Community Server 2007

Although not much appears different on the outside, last night I updated this blog to Community Server 2007. Although I'm always wary of updating something the size and complexity of CS, like before I found the CS upgrade process to be a relatively pain free experience.

One of the nice new features that aided in the update is the concept of override config files. Rather than updating the dauntingly large Community Server .configs, you can put your changes in a new file, i.e. communityserver_override.config. No more trial and error merging.

Community Server's new skinning system is also something I looked at while upgrading and I spent a couple of hours porting my old skin to the new system. Overall I found it was much nicer to use than what CS previously had. One thing that jumped out was the reduction in files. A skin previously was spread over a ridiculous number of files, and half the battle was just finding the one you wanted to edit. In CS 2007 it is down from 55 to a much more manageable 8 according to the documentation.

Also new is blog 'file storage' which you can read about here. Rather than entering this post using the CS control and manually uploading an image like I have previously done, this post is written in Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Writer not only automatically adds the post to CS, but it uploads the image (the one right below the title) into the specified blog storage directory and links everything up for me. Cool!

Finally I noticed that Community Server has FeedBurner support which I've signed up for. My FeedBurner URL is http://feeds.newtonking.com/jamesnewtonking.

Good job Community Server people.