Ben Tiedt

Community Server 2008 Hack-a-thon

2008-05-09T15:26:47Z

One of the fun benefits of working for Telligent is the ability to participate in regular "hack-a-thon" contests. These contests usually involve working with a new feature or product and result in great prizes! Last week, while the Community Server team was in Dallas, we had a hack-a-thon to make cool products using the new REST API in Community Server 2008 in less than 20 hours (the contest started at 3PM and ended at 10AM the next day). There were a lot of great entries and everyone showed...(read more)

What is a Good Online Video Service for Screencasts?

2008-05-08T15:59:44Z

I'd like to start posting more video-based demonstrations and walk-throughs of theming and customizing Community Server, but I don't really want to store the videos on my shared web host (and pay for storage and bandwidth). What is a good online video service for screencasts? Blip.tv ? Vimeo ? Veoh ? Other? Please let me know in the comments. Also, please let me know of any topics that you'd like me to cover....(read more)

Community Server 2008 - Groups Overview

2008-05-05T22:35:55Z

Community Server 2008 includes a new feature, Groups. Groups are miniature community sites within the larger community site, similar to Google- or Yahoo-groups. Each Group has its own content, membership, and permissions. What's in a Group? A group can contain a single blog, single media gallery, single forum, and can also contain "pages." The blog, media gallery, and forum can be individual enabled by the group owner. The blog, media gallery, and forum behave exactly the same as the...(read more)

Dynamic Navigation Add On for Community Server

2008-04-26T16:04:00Z

Common requests for new users of Community Server are "how do I edit the navigation bar?", "how do I add a second level of navigation items?", and "how do I add drop-down menus to the navigation items?" In all of these cases, changes are required to a few config files, some additional javascript needs to be added, and, even then, the items are only editable by modifying the theme files. To make these changes/scenarios easier, I've implemented a new add-on for Community...(read more)

Community Server 2008 - Centralized File System (CFS) Overview

2008-04-24T20:01:00Z

In Community Server 2007 and earlier versions, the many file-related features (post attachments, site files, blog files, avatars, role icons, etc) all implemented their own file management logic and supported (a) storing files in the database (b) storing files in the file system or (c) configurable options allowing file storage in the database and/or file system. Adding new file-based features (in the core application or in add-ons) required implementing custom file management logic. Database-based...(read more)

Community Server 2008 - Implementing Custom File Viewers

2008-04-23T15:13:00Z

File viewers are the unsung heroes that make Community Server 2008 media-friendly. They implement the support for viewing and resizing images, viewing uploaded and remote video files, viewing video from online video services, and playing uploaded and remote audio clips. Without file viewers, the media gallery would be the file gallery from CS2007. File viewers are supported when rendering post attachments or by using the "Insert Media" toolbar item in the content editor for blog/media/forum...(read more)

Improved Chameleon Documentation for Community Server 2008

2008-04-21T23:26:14Z

The updates to the official documentation sites are still a little way out, so, in the meantime, I've gotten permission to post the new, improved Chameleon control documentation on this site. Here it is: CS2008 Chameleon Documentation The new Chameleon documentation merges the old CHM download file and property documentation (along with some additional information and assumptions) to provide a single, integrated, searchable, control-based reference for all Chameleon controls in CS2008. It also...(read more)

Community Server 2008 - How to Implement Custom Widgets

2008-04-21T19:38:00Z

After adding support for widgets in custom themes , it may be useful to create a few custom widgets. Widgets in Community Server 2008 (internally identified as content fragments) are server-side .net classes implementing the CommunityServer.Components.IContentFragment interface. Community Server will load all classes implementing this interface from all assemblies in the bin/ folder and make them available in the widget selection form (subject to application-type filters) -- there is no additional...(read more)

Community Server 2008 - How to Support Widgets in a Custom Theme

2008-04-18T23:56:00Z

After updating a custom theme for CS2008 , support for widgets can be added. Community Server 2008 provides built-in support for extending Dynamic Theme Configuration to support selecting custom widgets to be displayed within a theme. CS2008 includes widgets for showing post lists, user lists, group lists, tag clouds, custom HTML (including viewer support for videos, images, and audio), as well as external widgets from Google, Widgetbox, and Springwidgets. Here's a short example of using widgets...(read more)

Community Server 2008 - How to Upgrade Themes from CS2007 to CS2008

2008-04-18T17:28:00Z

My last article outlined the changes made to Chameleon and Theming between CS2007 and CS2008 and could be used as a guide for an in-depth, manual upgrade of a CS2007 theme to CS2008. In this article, however, I'll provide my suggested approach to upgrading themes for CS2008. Upgrading a CS2007 Site Theme for CS2008 Remove Old Files/Folders The following files and folders are no longer used in CS2008 and should be removed (if they exist) to prevent unnecessary review when upgrading to future versions...(read more)

Community Server 2008 - Changes to Chameleon

2008-04-16T22:22:00Z

In this post, I'll outline the changes to the Chameleon theming engine (and themes in general) between Community Server 2007 and Community Server 2008. If you're interested in the changes to themes between an earlier version of Community Server (before 2007) and the 2008 version, I suggest reading my Introduction to Chameleon posts from the release of CS2007. New Functionality Community Server 2008 merges the File Gallery and Photo Gallery applications into a single Media Gallery application...(read more)

Community Server 2008 - Notes, Changes, and New Features

2008-04-16T01:05:30Z

As announced earlier today , Community Server 2008 is now available ! CS2008 includes many exciting new features: embedded video and audio, real friend support, widgets, mini-communities a.k.a. groups, improved messaging, and more. To help everyone make the jump to CS2008, I plan on publishing technical articles covering features that I was involved with: Changes to Chameleon (CS2007 to CS2008) How to Upgrade Themes from CS2007 to CS2008 How to Support Widgets in a Custom Theme How to Implement Custom...(read more)

Potterville High School Class of 1998 10 Year Reunion

2008-02-17T23:00:00Z

I was supposed to help plan the 5 year reunion for the Potterville High School Class of '98 that, as far as I know, completely didn't happen. Now that it's time for the 10 year reunion, there is a group of us trying to get something planned. If you graduated from Potterville High School (in Potterville, Michigan) in the class of 1998, please contact me (via the contact form on this site) or request membership in the Potterville Class of '98 group on groups.google.com so that you can...(read more)

Watch Theming Community Server from CSDC'07 (Part 1)

2008-02-15T00:02:00Z

Part one of Wyatt and my talk about theming Community Server from CSDC '07 is now available on the Telligent web site. This video provides an overview of Community Server theming, URL rewriting, and the Chameleon theming language. Go watch it now......(read more)

Dynamic Configuration in Graffiti CMS

2008-01-17T21:04:00Z

As was mentioned at the CSDC'07 back in October, Dynamic Configuration support is being used in more places. Today, it was announced that Graffiti CMS (a new product by Telligent ) now supports global variables. This feature is implemented using the same Dynamic Configuration support used in Community Server. The great news is that if you are familiar with defining configuration meta-data in Community Server, you already will know how to define configuration data in Graffiti! Both Community Server...(read more)