CS Nuggets

Replacement for CS and Graffiti

2009-07-26T08:57:00Z

Hey Guys, I wanted to let everyone know that I have found a replacement for Community Server and Graffiti CMS, so there is absolutely no reason to put up with Telligent anymore. The product is Sitefinity from Telerik . It is a full fledged CMS that that should be 100% compatible with any fully compliant ASP.NET application that you have. You can use it stand-alone, in parallel with any other application, or with an application of your own design. It has blogs, galleries, forums, and about 50 other...(read more)

Almost 2 years later, and still no solution in sight for small to mid sized communities...

2009-07-23T18:00:00Z

Telligent has completely failed the small to mid sized communities. The original promise was for Graffiti CMS to take over this roll, but it is now almost 2 years later and there is still no solution in sight to replace CS 2007 for these communities. Here is the latest post (4/14/2009) on the subject from Telligent, What is the future of Graffiti? After reading the comments, I agree that Telligent has completely lost its focus. In less than a year it appears that they have squandered the $20 million...(read more)

.NET Tweeks

2009-07-02T22:03:00Z

The latest .NET Tweeks post is now out and is the first of a multi-part series of Tweeks that developers can use in their everyday development of ASP.NET applications. This week it covers the PageBase idea and how to integrate it with master pages. Next week will cover an abstract method of accessing the business tier from a static class as opposed to directly accessing the business tier. .NET Tweeks...(read more)

CS2008: This blog is now WIDER!

2009-06-16T22:44:00Z

I haven't been happy with the crappy width that this blog had, but I didn't want to widen the width of the header image and ruin the aspect ratio. Well, I decided to go ahead and do it anyway. If I hadn't told you that I had widened the pictures, you'd never know the difference. When I get a chance I'll take some real pix to use up there, but this is good for now. Since I rarely get to the mountains down here in Southern California, I may have to rely on Dave Burke for some snowy...(read more)

CS2008: SP2 issues

2009-06-16T20:39:00Z

If you've upgraded to SP2, you may have noticed that some previous issues have resurfaced. The patch that I wrote to allow the file storage location to relative to the application, and go outside of the application, no longer works as written due to changes to the CSContext object again. Since my sites won't run without the patch, I did fix that issue. Here is the patch to make entries like basePath="~/../_filestorage" in your CommunityServer.config or CommunityServer_override.config...(read more)

CS 2009 Pricing

2009-06-16T18:44:00Z

Some one forwarded a link to the Community Server 2009: Final Thoughts on Role, Pricing and Adoption article to me today and I nearly fell out of my chair. Here is a snip from that post: Community Server Licensing (updated June, 2009) : Annual (CPU-based) One Time (CPU-based) Product Code Features 5K 12K Professional-10 10 Blogs, 10 Forums, 10 Media Galleries, 5 Groups and unlimited WIKIS 10K 20.4K Professional-25 25 Blogs, 25 Forums, 25 Media Galleries, 10 Groups and unlimited WIKIS 15K 30K Professional...(read more)

CS2008: CFS and the removal of BLOBs from the database. The unbelievable blunder!

2009-04-02T01:28:00Z

Back in June of 2008 I wrote CS2008: CFS: The deal breaker where I talk about why removing all BLOBs from the database was a HUGE mistake, and here is why: FILESTREAM Storage in SQL Server 2008 By removing BLOBs from the database you open up the problem of orphaned records, disconnected records, and backups being out of sync as the file system backup is now part of the database backup. The whole design is an obsolete concept and complete mess. In the past, BLOBs could be very taxing on the database...(read more)

Custom themes and source control

2008-09-30T06:42:00Z

After reading Breaking Themes in 2008.5 upgrade by Chris Shawn, I had an epiphany when I started to think about how I had setup the CS SDK in my TFS store. You will be able to do this with any of the major commercial source control applications (i.e. TFS, ClearCase, CVS, etc), it won't work with VSS, and I'm not sure about SVN as it is the most screwy source control application that I have ever used. In TFS I have a CS SDK root branch, a base branch which incorporates additions/changes that...(read more)

CS2008: A first look at the CS2008.5 SDK

2008-09-28T19:13:00Z

From a user POV, CS2008.5 is just a bunch of bug fixes with the addition of a new application type, Wikis. But, this is a major step for developers. Here is a cursory list of the changes: The SDK has been converted to Visual Studio 2008, but it appears that Telligent has not installed the latest service pack as the project files now store the Visual Studio build number. The projects all target the 2.0 .NET Framework, but they are also using some of the compiler changes that were made available with...(read more)

CS2008: Code base issues

2008-07-24T16:18:00Z

Hey All, I've been running into some rather significant issues with CS2008 since I started the process of updating all the code that I had written for CS2007 and prior, to work with CS2008. A lot of code is either just missing from the code base, or it has been bypassed by what looks like test code. I've been finding these very specific code bypasses all over the place, all of which cause failures of some sort. I reported one of these a week or so ago when we discovered that permissions were...(read more)

CS2008: Good news for .NET Community Program sites

2008-07-10T00:30:00Z

Last night I sent Rob Howard an email about some concerns that I had with Community Server, one of them being the .NET Community Program. As for this concern, here is his response: "The “.NET Community Program” absolutely still exists. I’m sorry, we need to do a better job of making sure people know about this." A few email exchanges later, I received the CS 2008 .NET Community Program license for this site. Which means that we will be switching over to CS 2008 very shortly, after I write...(read more)

CS2008: CFS: The deal breaker

2008-06-30T18:30:00Z

When I first read about CFS a number of months ago and learned that objects are no longer going to be stored in the database, I thought, "What are these guys thinking." I knew that there were going to be problems, and sure enough, there are. The ideal situation stores all objects in the database and the application caches those objects locally on the file system. This is the way that the old system worked for the most part, it just wasn't normallized. The current system is normallized...(read more)

CS2008: The good news and the not so good news

2008-06-24T00:39:00Z

Hey Everyone, It's been quite a while since I've had much news about CS as I've been working on other projects, but that should be changing for at least the next few months, which is part of the good news. I'm going to be working on a CS related contract and I will also be working on the CS2008 version of the calendar control in my spare time. The not so good news is that I am seriously considering the option of not upgrading any of my CS sites to CS2008, though I do have one internal...(read more)

CS SDK SqlDataProvider: Software Abstraction Layer

2008-05-28T01:27:00Z

Anyone who has looked at the SqlDataProvider project in the SDK has probably asked themselves, "What were they smoking when they designed this?" I don't know if Rob Howard is the creator of this technology, but he is one of the major influences that created ASP.NET and most of what it consists of. The idea of software abstraction layers is very similar to the ASP.NET module system and has been around at least as long, but nothing has ever been published by Microsoft about it until now...(read more)

CS2008: Released! What does that mean?

2008-04-16T16:45:00Z

Community Server 2008 is a major upgrade and change in how Telligent is doing business. The audience for Community Server is changing slightly as it really is no longer a good fit for very small communities, especially if you need features that are not a part of the free version. However, Telligent does have another product that is more suited for that audience, Graffiti . Both products support a new widget technology, which I need to take a closer look at. That being said, many addons that were...(read more)

CS2008: Update

2008-03-28T00:50:00Z

Hey All, The final release of Community Server 2008 is slowly aproaching, which means rebuilds / reworks of existing addons. I will be reworking the Calendar Control slightly to make it work better and be a little more flexable. The project that I'm currently working on had me making a templated control that supports skins, so I'm going to use that knowledge to make it a little nicer. As for the other addons, we'll have to wait and see. I know that one is no longer needed. Take it easy...(read more)

CS2007: What features would you like to see in the Event Calendar control?

2007-06-13T03:22:00Z

Ok, I just created the forum thread, What features would you like to see in the Event Calendar control? I'd like everyone to chime in here. Most of the requests will most likely only be possible in the commercial version of the control, but if I can add a feature rather easily to the free version, I'll do it. I'd like Dave Burke, Dan Bartels, and maybe even Jose Lima and Scott Watermask to chime in here. Lets see if I we can get them to post some thoughts. Comments to this post have been...(read more)

CS2007: Temporary Bug Fix for Forum Posts

2007-06-08T01:47:00Z

UPDATE 06/12/2007: Telligent has released SP2 for CS 2007 which contains this fix. There is a bug in CS 2007 where many of the properties of a forum post are not set prior to executing the post events. If you are using the SDK, you can make the following changes yourself to correct the issue until Telligent is able to provide a patch. If you are not using the SDK, you will have to wait for Telligent to provide a patch as it is a license violation for me to do this for you. Here is the change: File...(read more)

CS2007: API Bug & Calendar Update

2007-06-06T04:10:00Z

UPDATE 06/12/2007: Telligent has released SP2 for CS 2007 which contains this fix. UPDATE 06/07/2007: Read CS2007: Temporary Bug Fix for Forum Posts . A bug in the CS 2007 API was discovered tonight. When saving an edited forum post, incorrect information is passed to addon modules which makes it impossible to update the calendar and causes the application to crash if the post being saved contains a [cal] tag. I report the bug in the Community Server Bug forum. In the mean time, I have created a...(read more)

CS2007: Event Calendar Features

2007-06-02T03:01:00Z

UPDATE 06/05/2007 : Added support for tags in the form of , added the change to the resources.xml file that was left out, and changed the formatting of dates to require MM/DD/YYYY . Leading zeros are no longer optional. To use this control, you will need to place the following register line at the top of your page: <%@ Register TagPrefix="WGB" Namespace="WGB.CSAddons.Controls" Assembly="WGB.CSAddons" %> Here is a typical use of the control: <WGB:EventCalendar...(read more)

CS2007: Event Calendar Released!

2007-06-01T02:47:00Z

NOTICE: Only registered users are allowed to post and download, so don't forget to register . PACKAGE UPDATED 06/05/2007 21:10 PT: The readme instructions have been updated to list a change to the resources.xml file that was left out. Support for single tags has been added. Dates must now be in the MM/DD/YYYY format where leading zeros are now required. And a bug in the CS 2007 Module API was discovered for Forum posts. A temporary patch was made to prevent the control from crashing, but Telligent...(read more)

CS2007: Calendar Control status update

2007-05-30T04:31:00Z

UPDATE: CS2007: Event Calendar Released! and CS2007: Event Calendar Features Since Dan Bartels released a CS 2007 version of his control yesteday, I decided to post a status update. I've been working hard to get the new Chameleon Control finished, and its almost there. I plan on releasing it this Friday or Saturday, but it could be earlier if I have the time. This new control uses the same [cal] tags that Dan Bartels control uses, but it creates and uses 2 new tables and can co-exist with Dan's...(read more)

CS2007: Calendar Control in test phase

2007-05-18T04:09:00Z

UPDATE: CS2007: Event Calendar Released! and CS2007: Event Calendar Features Well, as of just a few minutes ago, I finally got the control working. I still need to do some testing and cleanup, but I have enabled it for use on all of my sites. In about 1-2 weeks, I'll release the DLLs for the free CS 2007 upgrade release that is 100% compatible with Dan Bartels Calendar for CS 2.x. Until then, let me know if you find any issues with the control on any of my sites. Click here to view the calendar...(read more)

CS2007: Teaser: Calendar: COMING SOON!

2007-05-16T23:28:00Z

UPDATE: CS2007: Event Calendar Released! and CS2007: Event Calendar Features The title says it all. Thanks to Reflector and Dan Bartels' Calendar addon, there will be 2 releases. The first being a CS 2007 version of the control that is backward compatable, and the second being a full fledged system for CS 2007 that may or may not be compatable, but there will be an upgrade path if it is not. If all goes well, the first release will be within 2 weeks....(read more)

CS2007: BUG & FIX: BBCodes and Emoticons

2007-04-30T06:43:00Z

This bug is a carry over from CS 2.x which improperly handles BBCodes and Emoticons. You can see this on the communityserver.org site. Every so often you will see a post with smilies that seem out of place, or you may be trying to use BBCodes and they don't quite work properly. This is mostly due to the order in which things are being processed. This fix requires making changes to the SDK, will correct these issues, and add 3 new BBCodes ( , [notes], and [ which is a BBCode escape for code lists...(read more)