Telligent's Community Server

Question

The company I work for is wanting to add blog functionality to our website and they were looking to spend an awful amount of money to have some crap being built on top of a CMS they purchased (sitecore). I pointed them to Telligent's Community Server and we had a sales like meeting today to get the Marketing folks on board. My question is if anyone has had issues working with Community Server, skinning it and extending it?
I wanted to explain a bit why I am thinking Community Server, the company is wanting multiple blogs with multiple authors. I want to be out of the admin part of this as much as possible and didn't think there were too many engines that having multiple blogs didn't mean db work. I also like the other functionality that Community Server provides and think the company will find it useful, particularly the media section as right now we have some really shotty way of dealing with whitepapers and stuff.

edit: We are actually using the Sitecore blog module for a single blog on our intranet (which is actually what the CMS is serving). Some reasoning for why I don't like it for our public site are they are on different servers, it doesn't support multiple authors, there is no built in syndication, it is a little flimsy feeling to me from looking at the source and I personally think the other features of Community Server make its price tag worth it.

another edit: Need to stick to .net software that run on sql server in my company's case, but I don't mind seeing recommendations for others. ExpressionEngine looks promising, will try it out on my personal box.

Answer 1

I've done quite a few projects using Community Server. If you're okay with the out-of-the-box functionality, or you don't mind sticking to the version you start with, I think you'll be very happy.

The times I've run into headaches using CS is when the client wants functionality CS does not provide, but also insists on keeping the ability to upgrade to the latest version whenever Telligent releases an update. You can mostly support that by making all of your changes either in a separate project or by only modifying aspx/ascx files (no codebehinds). Some kind of merge is going to be required though no matter how well you plan it out.

Answer 2

Community Server itself has been very solid for me, but if all you need is a blogging engine then it may be overkill. Skinning it, for example, is quite a bit of work (despite their quite powerful Chameleon theme engine).

I'd probably look closer at one of the dedicated blog engines out there, like BlogEngine.NET, dasBlog or SubText, if that's all you need. Go with Community Server if you think you'll want more "community-focused" features like forums etc.

Answer 3

Have you had a look at the Shared Source blog module for Sitecore?

Answer 4

Expression Engine with the Multi-Site Manager works great for that kind of situation.

Answer 5

Hi.

You can also take a look at Telligent Graffiti CMS. http://graffiticms.com/

It supports multiple blogs and authors.

Update: It's now open source and available at http://graffiticms.codeplex.com/

Answer 6

Community Server 2008.5 lets you add several members that can post articles. Also with Community Server 2008.5 you now have wiki's along with forums and the blogs. This probably has one of the better web based admin control panel's I seen in a while. This let's you easily change several things including the site's theme (or skin). To me it is one of the most scalable applications I have seen in a while. We are using it for our site http://knowledgemgmtsolutions.com.

Answer 7

Sitecore's Forum module is powered by Community Server and integrated with Sitecore CMS.

Answer 8

Skinning is pretty straightforward, and the sidebar widgets aren't very difficult to create (if you don't mind building controls in code). The widgets also allow options for the users to customize them in the control panel very easily. I doubt you'll find a strong community of widget builders for Community Server however. Nothing compared to the dev community for blogs like wordpress.

I recommend starting templates from scratch and adding in CS controls as needed, to get the markup you prefer for styling and to use only what you need.

Setting up different roles for users to post to different blogs is also very easy and requires no coding. You can have blog groups, and allow only certain users to post to certain blogs.

Answer 9

I like community server because of its flexibility. . .

Answer 10

Great information, thanks you