Community Server 2007 b1

I have noticed over the last few months there have been more and more people moving to using Telligent’s Community Server engine for forums and blogging.

I have to say it’s only getting better. scrappad at the moment is running Community Server 2.1 on .NET 2.0 and the performance is pretty outstanding.

Today Telligent announced the b1 version of their new version, Community Server 2007. This is a big release for Telligent as the guys have been working hard to fixing problems and adding features users want.

From what I have been reading, I was really impressed. The new version adds tons more functionality and features.

“There are a number of improvements and performance enhancements as well as a complete overhaul of the themes system. While all of the new dynamic theme tools are not yet complete there are a few blog themes that now have dynamic settings (paperclip, kid congo, riviera, and vanilla) and you can also see some of the new dynamic site level themes.

Additional features enabled in this b1 include:

Improved file management support for blogs
Anoymous subscriptions for blogs
Feedburner support for RSS feeds
Shared membership store for building linked communities”

I thought I would install it and see what it is like. You can find a working version of Community Server 2007 b1 here on my beta website: http://beta.se7en.co.nz/cms/scrappad/default.aspx.

I guess there is not much to see from a UI perspective right now. Many of the changes are with the control panel which makes life real simple for managing blogs. I like the new integration with Feedburner. That’s quite nice. Also the new theme engine is very very nice!

Well if you want to try it out, check out the announcement here: http://communityserver.org/blogs/announcements/archive/2007/02/15/community-server-2007-beta-1-now-available.aspx. There is also a new demo,exe which you can run.

Also note the following if you do install it:

“One note, there is a message that you will see in the Control Panel that says “This Beta version of Community Server 2007 Expires May 15th 2007″. We do not recommend running this beta in production.”

I’m still waiting to see some themes for b1.