We're only a couple of weeks away from a beta release of Community server 2008.1. As previously discussed this is the first of a more rapid pace of releases for the Community Server product.  (There is a public roadmap we've  produced that I'm hoping to have published next week some time to www.communityserver.com. ) What this means though is that we're pretty locked on what we are shipping and what we are NOT shipping.  This post will give you a few more details to help get you ready.

Themes

CS 2008.1 will be shipping with Hawaii as the default theme again, but will not include Lean & Green or Calypso in the box.  This was one of the hardest calls to make, but as a team, we realized we could either fix more bugs & ship good wiki OR support 3 themes while cutting a lot of bug fixes & feature work. 

The reality is that a theme is not simply a set of CSS changes.  Fixes & feature work had to be developed & tested in three themes. For the sake of quality, we chose to simplify for this release and focus on making one theme (Hawaii) better.  For those of you that felt Hawaii was a little drab, we have been adding some more stylization to it. 

Question & Answer Details

I previously mentioned that we were working on dramatic improvements for forums aimed at support communities.  Here are some details to get you ready.

• A new forum can be enabled for QnA or General Discussion. If you pick QnA then new threads will be questions without answers by default.  You can ask questions in General Discussion forums, but they aren't the default thread type.
• The basic workflow has been updated as follows:  User A asks a question, users B & C suggest answers, and user A marks one of both of the suggest answers as the "verified" answer. 
• Once an answer is verified it is always shown at the top of the thread under the question to help people that land there from google.
• Multiple posts can be verified answers.
• We show the user who suggested a post as the answer & who verified the post as the answer to the question.
• The theme icons & visuals have been updated to clearly reflect the three post/thread states (Unanswered, Suggested Answer(s), & Verified Answer(s) )

Wiki Details

This is the biggest addition to Community Server 2008.1.  In terms of a wiki you'll get support for the following:

• Basics: WYSYWIG editable pages with revision history's, tags, comments, & ratings.
• Multiple Wikis per site & One Wiki per Group
• Roles for Wiki Administrators & Moderators.  Admins can create & edit wikis while moderators can lock & delete pages. 
• Attachment support
• Activity Message support
• Support for customizable points for contributions if you have points enabled.
• The ability to create a Table of Contents for your wiki to add some structure.  Like I said, our target is collaborative documentation.  See dogfooding below. :-)

Something I didn't mention before

The Mail Gateway add-on for Community Server is going to be greatly improved because of all the work we are doing for Community Server Evolution.  Details are coming in future posts about Evolution, but all the changes made for Evolution will be included in the release of the add-on for Community Server 2008.1. 

What's Next?

When we hit the beta there will be no more feature work.  With the possible exception of extremely small change requests to Wiki & QnA forums what you get in the beta will be feature complete.  We then enter what we've been calling "baking time" for bug fixes & minor tweaks based on the feedback we get.  We'll also be looking at the forums to take in bugs from CS 2008 that are still lingering after SP1.  So yes, we'll be listening and responding in kind during this period.  Expect this "baking period" to last a few weeks before you see a final release.

What About Evolution?

Community Server Evolution is an intranet only version of Community Server that includes add-ons like Exchange, AD, & SharePoint Integration.  Because this is being built on top of Community Server the schedule is following the CS schedule, but will need some additional time once Community Server is solid.  It will beta & ship shortly after Community Server 2008.1 release.

Posted to Software and tagged as evolution , cs , community-server , cs-2008-1

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Here are two bits from the user registration process at Digg that makes them a little more human.

and

Posted to Design and tagged as digg , registration , ui , fun

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I'm sure a bunch of you just got done installing CS 2008 or upgrading to SP1 for CS 2008, but I want to give you the lowdown on what you can expect this fall with the release of CS 2008.1. 

Schedule

The first thing you'll notice is that I said "fall 08" and not "spring 09".  Yes, we're going to be speeding up the release rate of Community Server.  Expect 3-4 releases per year and also expect that service packs become strictly focused on bug fixes rather than features.  I'm going to label to the target of CS 2008.1 as September.  Expect a beta within 2 months.

Evolution

"Evolution" is the name being given to a new version of Community Server.  This version is being built for use as an intranet solution.  Evolution, although based on core Community Server functionality, will include extras meant for usage behind the firewall like Sharepoint, Active Directory, & Exchange integration. Evolution releases will generally ship after CS releases, but this post isn't about Evolution. :-)

Wikis

CS 2008.1 will ship with support for Wikis.  No this is NOT the same wiki engine you may have seen on http://wiki.asp.net.  Wikis, in Community Server, will feature pages with revision history, tags, ratings, comments, easy linking/ page stubbing, wysiwyg editing, and a couple of surprises for good measure.

I will say that our target scenario for Wikis is collaborative documentation.  This isn't to say you can't use it for anything, but we're really going to help out people looking to build documentation, tutorials, FAQ, etc out collaboratively. 

Forum Questions & Answers

I know, if you read my blog then you know we support this already... but not well.  We're improving everything from how you can set up support communities all the way down to the workflow & theme of QnA threads. 

Default Site Avatars

I've jokingly called the work we've done with Avatars my "No more Rob's" campaign. In CS 2008.1 site administrators will have the ability to upload a set of "Site Avatars" that users can select from.  This will be an option to enable or disable just like remote or user uploaded avatars.  We've also added the ability for admins to pick a new default avatar in the control panel for users that don't choose/upload their own. Finally I'm really happy with some of the updates we've made to the users avatar selection experience.  It's a small bit of functionality, but something a huge percentage of users will go through.

The Devils in the Details

Similar to cleaning up the user avatar experience there are a lot of small things we are doing to make the administrator and normal user's life better.  If we do it right then these are the sort of things you don't notice outside of being less frustrated and discovering "hidden features" that we've buried deep within the product. These changes range from something like making the administration UI easier to navigate to letting you add multiple users to groups at one time.

Posted to Software and tagged as community-server , evolution , cs2008-1

What would my blog look like if content boxes were purple?  You can answer that question by simply setting the color and hitting save... but then all of your site visitors will be subjected to your bright pink sidebar before you come to your senses.  You can avoid all that by taking advantage of preview mode and this post tells you how.

The first thing you'll want to do is sign into your blog admin or site administration panel.

For blogs click to your blog control panel and then click "Change how your blog looks".  If you are a site admin click "Site Administration" and then click "site theme". 

Once you see the theme configuration tabs you can known yourself out with changes... just don't hit save... at least not yet. Click the preview tab instead!

Once you click the preview tab click "enter(or start) preview mode" and then "open a new preview window". (If you are using a version of CS before CS 2008.1 then you will have to click back to the preview tab between these clicks. :-) )

You can go back, make more changes... like a taxi-cab yellow background... and update preview mode and test again.  Once you are happy with the changes you've made then you can click... wait for it... Save.

Should this be the new default theme?  What's your favorite ugly CS dynamic configuring?

Posted to Software and tagged as tellitip , community-server , cs-2007 , cs-2008

Hey there IndiansFanJoe3456!  Wow, that's a mouthful.  Chances are that you have one of these accounts on a site that doesn't let you be you because someone else is already you!  One of these sites may even be a Community Server site.  Well, there isn't an excuse for this.  As of SP1 for CS 2008 we've enabled "friendly display names" by default.  Well, we've actually supported this for a LONG time and this post will show site admins how they can control this. 

Open your Community Server control panel and navigate down to Membership Administration > Configuration > Account Settings > Profile Settings. Step by step arrows here:

In the screenshot above you see the master On/Off switch for this feature.  Turning it on will enable the following option on a users profile settings page...

And for some inexplicable reason that we'll resolve in a future release the user also has the ability to turn his or her display name on or off as shown here:

Long live "Indians Fan 4 Ever!"

Posted to Software and tagged as tellitip , identity , reputation , display-names

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3. Community Server 2008 Service Pack 1 is Now Available

I've been pinged by more than a few people about this today, but I can officially say that SP1 for Community Server 2008 is now available! On the download page you'll find updated install packages as well as an upgrade package for existing sites.

The more notable items include these enhancements:

• New users have display names enabled by default
• Users can delete their own activity messages
• Admins can now delete user files and folders
• Control Panel link destinations are most consistent

And these bug fixes:

• Better localization in all themes
• New friendships are properly logged to the activity stream
• Save and Continue works properly in blogs
• Centralized File Storage works correctly when accessed over SSL
• Empty conversations and profile announcements/comments can no longer be submitted
• SpamRules updated to get property values
• Several bugs were fixed within the REST Web services stack.
  

For a more complete list of fixes included in this release check out the official team blog post on the subject. I'll have another blog post in a few days that maps out the road ahead for Community Server.  I can tell you now that you won't be waiting another year for a big update.

Posted to Software and tagged as cs2008 , service-pack , community-server

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I don't usually go out and create a 1 per post "mindless link", but I tend to agree completely with what Dare said in this post and it wouldn't have been long before I wrote up something similar... so I'll just let Dare say it for me. 

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - The "Popularity" of FriendFeed is a Bug in the Social Software Ecosystem

It took a little longer than two months but it looks like I was right. For some reason Facebook isn't putting the comment bubbles in the news feed but I assume that is only temporary and they are trying it out in the mini-feed first.

FriendFeed has always seemed to me to be a weird concept for a stand alone application. Why would I want to go to whole new site and create yet another friend list just to share what I'm doing on the Web with my friends? Isn't that what social networking sites are for? It just sounds so inconvenient, like carrying around a pager instead of a mobile phone.

Although I'm going to add that Twitter falls under the same category.  Maybe it's because they've been too busy trying to keep the whale floating to add new features, but it feels so incomplete it's hard to see the value over all the other, site specific, status messages that define a users current activity.

Posted to Social and tagged as twitter , friendfeed , status , whale

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Community Server 2008 introduced the concept of Social Networking to our platform.  Users can register for your community, become freinds with other members, and get status updates from their friends, but it's lonely when you start out with no friends in a community.  A bunch of sites have the concept that new users are "friended" by default to an existing community member. This tip will show you how to do this with Community Server.

1. Open the Community Server control panel as an administrator.

2. Click to enter "System Administration"

3. Under Membership Administration click "Account Settings"

4. Open the "Friendship Settings" tab.

5. Add one or more existing site members to the "Default New User Friend List"

6. Click Save

In this case Delia is in charge of Employee Relations at Telligent.  So on our pre-beta Evolution intranet site (yes we are using this already) all new employees will be connected to her by default.  This will give them a point of contact before they build up their colleague list on Evolution!

Posted to Software and tagged as tellitip , community-server , cs-2008 , friends , administration , evolution

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George Carlin passed away yesterday and, in honor of him I'm posting a list of 7 things you can't say on the Internet.  Standard "this post does not reflect product direction or the views of my employer" disclaimers apply.  :-)

1. Content Production is NOT for everyone.  Not all of your customers need a blog or want to produce a video about your product... even if they love you!  And if you are thinking about starting a podcast then please stop, turn around, and get educated on broadcasting 1st.  Just because something has a low barrier to entry doesn't mean you need to do it without training. Broadcasting is best when done by people that know what they are doing and training doesn't mean "just do it"... Nike was wrong.  I'm not saying you can't do it, but simply that you have no right to complain if you can't get your show into iTunes or the front page of Digg.  Robert Scoble is NOT an A-List blogger that "made it"... he's a professional journalist that knows how to interview and write good stories.   The 90-9-1 % rule is there for a reason and isn't going anywhere.
2. Distractions DO NOT make you smarter. I'm not saying that the digital water cooler that is Twitter doesn't have an important place in your life, but unless you are a journalist (see item #1), Twitter does not make you smarter.  "Micro-content" could also stand for "micro-intelligence" and isn't a substitute for real conversations, real books, real education, or simply sitting down and doing whatever it is you are being paid to do... which (in most cases) is not Twitter every time you come up with some pithy thought.
3. The i[Phone/Pod/Mac] isn't as good as I'd hoped.  Saying anything like this still results in a religious following telling you why it's a good thing the first iPhone didn't have 3G or why iPods don't need video.   As a bonus to this I'll add that Apple would prefer you "NOT talk about fight club" in general as evidenced by their consistent persecution of their biggest fan sites.  I'm not sure when they won't be able to get away with that anymore.
4. E-mail is Required.  "We need to kill e-mail" or "e-mail is dead" is a meme that makes it's way around the Internet every couple of months.  I'm here to tell you that e-mail is NOT dead and that, in fact, your super cool Web 2.5 social whatever NEEDS killer e-mail integration.  E-mail is still the most widely used communication vehicle and will continue to be so for a LONG time.  E-mail isn't going away, but how we use it might evolve. :-)
5. Google Sucks.  They haven't improved the core search in years and gmail is really the best (albeit non-profitable) thing they've shipped outside of core search and their advertising business. Google docs is cute, but feels a lot more like a set of demo applications that give you a hint of what could be when it comes to online document sharing.  You run out of real runway in these apps fast when it comes to usefulness. Real document authors are going to be using word for a long time and google presentation is TERRIBLE compared to Powerpoint at allowing you to push your message.
6. Internet Advertising Sucks.  No one has really figured this out and the industry is still VERY young. Ads in online videos suck and if YouTube can't figure out how to make money then all video sites are in trouble until this gets solved.  Standard ads aren't any better. The targeting is generally terrible & even Facebook can't make much with all the information they have about you as a person.  These problems won't be solved until ad agencies catch on and realize that not only do you need 30 instead of 1 message, but that you need 10,000 messages about your product or more.  Maybe the problem isn't figuring out what people want to hear about, but that there simply isn't a message written for all those ears in waiting.
7. Social Software Sucks.  The top apps in facebook are the same f'ng quizzes that everyone sent in e-mail 10-15 years ago!  I can't port friend lists. I can't take my data with me. Nothing is really mine.  I have to sign into and manage 30 different profiles.  No one helps me figure out where to focus my attention and most software doesn't help me get my job done any faster... and my job is in Social Software!  The problem is a combination of the fact that the industry is so young that no one has really figured out how to properly integrate these platforms and tools into your lives.  Outlook was around a long time before "Getting things Done" came out and told you how to properly use it and the same curve is going to happen with Social Software as it evolves. This is what makes my job so exciting.

It's possible that this post was over the top and I am certainly taking things a bit far, but I believe that's what George did best.  He made us all look at standards in a different way and did it by making us laugh and reflect on our own behaviors.

Feel free to write your own list if you'd like, but I'm not going to go around tagging people to do it.  George wouldn't have approved of such things.

Posted to Business and tagged as standards , social , twitter , facebook , apple , google

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If you tune into This Week in C9 you may have caugh some stumbling over my name. It starts around the 7:30 mark.  But the best part is hearing Gretchen reffered to as "Josh Ledgard's wife".  I know this won't make much sense to many of you, but I've been "mr Gretchen" for a long time and this prooves there is just a little bit of justice in the world.

Posted to Social

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My last tip showed you how to get some attention on polls in your user community by using the featured post widget.  If you thought that was neat and you like collecting data then this tip is for you.  I'm here to tell you that you can download detailed poll results to Excel.

1. Create a poll as a post in Community Server forums.

2. Get users to take the poll.  (See previous tips)

3. Find the poll logged in as a site admin.

4. Click "User Voting Report"

5. Click Export & Open in Excel!

6. Analyze... that parts up to you.

Posted to Software and tagged as tellitip , polls , forums , excel , export , user-data

So you like polling people huh? But you want some more attention for polls so you can collect more user data?  This tip will teach you how to publish a featured poll to the front page of the forums in CS 2008 using the forum post widget.

1. Create a new poll in the forum of your choice.

2. Log into your site as an administrator

3. Visit the control panel and navigate to Site Administration > Customize Site Themes. (That's this URL off of your community /controlpanel/Settings/ThemeConfiguration.aspx)

4. Pick the sidebar tab (NOTE: This only works for themes that support dynamically themed sidebar content enabled like Hawaii. Custom themers may find themselves out of luck here. Your mileage may very.)

5. Find "Forum Widgets" and use the dropdown to select "Forum Post" and click "add widget"

6. Click configure on the forum post widget

7. Remember that post you created in step 1?  Well you need the URL and you need to grab the PostID out of the URL and paste it here.

8. Click OK and Save your theme changes.

Posted to Software and tagged as tellitip , forums , polls , themes , content

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I don't know why, but lately I'm a sucker for things like this...

Posted to Design and tagged as ui , text

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Today's tip will teach you how to customize the e-mail templates that are used in Community Server or Graffiti.  As I mentioned earlier today, the voice of your product or community is something that should be seriously considered.  You should have control over what your members see in automated e-mails that are sent on a regular basis.

• To edit the e-mail templates that Community server sends open the file named "e-mails.xml" from the Languages\en-US\emails\ folder in your favorite XML editor and have at it.  You'll obviously want to back up the existing file in case something goes terribly wrong.  :-)
• In Graffiti each template is located in the  __utility\emails\ folder with a separate view file for each e-mail.  

Although HTML is allowed in the templates you'll want to keep it simple as HTML is rendered differently in just about every e-mail client.  You should also make sure that each of your templates has both an HTML and non-HTML updated version. If you update just one you may have missed a % of the site users that prefer non-HTML mail.

Posted to Software and tagged as tellitip , graffiticms , graffiti , community-server , e-mail , templates

Something that's never really discussed in the visual age is the voice of your product or Community.  Words are just as important as important as the visual design and layout.  The language of your product educates, informs, and sets the tone of the environment for the user. 

If your software sounds angry it might have an impact on the user perception.  On the flip side, every one of these e-mails has the potential to be an important customer touch... make it a good one.

I'll pick on ourselves for a moment to demonstrate.  The following message is received by a user of Community Server 2008 when they are rejected by a group owner for membership...

From: EVOLUTION - Automated Email [evo(at)telligent.com]

Sent: Monday, June 02, 2008 4:45 PM

To: Jason Alexander

Subject: [CS Core] Access Rejected

Your access request to the CS Core group (http://evolution.telligent.com/groups/cs_core/default.aspx) has been rejected.

You were sent this email because you had requested access to the CS Core group and that request has been rejected.

Does anything jump out at you?  If you said "Jason has been REJECTED... and must be a loser" then you spotted part of the problem.  Jason thought it was a little harsh too.  Yup, we're dogfooding our upcoming CS Evolution product, running SCRUM, and Jason (although we love him) is a chicken in the process.  Although our group is open and Jason can read everything we didn't want him to be using our group site as a venue for feedback, so we rejected his membership to participate.

You'll be happy to know that in the next CS release we're doing a full sweep of the e-mail templates generated by CS.  I'm told in CS 2009 we'll be telling users "Don't worry, it's not you, it's me"... which would be a big improvement.  If you are using CS today and want to look over our mail templates and change them... it's the subject of today's Tellitip. 

I'll save you the jump and tell you that the templates are all in e-mails.xml in the \Languages\en-US\emails directory of Community Server.

What good and bad product voices have you seen?

Posted to Design and tagged as voice , evolution , e-mail , templates