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Book Review - ASP.NET 2.0 instant results

Michael — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 23:47:00 GMT

I bought this book and have spent time skimming most of it and reading a few select chapters. In my opinion, it is an awsome resource for someone that wants to jump right in to ASP.NET with some greate code examples. The books structure is very useful for developers as each chapters follows an Overview, Design, Code and Explaination, and Setting Up the Project flow. The book and accompanying examples do a good job of using nicely tiered architecture, however, datasets where used (at least in the examples I delved into) more than I would have preferred. I'm not big on datasets and tend to avoid them whenever possible. I highly recommend this book to and developer new to ASP.NET 2.0 looking for some example applications to get them up and running.

Commuinity Server with Existing Application

Michael — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:30:00 GMT

I'm working with a client that wants a rather robust ASP.NET application created that will leverage community server to manage their online community. I began searching for resources on best practices for integrating community server with an ASP.NET application to achieve my clients goals.Here are some of the resouces I found and the directions (or mis-directions) that I took.

From Telligent's Knowledge Base Article : Can I add blogs to an existing web application or site? it was clear that this was possible for blogs, and if it possible for blogs, it must be possible for the rest of the Community Server application.While the KBA states it can be done, I could not find any technical documenation on Telligent's website the coved the steps required to accomplish this.
Tutorial: Running ASP.NET applications under Community Server by Tod Birdsall - This was a great start. I went ahead and followed the tutorial, however, when I attempted to broswe to my virtual directory, things didn't go so well. After following the steps in this article I had to complete the following additional steps to get things up an running:

1. Copy the entire contents of the Community Server Web project's bin directory to my website's bin directory
2. Copy the entire contents fo the Community Server Web project's themes directory ot the root of my web application
3. Server Error in '/community/TCOYF' Application.
4. Due to a namespace conflict I need to make the following change to line 20 in the Themes\default\Common\home.aspx file:
Line 20: SearchQuery query = new SearchQuery();
Changed to:
Line 20: CommunityServer.Components.SearchQuery query = new CommunityServer.Components.SearchQuery();
5.Copy the entire contents of the Community Server Web project's Language directory to the root of my web application.
6.Copy the connectionStrings.config from the Community Server's web directory root to the root of my web application
7. Copy the following controls section from the Community Server's web project web.config file to my web applications web.config file.
<controls>
<add tagPrefix="CSControl" namespace="CommunityServer.Controls" assembly="CommunityServer.Controls" />
<add tagPrefix="CSBlog" namespace="CommunityServer.Blogs.Controls" assembly="CommunityServer.Blogs" />
<add tagPrefix="CSForum" namespace="CommunityServer.Discussions.Controls" assembly="CommunityServer.Discussions" />
<add tagPrefix="CSMail" namespace="CommunityServer.MailGateway.MailRoom.Controls" assembly="CommunityServer.MailGateway"/>
<add tagPrefix="CSFile" namespace="CommunityServer.Files.Controls" assembly="CommunityServer.Files" />
<add tagPrefix="CSGallery" namespace="CommunityServer.Galleries.Controls" assembly="CommunityServer.Galleries"/>
<add tagPrefix="CSReader" namespace="CommunityServer.Reader.Controls" assembly="CommunityServer.Reader"/>
<add tagPrefix="CSDynConfig" namespace="Telligent.DynamicConfiguration.Controls" assembly="Telligent.DynamicConfiguration"/>
<add tagPrefix="TWC" namespace="Telligent.Glow" assembly="Telligent.Glow" />
<add tagPrefix="CA" namespace="ComponentArt.Web.UI" assembly="ComponentArt.Web.UI"/> <add tagPrefix="CP" namespace="CommunityServer.ControlPanel.Controls" assembly="CommunityServer.Web"/>
</controls>
Custom Apps within Community Server by Adonis BItar has another approach to running an application under the community server web application that simply restoring the settings for the virtual directoy back to the default settings for ASP.NET websites. He has a web.config file available for download from his website. I also have a similar web.config file available for download which includes the necessary elements to use ASP.NET AJAX (including the required updates to use the May 2007 Futures release).

Community Server's Lack of Documentation

Michael — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 06:08:00 GMT

Ok, I need to preface this post with some sort of disclaimer. I will get around to elaborating on a disclaimer in another post and just link to it as several of my posts will likely require it :) but here I go.... First off, I want to say that I think Community Server is awesome. I'm not going to explain why I think Community Server is awesome (CommunityServer.org explains this in depth), However, I got a few big hang-ups with Community Server. My biggest complaint is the lack of real documentation on Community Server. I have seen several posts regarding this lack of documentation on their forums. The responses I have seen regarding their lack of documentation encourages developers to:

Use the forums on CommunityServer.org
Read the blogs of their MVPs.
Access Community Server's online documentation
Visit the developer Wiki.
Direclty review the code in the SDK

Well, anyone that believes the way to master an architecture and API is to scavenge around forums and blog posts is off their rocker. Not that some of the resources and not helpful (and greatly appreciated!). There are some great using Community Server and they constantly post valuable information on the forums and on their personal blogs. However, there is not a complete, concise, and up date collection of material regarding community server available.

Community Server's online documentation contains almost nothing for developers. It is geared toward administration and the developer wiki is completely useless, outdated, and incomplete..

While I understand that providing documentation would require resources (time and money) on their part, I believe this lack of documentation is really holding them back. I had the product downloaded, installed, and was able to administer it with ease, however, when I came time to customize it, I almost walked away from Community Server completely because of the lack of documentation. With some appropriate documentation the resources I and other developers have to spend getting up to speed with community server could be minimized to a fraction of what it requires today.

Lastly, how about the simplest of API documentation? If it is available, I have not stumbled upon it. Tonight I went ahead and downloaded the latest SandCastle CTP and generated the API for Community Server Components Namespace. It can be downloaded from my downloads page.

Book Review - Professional Community Server

Michael — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 03:57:00 GMT

This review may sound more like a rant that a review, so I apologize to the authors in advance. I do not mean any disrespect toward the authors as they have each contributed in many ways to sharing knowledge regarding community server. However, this book falls short of reaching any expectations I had for it.

I read this book in just a few hours. As I stated above, this book was a real disappointment. It remains pretty high level and skims over the technical aspects of community server. The book is about three hundred pages with about 15 pages that I found valuable. The book reads like an administrator's manual written by a marketing department.

The books states that itis for both experienced developers and general enthusiasts. This is a bit misleading as I found this book almost completely lacking in any real developer oriented material. The last 5 chapters that are geared toward developers each contain a few useful tidbits of information, however, this same content can also be found on many websites and blogs already (including the authors websites). Experienced developers are accustom to digesting technical information and will find this book loaded with extraneous blabbering that has nothing to do with understanding, coding, or mastering the Community Server architecture.

This book was a waste of the $39.99 I paid for it and even after it's publication, as far as I'm concerned, Community Server remain a undocumented software product

Update to run on Community Server

Michael — Sat, 26 May 2007 15:57:00 GMT

I've been contracting with a client that is using Community Server to manage their online community. As this work has made me become quit familair with Community Server, I figured I would update my personal website to run on Community Server and play with some of the features.