Professional Community Server Themes

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.

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

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

• Ways to control the content of themes using Chameleon controls

• Tips for implementing blog themes

• How to interact with ASP.NET Ajax

• 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.

Wyatt Preul works as a software test engineer for Telligent Systems. Wyatt is the author of the Wrox book Professional Community Server. Wyatt has been working with and admiring Community Server shortly after version 1.1 was released. Since that time he has become a respected member of the community and active participant in the product itself. Wyatt now spends his days happily developing features for Community Server and trying to locate bugs in the product, to which he reports there aren't many. His thoughts on development, testing, and Community Server can all be found at www.wyattpreul.com. Wyatt currently lives in Philadelphia with his beautiful wife Dusti.

Ben Tiedt works as a developer lead on the Community Server Team for Telligent Systems. Ben started working with Community Server during the development of version 2.0 and recently worked on the development of the Chameleon theming engine and Dynamic Configuration feature of Community Server 2007. Ben continues to develop future versions of Community Server and also enjoys answering questions on communityserver.org and posting help and tips on his blog at getben.com. Ben is happily married to his beautiful, understanding wife Tarah and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.