MANIA COMMUNITY

Override Files in Community Server

For all examples in this article, I shall only be modifying the configuration of the HTML Scrubber through a communityserver_override.config for the sake of consistency, however do bear in mind that override files can be used to modify any aspect of a communityserver.config or a siteurls.config file. Why Should I use Override Files? The main benefit of using override files to make changes to the core configuration files is that you are not actually modifying the core configuration files. You are instead making the modifications through a separate configuration file. This means that...
Community Server Question and Answer Functionality

The Question and Answer functionality in Community Server (introduced in Community Server 2008.5) is very useful in support scenarios where users come to your community posting questions because it provides a means of tracking whether questions have been answered or not. Below is a screenshot of a sample Question and Answer thread. Understanding Q&A A Question and Answer thread contains four types of posts – the original question, normal responses, suggested answers and verified answers. The original Question The original question appears at the top of every page in the thread. This helps...
Community Server Articles

Articles are a little known feature of Community Server which adds some very simple content management facilities to your site. When I say basic, I do mean basic. These articles don’t appear in search, nor are they automatically linked to by any part of Community Server (apart from in the Control Panel). To link to articles you need to add the links yourself – this could be from blog, forum posts etc. Or by adding a link to the navigation . However they do make adding and updating additional content pages on your website, in keeping with the look and feel of your community, very easy...
Customising Content Boxes


Common content boxes are used throughout the Hawaii theme. They are most visible in the Sidebars of Hawaii pages but they are also used in defining the main content of the page. There are four areas available in a Common Content Box, which may not all be present for a particular content box Title / Header Header Form Content Footer What each region refers to in a Common Content Box should be obvious from the above image of a common content box. In HTML, a common content box is defined as follows

TITLE...
New Site Theme

I’ve decided I’m a little bored of the previous theme my site was using and so I’ve updated to a new theme. I’m using a slight modification of the PointSpace – Blue theme converted to Graffiti by Rich Mercer (available at http://richmercer.com/graffiti-themes/ ). I shall be making some more modifications to the theme over the next few days and will post my updated version of the theme when I’m complete. Anyway, I’m hoping the new theme brings new life to my blog.
Resizing the Content Editor

It's been a little quiet here recently so let's put that right. Did you know that you could resize the content editor used when posting to Community Server? To do so, just click the arrow like icon in the bottom right of the editor and drag it up or down to adjust the height of the editor This is very useful when you're writing a long response and get bored of having to continually scroll up and down if you want to look back at something you wrote earlier in the post.
AlexCrome.CS 2008

Today I'm finally releasing the CS2008.5 version of my addon package. Not all the addons from my previous package have survived but that's no loss as they're now baked into the core of CS2008.5. Included in this release are the folowing addons: (If the name's not a hyperlink, I haven't documented it yet) Addons Configure Addons Control Panel Page Improved Filtering method for displaying Active Topics Referal Points Addon Mapped Path File System File Storage Provider CSModules Mark Threads Read On User Create Notify Administrator On User Create Refresh Post Cache On Comment Search Engine Ping Set...
AlexCrome.CS 2008 Is Here!

Finaly after working on it for months I feel ready to release this package. I am still working on documenting this release so do be patient with me whilst I do that. Included in this release are (If it's not a hyperlink, I haven't documented it yet). To download the package, please see the Installation Instructions . I shall be blogging more about particular aspects of this package over the coming weeks. In particular I plan to blog about Configurable Addons, and how they can be used to prevent having to modify the CS Control Panel whilst providing a nice way of configuring your addons....
Mapped Path File System File Storage Provider

This addon allows you to specify the path in which CFS files are stored based on the machine name of the current computer – e.g. you could have your development machine store files at c:\inetpub\CommunityServer\filestorage\ whereas store files on your live server at \\CSShared\FileStorage\, without managing two seperate communityserver.config files (or _override.config files). Installation Instructions Install the core AlexCrome.CS package . Configure the addon as described in the MappedPathFileSystemFileStorageProvider section of communityserver_override.config....
ReferalPointsAddon

CS allows your existing members to invite new members to your community through the Invite User page (/user/inviteuser.aspx). This addon provides an incentive for them to use this as it gives the user points for every new user they bring to the community. Installation Instructions Install the core AlexCrome.CS package . Execute the ReferalsSQL.sql script against your database. Configure the addon...

THANK!!!