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I can't believe I never used this handy SQL function before. I knew about it for a couple of years, but I never needed it. When I was doing the import of my Community Server blog to BlogEngine.Net I knew I needed some help stripping out serialized data in the CS_Posts PropertyNames and PropertyValues fields, so I went back to track it down. Specifically I needed to transfer author and website information of comments in cs_posts to the be_PostComment table. I always enjoyed working with serialized...

Ben Tiedt's Chameleon is one of my favorite aspects of developing in Community Server. With it's hierarchical contextual awareness and library of smart ASPNET controls, sophisticated UI's can be created in very little time. Of course, using CodeSmith templates to bang out the underlying class structures helps facilitate the process, too. Chameleon makes heavy use of <CSControl:Placeholders /> which display content using a <DisplayConditions> property. As an example, the DisplayCondition...

By default CS2007 shows a static link to members private messages, this 'chameleon' code will display a different message to the user if they have un-read private messages. <CSForum:ThreadList runat="server"> <DisplayConditions><CSControl...( read more )

I sling a lot of data in and out of my Jobs Management Application and this afternoon's slinging consisted of Job Estimate data from Microsoft Access. The process occurs through a Community Server background task and consists of three steps. 1) Request the List<Business Object>, 2) Retrieve the data to populate it in the AccessDataProvider, and 3) Pass it off to the SqlDataProvider. I had written CodeSmith templates to perform various aspects of the Access Data Import process, but not what...

In my Jobs Management app built on Community Server I needed to display job documents. Another in-house Document Management application already had a page that displayed documents based on jobs, so instead of designing original Chameleon controls as usual, why not iframe in an existing document management application page with some slight editing and styling. There were security rules that could be easily handled by going with an iframe as well. The result was that we could add job document support...

A common issue with Community Server 2007 was frequently required logins. This was always resolved by adding a MachineKey to the web.config. I add a MachineKey to each of my CS sites as one of my first setup tasks. In working with CS2008 I quickly realized that this was something I'll continue to do, as I found myself having to re-login unnecessarily. It takes 30 seconds to generate a key at ASP.NET Resources and add it to the web.config, so it's not a burden or anything. Fine nuglet material...

After a week of issues with the database, I've finally moved Virtual Servers on Digistic, and have upgraded to CS 2008. Athena 2008 will look something like nb development does at the moment, only with a lot more tweaks. You may notice that the web site looks slightly different. The new theme is mostly Hawaii, but with some major improvements. The 1st you will notice is a new home page. Yer, it's not much, but it does what I need it to. The 2nd should be the new menu bar. New tabs are products...