Community Kit for SharePoint: User Group Edition 1.0 now available
[Update 02/27: Wow, almost 300 downloads of the CKS:UGE 1.0 site template! "The site logo is broken. How do I fix it?" has become an FAQ. The answer is documented in the post-site-creation configuration steps provided in the [site URL]/Lists/Getting%20Started%20with%20the%20CKS/AllItems.aspx list that's included in the provisioned site (but hidden and can only be accessed via direct URL or the Site Actions | View All Site Content menu).]
The CKS:UGE was pre-announced just this past Wednesday, and the Release Candidate has already been downloaded almost 200 times! Several of you promptly sent in feedback, and I'm very pleased to announce that the final 1.0 version of the CKS:UGE is now available for download here.
After 5 months of starts and stops, the CKS:UGE 1.0 has finally reached the Release milestone thanks to the tireless and creative efforts of Shane Perran, a SharePoint MVP, on top of the initial work done by Inetium, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. The CKS:UGE demo site is at http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/sharepoint/cks/uge.
The first 3 user groups to implement a community website based on the CKS:UGE will each receive a dozen limited edition SharePoint logo'd thermoses to be given as prizes at their next meeting. :-)
Some of you might look at the CKS:UGE and say, "What's the big deal? I can manually recreate the exact SharePoint site in just a few hours." Yes, you probably can, but the benefit of having such a site template is that you wouldn't have to, and those few hours multiplied by hundreds of user groups come out to be many, many hours avoided. It's a site admin (.STP) application template, so it's very easy and quick to deploy even if you're using a hoster such as one of these.
I hope that the CKS:UGE provides both a model reference and adequate motivation for others within the SharePoint community to follow suit with a CKS: Wedding Celebration Edition, a CKS: Fantasy Sports Edition, a CKS: Home Owner Association Edition, and perhaps even a CKS: Church Edition. :-)
The ultimate goal of the CKS is to make SharePoint mainstream -- pervasive as a collaborative and community oriented application platform and part of the common vernacular. So, CKS:UGE 1.0 is just the tip of the iceberg. CKS 2.0 is already being planned, and I'm looking for volunteers to join in at http://www.codeplex.com/cks. Those of you, who are long time ASP.NET developers, may liken the CKS to DotNetNuke, and I would be honored by the comparison because I sincerely admire what the DNN folks have done for the ASP.NET community.
Here are several custom web parts for the CKS 2.0 that have already been developed and whose source code will be posted on CodePlex soon.
- Membership Request web part with built-in CAPTCHA:
- Membership Request Management web part with integration with Active Directory to create accounts (and can be extended to integrate with other directory services):
- Self-Service Password Recovery web part:
- Latest Posts web part that aggregates from all Discussion Boards within a Site Collection:
- Unanswered Posts web part that aggregates from all Discussion Boards within a Site Collection:
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