I have been thinking of switching my website to Community Server 2.0 for a couple of days now. The look and feel would remain the same, only the codebase would change from my source code to CS source code. I will have some migration to do, but I'm thinking it won't be a big deal.
What do I gain?
They have a slew of features in the product. You get blogging, forums, photos, themes and whole bunch of other features out of the box.
What do I lose?
Well the website in it's current form is all hand coded by me. Although I have taken ideas from a whole bunch of other projects, the coding is all mine. Since the solution I have is not complete, it gives me the oppurtunity to add more features and learn new things as I go, but then I wonder is there really any point in reinventing the wheel.
Hmmm.... this is really difficult (I am leaning towards CS), hopefully I will make up my mind in a couple of days. By the way, for anyone who really wants to learn how solid software is built needs to look at the Community Server source code. Yup, it is free to download, although they have better configurations (like ability to deploy in a web farm) that comes at a price. For the rest of us, we should be pretty happy with the free version.
Go for it!
I will fully support you switching to Community Server based on the following considerations:
1. Community Server should be a full scale business project, which means it should incorporate the main enterprise concerns into design, such as scalibility, security, user management, code management, etc. By viewing its code and setting it up, it's a good learning experience to get hands wet with real life projects;
2. Learn C# is almost a must for a developers these days. VB is just not enough. The best way to learn a language is working on a project. You know Java alreeady, it should not be hard for you to learn C#;
3. My selfish reason - I would like to have a site with forum and photos to for friends to visit, where we can post useful info (or jokes :)) ) - not just technical remarks. As a matter of fact, I will set one up myself after my current project if you do not start. So either you wait for me (could be a while), or you set it up now...
4) It will also make your resume look good :)). I think it's a plus plus if you have a professinal site setting up and running...
5)It will also be a starting point for you to learn Sql Server. I am sure when the posts increase, you need to learn how to improve performance which includes the DB side.
Is that enough? I may come up another 5 or 10 reasons :))).
- Lilly
May 07, 2006 12:17 PM
