A Concise and Practical Guide to Installation, Administration, and Customization Get Community Server
Express Edition set up and running fast Learn to manage blogs, users, forums, and file and photo galleries How to customize, market, and monetize your site
In Detail
Community Server is Telligent System's award-winning solution for quickly and easily enabling online communities. It includes a suite of integrated applications, such as blogs, discussion forums, photo sharing, file sharing, email lists, newsgroups, and more, which together can help you create your community presence. Community Server is the trusted solution for many organizations ranging from Microsoft and Dell to Conde Nast and Match.com, and powers massive communities like the Microsoft ASP.NET forums ( asp.net/forums) and the XBOX forums ( forums.xbox.com). You can learn more about Community Server, and see it in action, at communityserver.org.
Written in a clear and concise manner, this book will guide you through the installation, administration, customization, and deployment of a Community Server solution. With the help of this book you will be able to start using your Community Server site within minutes of its installation. The book kicks off with a brief overview of Community Server, its various editions and licensing options, and installation procedures and then delves deep into the creation and management of blogs, forums, photo galleries, file galleries, and more.
The book also explores the different ways you can customize your Community Server site along with coverage of various add-ons and modules. You will also learn how to manage your Community Server license and other related settings. Towards the end, the book provides an overview of the various steps required to deploy Community Server to a hosting server.
What you will learn from this book? An overview of Community Server, and the various editions and licensing options Installing Community Server Creating and managing blogs and forums Creating and managing photo and file galleries Using the Reader and Roller functionality to collect and display RSS feeds Managing users and roles, and working with user profiles Monetizing your Community Server site by adding paid advertisements Customizing Community server, applying themes, and using add-ons Configuring RSS, Date, Time, and Email settings Understanding Community Server Reports Deploying Community Server
Approach
With this book in hand, you will be able to set up and manage a Community Server solution. You will learn how to create blogs, forums, photo galleries, and file galleries, and use tools such as the built-in RSS reader and RSS roller in a step-by-step manner. This book will provide your with a clear and concise overview of Community Server and will impart the knowledge necessary to enable you to run and manage a Community Server solution.
Who this book is written for?
This book is aimed at the Community Server administrator with a base level of technical competence and confidence, but no prior sysadmin or developer experience or knowledge. No knowledge of ASP.NET programming is required for using this book. What is essential is your own passion for your target community and your desire to provide the best platform possible to that audience.
User review
Essential guide to working with Community Server
This book covers all of the basic functionality of the Community Server product from Telligent. Chapter 1 gives you a background of the product. Chapter 2 tells you what is required to use the product and how to get a copy of it. The rest of the chapters dive into the detail on the individual features of Community Server, like blogging, forums, RSS feeds, user management and more.
The author of the book was very diligent to capture every and explain the many configuration options for Community Server. This makes the book a worthwhile purchase for anyone who wants to implement Community Server.
User review
Bit dissapointing.
I got this when there was no other book on CS out there and the docs from CS were wrong/missleading/incoeherent, now there are plenty (WROX); at the time of release this book was the only source of information to get the damn thing working. Now that CS have read this book that have improved their supplied docs!
This is a quick guide to getting CS1.1 up and running, we are on cs2007 now.
It is a thin book which is good as it is really the book that should come with the software. So if you are to impliment CS in a week by a client this is the one to skim thru. If your client wants its customized (since all CS sites look the same) you will need the WROX books and a copy of VS2005.
CS offers a very rich and very scalable (web farm) platform for deliving forums and blogs with other associated community features. Has an excellent Admin/CMS system, and is the platform of choice my many bloggers at microsoft.
Think of this book at 'CS in 5 days' then its ok.
The more detailed WROX book is 3 times as thick as this one, where as the WORX styling book (use the CD Custom controls to make a CS site unique from all the rest) is the same thinkness.
User review
Perfect for webmaster/sysadmins and non-technical decisionmakers
The Community Server platform is an out-of-the-box server software product that makes it possible to create online communities quickly.
The book, Community Server Quickly, helps the system administrator or webmaster that is new to this product, to get a quick start. It must be noted that the book focuses on the 2.1 version of the server. The 3.0 version is at the moment of this review in beta 2, and the book features a small chapter on this release.
The first section is a good introduction to what community server is. It presents the five main functionalities: Blog, forums, photo galleries, file galleries and reader/roller.
Next it explains in detail how to install the server followed by a very detailed description of the five functionalities. I don't think there is a feature in Community Server that isn't described in this book.
The next three chapters is about the administration of users and customizing and setting up the server. This is all described in relation to what the out of-the-box product is capable of.
Last the book goes into the more advanced features of Community Server as reporting, ads, spam blocker, URL redirects etc. This is not need-to-know knowledge for everyone that works with the server, but shows that this book describes what Community Server can do from A to Z.
I think it is a good book for new admins and developers that need an overview of what features the product contains. If you have already worked a lot with Community Server and wants to develop against it, this is not the book for you. Overall its a well-written book for webmasters or non-technical people that want insight in the wonders of CS.
User review
Your very own online community with Community Server
The Community Server by Telligent System is a suite of applications for running an online community. It includes a blog, a forum, and photo and file sharing galleries. This book by Anand Narayanaswamy will help you install, customize, license and administer your very own online community with Community Server Express Edition. The author walks you through everything you need to do to get up and running.
He begins by helping you choose the version of Community Server that is best for your needs. Then he walks you through downloading and installing the application on your development machine. He explains the control panel and how to set up the program's options.
Next, you work on the Community Server's blog application. Narayanaswamy covers how to set up a sample blog. You will learn how to register and manage users to the blog and how to perform other administrative tasks. A discussion forum is one way to keep visitors returning to your community site. The author shows you how to start up a sample forum, how to set up multiple forum groups and how to manage the forum on a daily basis. Next, he does the same by showing you how to set up and manage the sample photo and file sharing applications. Finally, he helps you work with RSS to track content from other blogs.
Now that you have your Community Server site set up, the author walks you through the general management tasks such as registering and managing members, password protection, cookie settings, and working with member profiles and avatars. He also covers IP tracking, email setup and other administrative duties. Next he shows you how to work with blog and forum activity reports, how to manage your license, how to set up and maintain word filters and spam blockers. He also shows you how to set up RSS to get the word out about your new community site.
Community Server is a theme and modular based suite of applications. Narayanaswamy helps you customize your community site by changing the look and feel of the themes and customizing the modules to meet your specific needs. Finally, you are ready to find a server and go interact with your community.
Anand Narayanaswamy is an independent consultant and runs NetAns Technologies. He is also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in Visual C#. He has worked as a Technical Editor for several publishers.
User review
Better Than the Product Documentation
Community Server is a very powerful product which, perhaps because it's mainly been written for developers by developers, has never been very strong on end user documentation. That's where this book comes in. If you want something you can pick up and read, that has information organized in a logical fashion, about how to get started with Community Server, then this book is better than anything you will find online.
