Finally, I'd feel naked without a
CAPTCHA control wrapped around my comment form Submit Button, but first I want to further investigate what type of comment spam protection is baked into CS 2.0.
Two functions I MUST HAVE on my site is
MultiAdd Photo Upload Support (I'm not going to bitch about this STILL being missing in the free version. Telligent is a profit-driven company who doesn't need to justify why certain functions are not available in a free version of their product--though I can't understand why, at this point, a multiadd photo function isn't built into the core of CSGalleries.) The second function I'll need before blast-off is the
Galleries integration piece I added to CSBlogs, where I can select Gallery photos from my PostEdit page and add them to my post formatted and sized the way I want them. Some things a guy can't live without.
So look for details on CS 2.0 bits found here in the days and weeks ahead, mixed with lots of CSLove and maybe a bit more bitching. Today I'll leave you with lots of CSLove.
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