STAY AWAY FROM COMMUNITY SERVER!

Ken Robertson replied on Wed, Sep 5 2007 1:31 AM | Locked

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My $0.02.

Part of the key is not to simply say "CS sucks" or "CS lacks features" and run off to another product.  Sure you can, but it isn't product.  What makes it suck in your opinion?  What features do you feel it lacks?  Roadmaps are ever evolving.  As new releases are made, new features are planned.  As demands change, those features also change as well.   Not saying anyone has said it sucks and ran off, but just using it as an example that communication leads to results.

Billy Koch replied on Wed, Sep 5 2007 10:45 PM | Locked

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Honestly Drupal was under alot of attack during its 4.0 phase but then when 5.0 came out it resolved alot of issues.  Noted Drupal has really improved themselves, but you know what - thats the whole point of software development, you aim to improve and continue to improve as you go through releases.  As I noted before, nothing happens overnight and nothing gets fixed and developed over-night. Community Server is not for everyone just as Drupal or any other Community Based application is not for everyone.  Everyone has their own preferences and you choose to what you feel is best for yourself and the community.  But you know Drupal has been around and in development since 2000 - and I am not exactly sure how long Community Server has been around.  But point being - is that you can't please every single person.  All I can say is that people need to quit just saying CS Sucks and etc and you offered a suggestion - video - thats something that would definitely be nice to provide.  So that is a suggestion and a good proactive one. 

 Bottom line is - everyone has their own preferences.  I can remember the days when people would say phpbb sucks and that vBulletin rocks and then later I hear SMF is better than both.  So it is all about personal preferences.

Tommyweather replied on Wed, Sep 5 2007 11:08 PM | Locked

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edltech:

1. Agreed. CS does suck.  No support for common "community" functions, video, etc.  Drupal is way better.
2. Drupal is free.
3. Drupal has WAY more community support

We are moving our rather large CS implementation to Drupal right now.

 

Good luck people.

 

I think you are selling CS short.  Community Server, like many other things in life, is what you make of of it.  If I can put together a website using CS then anyone can.

sandeeppradesh1 replied on Thu, Sep 27 2007 4:39 AM | Locked

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 i'm a new user that just installed community server and can't believe this is a mature release with years of development and updates behind it  .... you're expecting cutting edge development, things that break new ground from Microsoft, being the biggest software company in the world ... and you get a product that feels like a PHP or Perl script hack from 1999 ... you'd think out of 70,000 employees they allocated 3 to community server

Jose Lema replied on Thu, Sep 27 2007 11:28 AM | Locked

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Hi sandeeppradesh1,

Just to clarify, the creator of Community Server is Telligent, not Microsoft. Our core product team has grown over the past couple years, but we're still nowhere near 70,000...closer to the 3 you mention.

So, if you're as disappointed as it sounds, do you have any specific feedback to help make the product better? What drew you to install CS? Where did we fall short?

Alex Crome replied on Sat, Sep 29 2007 6:21 AM | Locked

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I think some of this problem is that Telignet are not showing off the main features of CS.

Take Chameleon for example - the theming engine is very powerful and you've got a variety of themes to show off that were submitted in the Extravaganza however, where are you showing these off to new users for CS.  Even if users do manage to find themes.communityserver.org, the themes are cryptically labelled 'Track I' 'Track 2' and Employees.  Whilst that naming convention may have made sense during the Extravaganza, it doesn't any more.  Why don't you recategorise them into 'Blog themes', 'Site themes' and 'Recolourings' (couldn't think of a better name for the third but i'm sure you can ).  I think you should also install each theme on themes.communityserver.org, and provide a 'View theme' option next to each theme so users can 'try before they buy'.  I think you should also clearly define a way for users to submit new themes to that site outside of the Extravaganza so that you can build up a bank of themes Users can use.  Show off the different themes available for CS on the 'Get It Now' page - maybe by adding a link to themes.communityserver.org under the Extensibility section.

When people say CS is feature lacking, I think what they mean is there aren't enough  addins for CS.  There is currently no one single place to find CSModules for CS 2007 - there are plenty for CS2.1 and below in one place in your file gallery however there are few if any for CS 2007.  You also need to add a way for Users to submit CSModules to the gallery. As you say, 80% of your audience are non technical people.  They do not want to be manually modifying _override.xml files to configure their modules.  What they want is a nice simple way to add them through control panel.  You've already got a way of merging communityserver.config with it's override file, surely you could.  Another problem with CSModules is there's no one place to find them.  Yes you have the Add Ons & Controls forum however that gets clogged up with .

My last point is with your showcase.  Not everyone has or are expecting huge multi-thousand user communities, especially users of the personal edition.  They want to see smaller scale setups, they may want to see a personal site with just a blog, file gallery and photo gallery, they may want to see small communities with just a few dozen members or they may want to see an example of a forum based on CS integrated with an existing website.  Maybe make a site where users can submit their (CS) websites and categorise them so new CS users can have a look to see what other people are doing with CS.  I think www.cs-listings.com does something similar but I can't check as the site's down at the moment.

 And that's my 2p.