The Evolution
Microsoft released the first version of an ASP.NET-based forum application (see screenshot below) in 2002. The application was initially developed by Scott Mitchell under the name WebForums.NET in 2001 and later sold to Microsoft with some additional features. It was first deployed at the official website of ASP.NET and can be downloaded from http://asp.net/Forums/Download/Default.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1.
Rob Howard and his team of developers were instrumental in the development and management of the application at Microsoft. The forum software is still being used by many websites and is available separately for download from the above- mentioned Uniform Resource Locator (URL) along with its complete source code.
Rob floated his own company named Telligent Systems in 2004. Telligent decided to develop a new forum application with rich features from scratch. This marked the beginning of Community Server. The development team decided to extend the traditional forum application to include blogs, photos, and galleries, which are relevant for developers, business owners, and hobbyists so that they will get all the required functionalities under a single umbrella. This will also avoid the pain of installing multiple applications for the creation and management of blogs, forums, and galleries.
Telligent initially launched a series of builds and finally ended up with 1.0. After getting the feedback from visitors, Telligent launched Community Server 1.1 including more features. With the release of each version, new features such as an improved user interface and the facility to easily customize the software were included. The launch of Community Server 2.0 has been greatly welcomed among developer circles, since it shipped with many more intuitive features than its earlier counterparts. One such notable feature is that of roller. With roller, you can display posts from the blogs maintained by other people.
Telligent has made exciting improvements to version 2.1 of Community Server and it includes many powerful features including a new functionality called Tagging as shown in the screenshot below:
Moreover, all users can create and manage their own reader and the roller, as functionality has been tightly integrated with blogs.
A complete list of all the features can be explored at: http://communityserver.org/i/features.aspx
Telligent has made exciting promises for the future builds of the product, which include an integrated Content Management System (CMS). We will explore the features included with the upcoming Community Server 3.0 at the end of this chapter.