Has anyone used CommunityServer 2.0 that likes another solution better?

So far it's been great aside from a few bugs with x64 that were just fixed with the recent update. What I'm looking for in this thread is alternitive solutions for clients that don't like cs. I've used Joomla, Mambo and a few other ones so far cs has been the best to work with. Lets get some opinions on solutions for your hosting business. Price is not an issue.

something like aspnix using on their website for support

I hope you'll post some of your issues with Community Server 2.0 on x64 on communityserver.org, as we'd be very eager to address them. The best would be the Bugs & Issues or General Discussion forums under the main CS group.

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Slightly OT, but we have a love/hate relationship with CS.

The biggest problem is that our clients are not computer geeks and they are frustrated by the skins/customization (or lack thereof).

In systems like PHPbbs, or VBulletin, you can change the color scheme with simple web-based menu choices.

Community Server requires you to be an expert CSS programmer and then delve in the black-art secrets of the "skins" files to make even basic changes.

You can't even easily use the alternate skins supplied with CS 2.0 unless you know how to merge those folders on top of the existing "default" folders.

CS desparately needs an "admin" (non geek) level set of menus for customizing the system. All the other forum software systems have had this for ages. Seems really weird that CS doesn't.

I hope you'll post some of your issues with Community Server 2.0 on x64 on communityserver.org, as we'd be very eager to address them. The best would be the Bugs & Issues or General Discussion forums under the main CS group.

Ken Robertson
Communmity Server Team
Telligent Systems, Inc.

While I am not necessarily using this as an excuse, CS hasn't been around as long as some of the others like vBulliten or phpBB, so we aren't quite as mature. But it also offers other things they don't. Want integrated blogs or photo galleries? Not going to get it with them out of the box.

I agree, skinning could be better, we recognize that and are working to get it better.

As for the administration... have you seen CS v1.0 or v1.1? 2.0 is a vast improvement over them and it will continue to get better. We completely revamped it, and granted it is not perfect, but it is as good as we could get it until we put it out there, had some time to get some feedback, and will continue to improve it with each release. We've already been working to address some usability issues for v2.1.

The thing that is difficult is having a lot of options, but keeping it simple. Additionally, not just the site admins go into the control panel... any user can. If they have a blog, they need to use the control panel to manage it. So the control panel has a lot more to handle than other software that simply does forums.

I am mambo user and until now i was very happy about it and im still am, any way, I had a look at communityserver.org and seems to me that is fine but I wont change it for mambo...

The problem I have with that explanation is that customizing colors and basic appearance is considered a core feature by most admins.

CS has gotten excited about the geek "skin" architecture which is only usable by expert programmers/web designers while ignoring the real users by not providing this feature since the beginning.

While blogs and photo gallery may be nice, I see very few boards based on CS actually using these features.

I think they could add value, but as they are implemented today they are very kludgy as they don't support any kind of self-service provisioning (allowing users to sign-up for their own blog or photo gallery) and they are "funky" to use.

It's nice to say "we are better than program abc because we have special features xyz" but if the majority of users don't care or want features xyz and find the main features to be inferior to the other programs, well, that is why the others still seem to have a huge following.


While I am not necessarily using this as an excuse, CS hasn't been around as long as some of the others like vBulliten or phpBB, so we aren't quite as mature. But it also offers other things they don't. Want integrated blogs or photo galleries? Not going to get it with them out of the box.

I agree, skinning could be better, we recognize that and are working to get it better.

As for the administration... have you seen CS v1.0 or v1.1? 2.0 is a vast improvement over them and it will continue to get better. We completely revamped it, and granted it is not perfect, but it is as good as we could get it until we put it out there, had some time to get some feedback, and will continue to improve it with each release. We've already been working to address some usability issues for v2.1.

The thing that is difficult is having a lot of options, but keeping it simple. Additionally, not just the site admins go into the control panel... any user can. If they have a blog, they need to use the control panel to manage it. So the control panel has a lot more to handle than other software that simply does forums.