Datasheet

Server 2007 and later to be able to alter the presentation of a theme and then to share that alteration with the
world. One of the important qualities of this mechanism is that you do not have to be familiar with .NET
or theme development. Instead, a novice user is able to alter their site and share this alteration.
Aside from the portability of themes in Community Server 2007, themes are now much easier to create.
There is a standard set of controls that can be added to theme pages that have a consistent set of prop-
erties. Furthermore, the theme controls in Community Server 2007 support implicit binding. This means
that a theme developer does not need to know how to retrieve a blog in order to display content from
a blog. Instead, he or she only needs to place a blog control on a page that would normally display blog
details, and the control will take care of the reset. The power of the new controls is actually quite amazing.
Standard Control Features
The theme controls in Community Server 2007 are not limiting. Instead, you are able to extend them
and create custom controls that are consistent with the current controls. The new controls have many
useful features, some of them include the following (please note that this is not an exhaustive list and
that there are actually many more standard features for the controls):
K DisplayConditions — You are able to toggle the visibility of most controls using conditions,
which can include custom conditions that you create.
K Actions — You can implement actions that take place after a form or other control type suc-
cessfully or unsuccessfully does something. For example, if you want to redirect the user to a
new page after he or she logs in, you can do so by placing
GoToSiteUrlAction in the
SuccessAction template on the login form.
K Tag —Y
ou are able to surround most controls with an html tag whenever the control is rendered.
For example, if you want to surround a ResourceControl with a div tag, you can simply set
the value of the
Tag property to div. There is an enumerator for the tag property that provides
you with intellisense whenever you are setting it.
Theme File Reduction
Less is required from users in order to change the look of their site. It is now much easier to switch
themes on a live site. This enables a site to alter its presentation in order to meet the needs of the com-
munity that it is enabling. Now in Community Server 2007 there are dynamic themes. These types of
themes enable an administrator to easily change how a site looks all from the Control Panel. A site can
also allow blog owners to alter the presentation of their blog from the Control Panel with great ease.
Types of Themes
Community Server 2007 ships with one less type of theme than previous versions. All of the applications
on a default Community Server site, except for weblogs are integrated into a site theme. Previously the
Photo Gallery was able to have individual themes created just for it. Now these theme files are part of
the main site theme.
Aside from the site theme there is the option to create weblog themes. This allows blog owners to
select the theme that they would like to use on their blog. As a result, a site can have users that have
blogs that look different from one another.
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Chapter 1: Key Concepts
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