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If you read us through our website, you’ve probably noticed that we launched our new homepage yesterday. Community Server didn’t have exactly the controls I needed to create the new homepage, so I had to create new controls that did what I wanted.  Fortunately, CS did gave me the building blocks I needed to quickly assemble the new page.  I wanted to post here the source files, in case anyone wants to create a similar page with Community Server. I created three new controls.  Here’s what they look like on the home page.

Control 1:   FeaturedArticle
Purpose: This control shows one featured article, along with the excerpt and the author’s avatar.
Files Needed : FeaturedArticle.cs, Skin-FeaturedArticle.ascx

Control 2:   AggregateCompactPostList
Purpose: Shows a configurable number of latest and most popular posts.
Files Needed : AggregateCompactPostList.cs, Skin-AggregateCompactPostList.ascx, AggregatePostList.cs, AggregatePostList.ascx

Control 3:   AggregateCompactArticleList
Purpose: Displays an article’s category title, excerpt, and published articles.
Files Needed : AggregateCompactArticleList.cs, Skin-AggregateCompactArticleList.ascx, AggregatePostList.cs, AggregatePostList.ascx

You’ll also need some css styles added to CommunityServer’s style sheet (via default.aspx in the Themes/default/style directory)

All CS files go in the CommunityServerBlogs project in the Controls/AggregateBlogControls directory, and all ascx files go in the CommunityServerWeb/Themes/Skins/Blogs directory.

You can download the source files here.  Shoot me an email if you need help implementing this, or if I left anything out.

-Brendan