September 2004 - Posts
If you download dScribe and played with the tool, few things are still missing. It's because I usually setup those stuff directly in the database, but I reckon it's not really the right way to do it.
So the next version will include more Administration functions.
- Pages & Sections Setup (version 1.55)
This is a big part and the core of the CMS. You will be able to Add/Edit from a selected Project, all the Pages. Then again on the same page, another list of Sections will come up and then a list of Templates where you chose the one you want for this particular section.
- Setup. (version 1.6)
This has been pronised since a while but it's not so easy to build a proper setup including Database setup too.
I hope to have this done before the version 2.
- Better preview of the different elements. (version 1.6)
I am going for this to build a Settings page where a lot of mandatory details will be required by the site Administrator. This will help I hope so, identifying in the best possible way the full qualified URLs for the different pages/sections to preview.
I am working already for the version after the next, and I hope to have in version 2 (TBD end of November if everything goes well) a full XML support, including the Templates themselves.
But at the present, hard work to achieve for the next months.
A new version of Community:Server has been released.
You can download the patch if you have already the 2.0 running and click here to know more about this update
By the way, the discussion I started with Rob about the future of community:Forums is still going on.
Rob confirmed yesterday that the product will still be free for download, but I still wait a better way to access the download of the free version (not through a store !)
Anyway great job on the last version.
If you can't wait ASP.Net 2.0 to check the degree of XHTML compliance, you can use this solution provided on codeProject.
Check this on the Daily WTF :-))) LOL
I like menus, and Obout has just released (for free :-)) a new .Net component slideMenu.
Basic Slide Menu is FREE
All browsers: IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, Safari
No time limit. No expiration.
Unlimited number of items
Download component with working examples for Classic ASP, ASP.NET, VB.NET, C#, XML.
Things are going pretty cool with build up of Irish Developers :-)
We have now two meetings soon, one online this Monday, and another in Dublin on 18th of October.
Well it's time now for me to report some cool news. I met for the third time in less than two months with Clare Dillon from Microsoft Ireland.
Clare is the Developer & ISV Marketing Manager for Microsoft Ireland, and we work very closely to build a strong user community here. She announced me this morning some great events coming on, but one I can mention is that Clare agreed to be present at the first Irish Developers gathering this October in the Mespill.
So that's sound great for me, and I am sure this will give our group the credibility and the recognition we deserve :-)
If you want to know more, join us in one or better the two different sessions.
Volunteers will be rewarded in a way or another, but shhh... ! Can't tell more now !
I am writing some code for the Irish Developers site, and I try (for a short period) to include a capture of the main feed on my homepage.
I used a nice assembly based on a project RSS 2.0 framework to parse the XML stream.
My problem now is that the main feed here and the one fromn Dotnetjunkies are toooooo sloooow, so I got a lot of timeout errors. I tried other RSS feeds, they are all ok.
Any idea ? Does someone has this main feed replicate somewhere ?
My previous post/rant about Community:Forums got the expected reaction, and I entered in an intense and very interesting debate on IM with Rob Howard, one of Telligent founders.
Thanks Rob for the chat, even if we are still in disagreement on some points. I still think, and I am not the only one, that you can't snap your fingers and decide to take an important piece of community development like the forums, and make profit with this, whatever the good and valid excuses you gave me.
From Rob:
We're actually in the process of getting back to Open Source, i.e. allowing external contributions. We've spent the past 4 months with external check-in closed only because we've tried to keep the team small and focused. The plan is to move to a model of a few people that have check-in rights -- we're in the process now of working with those individuals -- similar to how many other large OSS projects are run.
Scott's comment about profitability is not completely accurate in this case. There is both a free version and a commercial version available. The commercial version is $129 and includes forums, blogs, and a photo gallery. Given that we have 6 fulltime people (who we pay) working on the project we would have to sell a lot of the $129 commercial licenses to make a profit and that's just not happening nor did we expect it to.
We actually decided to pursue this route of product licensing based on how we saw the ABM (anything but Microsoft) crowd moving. MySql, PHP Nuke, and many Linux distros have moved to a similar model - whereas there is a time/money continium and they offer both a free and a commercial version of their products.
We will always have a free version available.
However, for people that choose to use the applications commercially we do hope they choose to purchase a commercial license. This helps us develop, maintain, and continue building these solutions.
Our proof of this effort cannot be demonstrated overnight and the skepticism with our intensions is completely fair; we can't prove them otherwise until we have more history to hold up as evidence.
If you want to learn more about what we're doing -- the best place is http://www.communityserver.org. We've done several postings there that discuss our long term plans and goals for these projects.
As for our Whidbey plans, as many people know I used the Forums as my testbed for coming up with Whidbey features such as Membership, Roles, Personalization, Skins, Providers, and many other core ASP.NET 2.0 features. Needless to say, Community Server will have Whidbey capabilities and integration second-to-none <g>. In fact, in our 1.0 release of Community Server we will have a back-ported Membership, Roles, and Personalization system that is forward compatible with Whidbey.
If anyone wants to chat about any of this offline with me, just drop me a note at rhoward@telligentsystems.com.
I also fully agree with Scott Galloway when he say:
"... The saddest thing is that this again reinforces the Java / Open Source world's view of the .NET community - that as soon as anything seems vaguely profitable then 'community be damned' and profit takes over... "
Jeff has also developed a free forums tool called Popforums and I will have a look at it for my next project. Because not only is free but it has been cleverly developed on a more simple basis than Community:Forums which could be a bit 'heavy weight' for some small projects.
I like competition :-)
I am surely not going to make friends with this post, but my rant of the day going to Telligent.
Community:Forums, new name for ASP:Forums is now under the control of Telligent. What surprised me is that this company 'hijacked' the product built through the contribution of many developers in the .Net community.
Of course, it's still free to download, but the confusion come by the fact that if you click on the download link, you are redirected to a store online, and one of the first thing asked is 'Want to buy these items by Paypal?'.
I had to read twice the page to find that I can still download the product for free. I wonder if soon or later this free option will not disappear ?
I think if Telligent want to make money with this tool, I have no objections. But we should have one free version at ASPNet web site and another commercial one in Telligent.
And if I have to buy their forums tool, It shouldn't be called anymore Community::Forums but surely Telligent forums.
I am very dependant in my different developments with ASPNet Forums, so please let the forums belonging to the community.
After some attempts to find a suitable date for everybody (my gos guys
you are so busy :-)), I finally come to this conclusion, it's hard to
organize a meeting in a small country !
Anyway, I propose now two meetings instead of one, the first online,
the other offline.
- Online meeting Monday 4th of October at 11Am(usually the perfect
coffee break time).
Duration: 15 to 20 minutes
- Mespill hotel, Dublin in the pub/bar area Monday 18th of October at
5Pm.I chose this place because it's usually quiet for talking.
If you are inerested and want to join the group send me an email using the contact page in my blog
More Posts
Next page »