Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Using CKS:EBE 2.5

I finally carved out some time to look into the latest updates to the CKS:EBE (Community Kit for SharePoint: Enhanced Blog Edition).  I took the dive, got the latest build and ran with it.  I’ve come to like it, but it wasn’t without a few issues.  I implemented EBE 2.0 about a year ago and always had some minor issues.  Things like CAPTCHA not working and a crazy amount of spam.  So I couldn’t receive comments.  I blogged a little but was mainly frustrated.  So I went to CodePlex to see what the great EBE team put together with the latest bits from (4/12/09).  Although there doesn’t appear to be too much in the way of updated news or documentation, I have to say the team really did a great job.  There were a number of improvements that fixed the issues I had with the previous version (2.0).

Having said that, the SharePoint blog site has some oddities that make it different than other sites.  And the CKS:EBE on top of that adds another layer of complexity.  With that complexity, I have to admit that it crossed my mind several times to just abandon this whole thing and start using my Live Spaces account.  But after some tweaking, things seem to be working fine now.

Things are still “under construction” but here’s a list of the items changed so far:

  • added the tag cloud to the “Intense” theme
  • removed links to trackbacks and trackback counters
  • removed anonymous permissions to the trackbacks received list –  I have no use for trackbacks.  I just want a simple blog :)
  • enabled alerts for comments so I’ll be notified when a comment comes in

These changes included changes to the files in the theme directory and the root directory using SharePoint Designer.

I’m hopeful that this package will meet my needs for blogging going forward.  Thanks EBE team.

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