Jivespace Developer Community Blog

Clearspace 2.5 Officially Announced

matt — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:59:09 GMT

Thanks to everyone that's participated in the 2.5 beta -- we're finally ready to officially announce Clearspace 2.5! Check out the main Jive website for details. Sam's blog entry also has a great overview of what's new in the release. You'll also notice that we updated Jivespace to 2.5, so you can trythe release here. We're doing final testing and will have the release bits available in the near future.

There's a lot in this release that's aimed at the developer crowd including many improvements to the plugin framework and a new theme resource kit for making easier changes to the UI. Check out the many new sections for developers in the Clearspace documentation. Also significant in the 2.5 release are big improvements to performance. Over the past several months, we've built out a performance test environment that's let us measure the many improvements we've been making to the code -- from a 15% improvement in some areas to over 700% in others. Overall, Clearspace 2.5 is at least a 200% faster than 2.0.

The Clearspace dev team is thrilled with the new release and we hope you'll be too. We're looking forward to your feedback!

Beta 4 Released

matt — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:47:35 GMT

We just released beta 4 of Clearspace 2.5.0. Changes since the last beta:

(CS-1690) Add more field checking to the profanity filter; tags Improvements
(CS-8007) bulletted lists and outdenting
(CS-5369]) Remove developer upgrade tasks
(CS-8191) Guests can read blog posts even when they are not allowed
(CS-8109) Tasks lists are broken due to anonymous user changes
(CS-8060) Due Date not displayed when importing/exporting project tasks with combined js resources enabled
(CS-8040) Removed "hide profile fields from guests" setting
(CS-8026) Recent content shows "by" the author rather than person who recently updated
(CS-7361) Removing attachment on edit of document when document requires approval causes system error.
(CS-6697) Documents get published in moderated spaces if the user saves a draft first and then publishes it

Many thanks for all the feedback so far and please continue to help us test the release!

Beta Program Launched

matt — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:28:34 GMT

We've just launched the public beta program for the next release of Clearspace. We'd love your help in making sure the code is as polished and bug-free as possible before the general release. This release is the third beta (after two private betas) of the 2.5 series. There are two ways to get involved: first, you can

download the release and install it on your own servers. You can also visit the beta sandbox site and create an account to test out a live instance and provide feedback. We're looking forward to hearing what you think!

New Clearspace Plugin Directory Launched!

dawn — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:31:19 GMT

We just launched our new Jivespace Plugin Directory for Clearspace plugins! You can now more easily find and download plugins from Jivespace, and if you are developing plugins, you can add your plugins to the new directory.

The really cool part is that we created the entire plugin directory as a plugin to Clearspace. Our web engineer, Tim, took our existing document content type and extended it to create a new plugin type with additional information relevant to plugins along with a new look and feel for the plugin directory. He also used the plugin jar to pull almost all of the metadata displayed with the plugins, including license, logo, readme, compatible versions, and much more. For developers, this means that you only need to enter the information in your plugin, instead of having to duplicate all of the information by filling out redundant forms. It also means that when you update your plugin jar file with a new release, the plugin information will be automatically updated.

Tim is currently working on polishing the code a bit, but he will be releasing this as a plugin for other people to use as a plugin marketplace. It also provides a very useful example of how to extend an existing Clearspace content type to create a new content type in Clearspace.

Keep in mind that this is just the first version of our Plugin Directory, and we plan to start making incremental improvements and enhancements. But first, we want to hear from you. Take a look at the new Jivespace Plugin Directory. What do you like? dislike? How can we make this even better in future revisions? Please leave comments with your ideas on this blog post!

Don't forget to attend the Jivespace weekly chat on Thursday!

dawn — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:09:21 GMT

I wanted to remind everyone that we have a Jivespace weekly group chat scheduled for tomorrow (and every Thursday) from 9-10am Pacific time. During this hour, you can ask any questions about Clearspace development topics to the engineers who wrote the software.

Do you have questions about

how we are using Spring, Struts, Acegi, and more in Clearspace 2.0?
a particularly difficult customization?
writing plugins and widgets?
accessing Clearspace data from other sites using web services?
any other developer topic?

Please feel free to drop in anytime during the hour to ask questions. We also post all of the chat transcripts to Jivespace.

Jivespace now running on Clearspace Community 2.0

dawn — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:28:14 GMT

I wanted to point out (in case you haven't noticed the difference) that Jivespace and some of our other Jive communities are now running on Clearspace Community 2.0!

You can learn more about our launch of Clearspace 2.0 and our new website by visiting Jive Talks.

With any major upgrade, we can probably expect a few minor issues (despite intensive internal testing). If you notice anything strange or buggy, please post comments here.

New Plugin: Member Map

dawn — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:49:43 GMT

Jim Tremlett just released, Member Map, a new plugin for Clearspace based on Google Maps.

The Member Map plugin builds on the Google Map plugin developed by Jay Allen. The plugin displays the location of members of a community based on their addresses. The plugin employs Google's Map API for both the display of the map as well as the geocoding of addresses. As such, the address may be as general as a zip code or state, or as specific as a full address including street address.

Wikis in the enterprise - have a good story?

PaulBiggs — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:10:17 GMT

Hello Jivespace! We here at Jive are reaching out to collect feedback on how companies are using wikis to collaborate on a large scale. We often hear stories from users who have moved to Clearspace.

But, you have a unique perspective on wikis as developers: technical details of the back-end installation and maintenance, troubleshooting, supporting end-users, and the myriad of other facets that come with administering wikis in a large organization. Do any of these questions sound familiar...

Did your company use wiki technology before using Clearspace?
Did you maintain multiple wikis? How were they connected?
Did you outgrow a wiki solution? What were the technical limitations?
Were you looking for a stand-alone wiki, or a more comprehensive solution?
What was the biggest hurdle faced by your end-users?

Wikis are great tools. But, when do you need more than a wiki? We'd love to hear your wiki stories from the trenches of IT.

(As a thank-you, we'll send out a Jivespace t-shirt to those who can provide some good stories on wiki usage in the enterprise!)

Friends of Jivespace

dawn — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:32:07 GMT

Today, we released Friends of Jivespace, a new blog where key community members can talk about their experiences with Clearspace. So far, we've had 2 community member posts.

Magpie has shared his thoughts on Chaos and Order:

For my inaugural blog on Jivespace I've chosen the subject of Chaos & Order - dichotomy which I believe Clearspace has the potential to fulfil.

I come from a structured world of comprehensive metamodels and complex information management systems. It may seem strange to embrace the world of unstructured information - the enemy for so long. However, to reject is to deny humanity and miss the potential to foster, harvest, and support knowledge sharing and transfer.

I like Clearspace because .... it seeks to embrace having conversations, but with a 21st century twist.

Ryan Rutan's post discusses a few Random Clearspace X Ideas including:

Leveraging the Listener Framework and Filters to process content at create/edit time against a custom dictionary of terms and matching URL structures...and storing meta-data about rendering actions to take into consideration when rendering the document for display. The hopes would be to do one of the following, provide a list of relevant links off to the side of the document that would help drive traffic towards measureable calls to action. If we were bold enough, we could apply these meta-data instructions as a filter, and alter the appearance of the actual words in the content as hyperlinks. This might be too intrusive to our customers, and we'll need to evaluate the nice balance between content ownership and ROI. =)
Abstracting the Ratings Engine in ClearspaceX as a Ratings Service for all content on the website. We've been looking at the possibility, of creating a private community visible only to Admins and WebService loings, and then creating Document Stubs into that community and capturing Ratings regarding non-ClearspaceX pages on those assets, and then surfacing the ratings to the remote sites as well through the same Web Service APIs. Since ClearspaceX is integrated into our SSO solution, we already know that we are talking apples to apples between the 2 systems. We just need to work out logistics of whether or not a user (who is logged in), has a "username" or as we call it "alias" when they rate...and how to handle the corner-cases that stem from that core issue.

You will want to keep an eye on this blog. I suspect that we will have some really interesting posts by other community members in the next few days.

If there are any other community members that you wish were included, please let me know. I would love to add more people to the Friends of Jivespace blog!

Give Users Advanced Access to Clearspace via Email (Beta)

dawn — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:18:34 GMT

Today, Aaron Johnson released a beta version of the Advanced Email Plugin for Clearspace.

The Advanced Email plugin gives your users the ability to comment on blog posts, documents and discussion threads and to create discussion threads, documents and blog posts, all via email.

Please keep in mind that this is a beta plugin, so please read the installation instructions and caveats carefully.

You can get all of the details about the Advanced Email Plugin for Clearspace and download other cool Clearspace plugins on Jivespace.

Chat with Jive's Clearspace Developer Team every Thursday!

dawn — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:01:15 GMT

I just wanted to remind everyone to attend our Jivespace group chat this Thursday (and every Thursday) at 9am Pacific time. Several of the Clearspace core developers and support engineers will be online to answer your questions about Clearspace!

Want to Create Fancy Charts in Clearspace?

dawn — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:56:33 GMT

Appfire has just released the FlashCharts Plugin for Clearspace. The Appfire FlashCharts Plugin introduces "data visualization" to Clearspace through stunning XML-based Flash charts and graphs. 20 different flavors of animated charts are individually controlled through 'macro parameters' and a set of associated 'xml data structures' required by each chart type.

You can get all of the details about the FlashCharts plugin and download other cool Clearspace plugins on Jivespace.

Would you attend a Jive Developer Day Event?

dawn — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:15:29 GMT

We are tentatively planning to hold a Jive Developer Day event focused on the Clearspace 2.0 release. But before we make anything official, we wanted to make sure that people were interested in attending.

What I need to know

(See below for details)

Are you interested in attending?
If so, would you also attend an optional Saturday event?
Any suggestions to improve the event?

Target Audience

People writing plugins, customizing, or doing other development on Clearspace.

Tentative Logistics

Location: Jive's World HQ in lovely Portland Oregon

Date: April 10-11

Price: Maybe free or a very small registration fee.

Rough Agenda

4/10

6-8pm Happy hour with a presentation on New Technologies and Implications for Upgrading to Clearspace 2.0.

4/11

8-9: Breakfast / networking
9-9:15: Kickoff with Matt / Bill / Marty
9:15: Session 1 - Tips, Tricks & Best Practices for theming Clearspace 2.0
10-10:15: Break
10:15-11: Session 2 - Widgets to customize home and other pages in Clearspace 2.0
11-11:45: Session 3 - Lessons in upgrading the Google Maps plugin to 2.0
11:45-12:45: Lunch & networking (or working lunch)
12:45-1:30: Session 4 - Plugins and Macros in Clearspace 2.0
1:30-2:15: Session 5 - TBD
2:15-2:30: Break
2:30-3:15: Session 6 - Web Services - what you can do in CS 2.0
3:15-5:15: Coding workshop - Attendees bring their code, ask questions, & get tips from roving Jive engineers
5:15-??: Happy hour & Dinner with Jive developers and brainstorming ideas for improving Clearspace

4/12

If people are interested, we would be happy to organize a fun Saturday event like a wine tasting, bowling, beers of the NW, etc. We'd probably ask people to chip in to cover the costs of this event, but you would get to hang out with cool people from Jive

Don't Forget to Join the Group Chat on Thursday!

dawn — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:09:22 GMT

I just wanted to remind everyone to attend our Jivespace group chat on Thursday at 9am Pacific time. Several of the Clearspace core developers and support engineers will be online to answer your questions about Clearspace!

If you missed the last chat, you can find the transcript in Jivespace.

Jay Allen: Featured Jivespace Community Member

dawn — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:59:09 GMT

I asked Jay if he would mind being the featured Jivespace community member, and he was kind enough to indulge me with the answers to these questions in an email interview:

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

I work for a large computer company and lead the community development on one of their web sites. I took an odd path getting here, I have a math, science and English background (liberal arts, go Ripon College Red Hawks!) but never took a computer class in my life. That usually leads to jokes like "no wonder your code is...". A Shakespeare background doesn't hurt when navigating the politics of a large company. I try to use my own experience as an example for my kids that they can do anything they want if they put their minds to it. You can imagine how that goes over, they are holding out for the sleeping late and playing video games all day job. That's not too far from what we do so there's hope.

How did you get involved with Jive and Clearspace?

In the summer of 2000 I (with help from a couple friends who quickly bailed) wrote a sports trivia web site, lockerjock.com. I needed to integrate forums into it and after some searching found Jive. This was around the Jive forums 1 release when Jive was open source software. I probably have the oldest continually running Jive forums installation ( 1.2.6 I think). I should invest some more time into it but I'm waiting for the sports trivia market to really take off. I got to know Matt, Bill, Dave, and Bruce and continued using all the Jive products both personally and professionally. I once knew the entire Jive team but you guys are growing so fast I can't keep up! It's been very satisfying to watch Jive succeed.

What is your favorite Clearspace plugin?

The youtube plugin.

What is your favorite Clearspace feature?

The drag and drop widgets. I should say the robust, flexible APIs, enterprise performance, or integrated community suite but I'm a sucker for eye-candy.

Mac or PC?

Sadly, PC but I'm seriously considering a Mac. My daughter searched on pumpkin patterns around Halloween (do NOT do that) and picked up a virus that I'm still trying to get rid of. It sounds like I can do all my development work on a Mac now.

What do you do for fun?

As Bill Cosby said my wife and I used to be intellectuals but then we had kids. Some days we think all we do is yell. We have three kids, two boys and a girl and all of them are pretty serious soccer players which consumes a lot of our free time. Both Kris and I play competitive tennis, Kris coaches girls track, and I run somewhat competitively. I've done two stints on the Jive Hood to Coast team and am considering a third if Kris and I don't go to the tennis US Open. When I do my own development it's in the evenings after the kids go to bed.