Rocky,

Looking forward to the new book. Writing a book must be ton of work... not to mention two books, and a framework in two languages. Just a reminder... there are a lot of us out here who really appreciate that hard work.

That's great news on Community Server, and hosting at your company. I looked at some of their documentation after someone suggested it on the message board, and it looked very good to me. It looks like you have the option to divide the forums into seperate threads. Do you have any plans to do that? It might add some confusion about where to post, but I think overall that would have a net positive effect. For example, if I was looking for design help, I could limit my search to the "design" forum/thread (will need to learn the Community Server lingo :). Some ideas for forums: CSLA General Questions (Installation, Book, PTracker, etc.), Remoting (.NET Remoting and Web Services), Enterprise Services, Tools (Code generation, UI and Report tools, etc.), Design and Patterns, Security, Server farms and state management, yada yada yada. I'm sure you could think of better categories. Obviously I'm suggesting areas of discussion (Community) beyond the CSLA framework, but we are already doing that. I'm pretty impressed by the CSLA community that participate on the message board... I would like to think the CSLA community would be the first stop when shopping for .NET development advice/sharing.... kind of a "we are all in this together" mentality.

One really useful forum would be a dedicated forum for "Design/Forums"... a place to ask for "How to"... or "How have others solved this...." or "I just solved this by ....". I would think this is where the veteran CSLA community could really get down to beyond-the-plumbing sharing and mentoring (i.e. get beyond that plumbing stuff you mentioned in an earlier blog). JMO... this might not be your direction... just throwing out some ideas. The process of just selecting forum subject titles isn't as easy as one would think... lots of overlap.

I didn't get a chance to figure out if Community Server provided the mechanism to house static documents (wiki). It would be awsome if there is a community wiki/white paper/... area within Community Server where we could browse/post static documents, and link them to our posts. Possibly the excellent information you post on your CSLA page of your website could move there... and for sure documents from veteran CSLAers that are willing to share. This would likely be the first place to start for code examples. Examples... that's always the best learning tool... design examples, code examples, ...

Just my 2 cents... I've found your book, framework, blogs and message board to be my first line of .NET development knowledge accumulation. I've read most of your SOA blogs (or are those rants :). Maybe CSLA and all supporting information is one SOA service (we ask what we want within the contract and the fountain of knowledge payload is returned). :) btw... that begs the question: is Google really the mother of all SOA? I really don't get SOA, so I doubt it.

If this was on community server, I would preview it before posting. :)

Rocky,

This is all great news! Thanks again for your wonderful books and CSLA frameworks!

Jon

This sounds absolutely fantastic. Looking forward to the book even if I will be waiting for the VB version LOL. I really MUST leran to read C#.

As for the forum I agree with Mike and think sectioning it is a great idea. That way we could keep things like questions on Codesmith Templates, questions on Active Objects and (from a purely selfish point of view) questions on my site on different areas of the forum away from the general CSLA questions. I'll be truthful and say that I don't think I've seen Community Server yet but it sounds very good.

Thanks for all your hard work Rockford it's very much appreciated by all of us.

Take it easy :-)

Since I had suggestions/ideas about using Community Server 2.0 (CS), I thought I could at least go try and figure out what the CS options are. I can't say I totally succeeded, but I did learn a few things.

It looks like standard features out of the box include blogs, forums, file exchange and photos (hey, good place for more of your great pictures Chris).

There are some add on modules available also:
http://developer.communityserver.org/default.aspx/CS.FirstCSModuleContent

An CS overview video: http://communityserver.org/blogs/videos/archive/2006/01/25/511433.aspx

The CS site referenced some websites using CS:
www.hive.com
blogs.msdn.com
forums.asp.net

It looks like the mother of all Community Server sites is Channel9:
http://docs.communityserver.org/

Forums: http://channel9.msdn.com/forums.aspx
wiki: http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/ ***

I couldn't find the wiki as a standard CS feature or an add on module. The bottom of the channel9 site said "mutated"... so must be CS+. Oh yeah... I see... FlexWiki http://www.flexwiki.com/ ... same one Rocky used for CSLA.

My quest was to see if I could figure out the best (or good) approach to CSLAers using CS to post questions (forums), and post solutions, white papers, docs, code examples, implemented design/patterns using CSLA, etc (Blogs? Wiki? File exchange?). Can't say I succeeded. :(

So I tried to be helpful... since I made suggestions. I will try and go back and look at more of the example websites, particularly blogs and file exchange. Maybe there is a way to link files (e.g. zip files in exchange area) in the blogs... but not sure what organization and sorting options there are for the blogs (out of the box)... say CSLAers added blogs vs content Rocky adds (i.e. reserved moderator area for blogging/teaching/ranting).

Looks like the Channel9 website is excellent... I might have to spend some time there. Rocky... you need to follow suit and put out CSLA videos, podcasts and screencasts. :)

Why was the C# version released prior to the VB version anyhow? It can't be that C# is that much faster to type in is it? ;-) Or is it that the C# version nets more sales? Looks that way from the Amazon sales ranks. Just curious...

Well I finally got my Expert VB book in the mail (ordered it with Amazon.com) and I have been reading it feverishly. It's amazing to come across another book that opens up so many doors. I have been bumbling along trying to wrap my head around application stuctures and languages. NOW the lights are becoming brighter. (many light bulbs turning on above my head)

Thanks Rocky for such a high quality resource. I have to admit that I am having to re-read pages frequently as I apply it. Sometimes I think my head will explode, but it is coming together now. One thing I love about Expert VB, is I don't think you have to be an expert. As long as you can read....it's a go!