Professional Community Server Themes (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

~ Wyatt Preul (Author), Benjamin Tiedt (Author)
Key Phrases: rendered property, text box, theme options, Community Server, Control Panel, Creating Custom Chameleon Controls (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Wrox's Professional Community Server Themes is one the first guide to the Chameleon theming engine. Inside, Telligent developers Wyatt Preul and Ben Tiedt share their experience with Community Server, and teach readers how to extend their implementation with theming. Professional Community Server Themes is heavy on fully implemented examples, making this a hands-on guide that will get readers customizing the look of their Community Server install quickly. Topics include:

*URL Rewriting

*Modifying SiteUrls.config through Overrides

*Understanding Chameleon

*Implementing Blog Themes

*Interaction with ASP.NET AJAX

*Dynamic Configuration Options

*Content Scrubbing

*Creating Custom Chameleon Controls

and more.

From the Back Cover

Professional Community Server Themes

The simplicity and flexibility of Community Server has made it one of the most popular web site packages available, enabling communities to be easily created and allowing them to continuously grow and thrive. This is the must-have book on creating custom themes for Community Server so that you can effortlessly turn your Community Server site into one that meets your specific requirements.

Wyatt Preul and Ben Tiedt share their invaluable experience using Community Server and introduce you to the various files and concepts that form custom themes. They equip you with knowledge of the new controls that are available with the 2007 version of Community Server. Generously enhanced with fully implemented examples, this hands-on guide covers a wide range of topics to get you started with customizing your Community Server site quickly.

What you will learn from this book

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How URL rewriting takes place in Community Server so that you can add new pages to a site and modify paths to existing pages

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Ways to control the content of themes using Chameleon controls

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Tips for implementing blog themes

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How to interact with ASP.NET Ajax

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Various topics such as content scrubbing, dynamic configuration options, custom editors, and custom controls

Who this book is for This book is for web developers who are interested in customizing the presentation of a Community Server site. Experience with ASP.NET is helpful but not necessary.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 337 pages
• Publisher: Wrox (November 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470182083
• ISBN-13: 978-0470182086
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #815,322 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hit the Ground Running, January 5, 2008

By	Douggy Fresh (London,UK) - See all my reviews

This is a very accessible book. Short and to the point. It assumes you download the complete CS SDK( eg CS2007) and that you are using VS2005. If covers all the basics that CS2+ uses, eg the effect of URL rewriting within the HTTP Module pipeline to how AJAX.NET works, using Control Extenders etc. Then once you have compiled the who project and built your own CS2007, looks at how to use or customize each of the groups of controls used by CS. It also have a chapter on the CSS and Themes.
I bought the book because I did not want my CS site to look like all the others. This goes way beyond that. Yes it addresses what what you can do with CSS & Themes (what is the purpose of a theme? Think lighthouse in a storm to hold together you creative narrative - dont think oh its just a CSS thing), but to take the CS and deconstruct it to build a totally unique CS site so that you would never know it was a CS site. That is what you have here.
This book is not a walk in the park.
It assumes you are a VS200X creative, that you can program UIs and utilize classes. The code is in C#2005. Just reading thru the rest of the code is a good lesson in design and a good understanding of how the whole CS framework works.
It is far bigger that I ever thought.
CS2007 is a is a good platfrom for HIGHLY SCALABLE multiserver load balanced performant communities. You can see why when you lift the lid with this book. It covers installing it on your single development PC and getting the basic project built.
I was up and running is about 30mins (the install takes forever) using a VSTS 2005 hooked into TeamFoundationServer.

So this book is good value for money (got mine in the second hand section), you can use it to pick and choose what you want or do the whole thing in you want to intergrate CS2007 into an existing content site (eg add forums and blogs).