Community Server Quickly: A Concise and Practical Guide to Installation, Administration and Customization

Working with this clear and concise step-by-step guide you’ll be up and running with a fully featured Community Server Express Edition website based on ASP.NET as fast as possible. With full coverage of installing, managing, and customizing this powerful tool for your community audience, this book is the essential administrator’s companion. 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 (www.asp.net/forums) and the XBOX forums (forums.xbox.com). You can learn more about Community Server, and see it in action, at http://www.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.

This book targets the free Express Edition of Community Server.

The book covers:

· 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

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-bystep 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.