Telligent have released Community Server 2007 and with it the SDK - basically all the source code for the product. If you want to do any development for this new version of CS, you’ll need to download this and get it working. It’s all manual install though and as Dave Stokes hasn’t managed to update his install guide yet, here are some rough and ready instructions for running it from scratch using SQL authentication with the database.
NB. This is a VS2005 SP1 \ ASP.NET 2.0 project only now, so no more VS2003 support.
- Download the SDK from http://get.communityserver.org/download/
- Extract all the files from the download (CS2007_3.0.20416.853.sdk.zip - catchy innit?).
- Open SQL Enterprise Manager \ SQL Management Studio. Create a new database to host all the Community Server data. I’ll call it %CSdatabase%.
- Run cs_3.0_CreateFullDatabase.sql against %CSdatabase%. You’ll find this in the SqlScripts directory in the SDK.
- Now create a login for the website. I’ll call it %CSuser%.
- Give %CSuser% access to %CSdatabase% and put it in the following roles:
- cs_securityadmin
- cs_ddladmin
- cs_datareader
- aspnet_Membership_FullAccess
- aspnet_Personalization_FullAccess
- aspnet_Profile_FullAccess
- aspnet_Roles_FullAccess
- aspnet_WebEvent_FullAccess
- Create a new community by running the cs_system_CreateCommunity stored procedure like this:
exec dbo.cs_system_CreateCommunity 'localhost/cs', 'dev', 'admin@example.org', 'AdminUserName', 'AdminPassword', 0, 0
Where you replace "localhost/cs" with your URL, and replace the Admin account email, username and password with your desired values. NB This is not the %csuser% account, this is the account you will log into CS with when its up and running.If you would like to have a sample blog and gallery created for you, change the last zero (0) to a one (1) in the line above.
exec dbo.cs_system_CreateCommunity 'localhost/cs', 'dev', 'admin@example.org', 'AdminUserName', 'AdminPassword', 0, 1
- Create a virtual directory in IIS pointing to the Source\Web directory. It should have Read & Run Scripts permissions. Make sure IIS runs ASP.NET 2 against it.
- Open VS 2005 and then open the Community Server 20.sln file from the Source directory.
- Open the properties for the CommunityServerWeb20 project. Click the Web tab and towards the bottom of the options, make sure Use IIS Web server is checked and change the Project Url to point at the virtual directory you just created. Save that.
- Open connectionstrings.config from the CommunityServerWeb20 project and change the connection string there to the correct one for your database. Something like this
server=(local);uid=%CSuser%;pwd=%CSuserPassword%;initial catalog=%CSdatabase%
- Build the whole Community Server solution.
- Start CS2007 in your browser.
Interesting to note the timing on this one - on the day that Telligent launched Community Server 2007, Microsoft publicly launched what seems to be a beta of something not a million miles away from it, currently codenamed ‘Athens’. Now the last time they used this codename, it referred to the project for an ideal home pc, presumably now made obsolete by the arrival of dedicated Media Center PCs and Windows Home Server boxes. Perhaps this second Athens project will also fade away in time?
The tagspace demo is an interesting mashup of various Web 2.0 sites already out there, but what are the blogs and forums betas for? Is this what Live Spaces will eventually become or did Microsoft just decide that it couldn't bear using an third party product to run its two main blog spaces any more?
(More info here from the project lead's blog)
Microsoft intends to migrate its blogs.msdn and blogs.technet sites to a new community platform that is internally code named “Athens”. If you are interested in playing with a beta and offering feedback on what you would like to see in the platform going forward head over the new beta site. In addition to the blogs it will be a home for forums.
I’ve been trying my hand at extending Community Server. The SDK and Dave Stokes’ SDK installation guide are invaluable but I came upon an awkward glitch when trying to debug my first extension. Having attached the VS debugger to the web server process, and done anything in Community Server I’d get
An exception of type ‘System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException’ occurred in System.Data.dll but was not handled in user code
Additional information: EXECUTE permission denied on object ‘sp_sdidebug’, database ‘master’, owner ‘dbo’.
A quick bit of googling reveals that this isn’t a uncommon but it’s related to SQL debugging and I wasn’t attempting to do that. None of my VS projects had ‘Enable SQL Debugging’ checked. Fortunately the solution was quite straightforward : when attaching the aspnet_wp.exe process to VS, make sure you are only attach managed code.
- Click Tools > Attach to Process
- Click the Select button just above the list of available processes to attach to
- Select ‘Debug these code types’ and check only the boxes for Managed (and Native if necessary) code.
- Click OK
- Click Attach
- Debug as normal
Full credit to techenvelope for this.
For reference though, if you are trying to do some SQL debugging, the MS advice is to
The actual support articles are
Full instructions for use and download at
Ken Robertson’s blogMayhaps Ipona will be run with Community Server soon?
I'm thrilled to announce the immediate availability of Community Server version 1.0
[Via Rob Howard's Blog]
And if, like me, you've been running dasBlog on a personal site and see no reason why this is of interest, on of CS's developers Ken Robertson has written an article on how to adapt it to work exactly as a single person site rather than a community. Then of course you have the added gallery and forum features, tempered neatly with the 'XML vs SQL Server post store' internal debate that ye purists are bound to have. Enjoy.