Jivespace Community Blog

Theming in Clearspace 2.0

dawn — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:58:01 GMT

As you know, we changed a few things in our underlying architecture for Clearspace 2.0, including some changes in the Freemarker templates as a result of moving from Webwork to Struts along with some other changes. In this video, Matt Walker, Professional Services Engineer at Jive Software, talks about the process of upgrading existing themes along with plenty of best practices to make your themes more easily upgradeable in the future.

Matt also did an earlier screencast as an Introduction to Skinning Clearspace, which you might also want to watch along with this video.

You can also download the Quicktime version (Caution: file is ~200MB), or you can watch a larger version online, which will improve readability of embedded screenshots (recommended).

The entire presentation is also attached below as a PDF file.

Craziest Ideas to Improve Clearspace

dawn — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 01:01:06 GMT

I asked our developers here at Jive to respond to the following in 15 seconds or less: tell me your craziest idea for how to improve Clearspace. Here is what they came up with, but make sure you hang around for the bloopers at the end!

Or download the Quicktime movie (~58MB)

Clearspace Performance Tuning

dawn — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:20:45 GMT

Learn about the many things you can do to improve the performance of your Clearspace installation. Support Engineer, Will French, covers everything from tweaking cache sizes to running query stats in this Jivespace video.

Or download the Quicktime version (Caution: ~100MB file size)

The Differences Between Clearspace and Clearspace X, Part 1

greg — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 16:42:06 GMT

Thanks to some great feedback from community members I wanted to clearly articulate the current differences between Clearspace and Clearspace X as well as provide sense of how the products will continue to diverge over time. You can also check out a video on the same topic.

When Clearspace was under development we realized that trying to force a single product into two very different use cases was a bad idea. Since Clearspace and Clearspace X serve different purposes, and have a different set of users and buying criteria, we decided to give them each their own focus. Clearspace is focused on giving people inside organizations a place to "get work done" that breaks down silos between groups, gives everyone a voice and recognition, and keeps people in the loop. Clearspace X, on the other hand, focuses on providing a full-featured online community solution where the needs are around customers getting support, providing feedback, sharing ideas and connecting with other users. This distinction allows our development teams to focus on solving specific business problems instead of worrying about how one product must "boil the ocean" by solving everyone's needs.

Current Differences

The current feature differences stem from different configuration defaults and exposed functionality. Over time the products will diverge more significantly as new features are created for each use case. However, at an architectural level the differences between the products are basically non-existent, and we don't expect the two products to diverge architecturally in any meaningful way.

Name	Description
Profile Fields	The two products contain different default profile fields: Clearspace contains 'location', 'title', 'phone number', 'biography' and 'expertise'. Clearspace X contains 'location', 'occupation', 'biography', 'expertise', and 'homepage'.
Create Blog Permission	Registered users are given permission by default to create a blog in Clearspace but are not allowed to create a blog unless given permission in Clearspace X.
Guest Access	Anonymous / guest users are allowed to view content in Clearspace X by default, but in Clearspace that permission is off which forces users to first login before viewing any content.
Private Messages	Private messages are enabled by default in Clearspace X and disabled by default in Clearspace.
Blog Trackbacks	Blog trackbacks are off by default in Clearspace but on by default in Clearspace X.
Blog Pings	Blog pinging is enabled by default in Clearspace X and disabled by default in Clearspace. Blog pinging is a process that happens behind the scenes in most blog software. When enabled, your instance will send an XML-RPC ping to weblogs.com, Google blog search and Technorati, but only if blog pinging is enabled when a new blog post is created / published on your system.
Email Visibility	Email addresses on user profiles are hidden by default in Clearspace X and are visible by default in Clearspace.
Language	Clearspace X uses the word 'Community' when describing the containers for content while Clearspace uses the word 'Space'.
Design	Clearspace X uses a different design than Clearspace. The difference is controlled by using jive-external.css versus jive-internal.css.

More Differences Over Time

Over time there will be certain features or changes that only make sense in one or the other product.

Name	Description
Reputation and Recognition	The way that the reputation and recognition system work will change over time as each product gets a more focused version of the system.
Read/Write WebDAV	This type of functionality only makes sense in Clearspace for most customers.
Certain Integrations	Integrations with other systems may only make sense in one use case or the other.

Summary

Clearspace and Clearspace X have different purposes and are meant to solve different problems. So it only makes sense that we want the respective development teams to be thinking about those problems as they further refine the product. The current differences are primarily focused on configuration to best fit the problem being solved by each product, but these differences will continue to grow as new features are added that are unique to its intended use case.

Differences Between Clearspace and Clearspace X

dawn — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 23:21:46 GMT

Want to better understand the differences between Clearspace and Clearspace X along with some ideas for how the two products may evolve over time? Learn more from Jive Software's Aaron Johnson and Greg Unrein.

Or download the Quicktime Movie (Caution: 166MB File)

What Do You Like about Clearspace?

dawn — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:14:49 GMT

We asked this question to more than 50 Jive Software employees and got their answers on video for the world to see! Make sure you stick around for the bloopers at the end of the video.

Or download the Quicktime movie (Caution: 207MB download)

Events in Clearspace

dawn — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:27:00 GMT

Learn about event handling within Clearspace from Bruce Ritchie.

Or download the Quicktime movie

Clearspace: Anatomy of a Product Launch

dawn — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:35:00 GMT

Bill Lynch, Aaron Johnson, and AJ Wright spent an evening at PJUG (Portland Java Users Group) talking about everything that went into the launch of Jive Software's Clearspace product. You might also want to follow along with the presentation.

Caution: I try to keep most of the videos edited down to 5-10 minutes, but this is the full 35 minute presentation.

Or download the Quicktime version

Josh Bancroft on Facebook, Social Networks, and More

dawn — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:43:00 GMT

I was able to corner Josh Bancroft, Intel Social Media Evangelist, at a recent blogger dinner at the Jive Software offices (co-sponsored by Intel, but organized by the Portland blogging community). In this video, Josh discusses Facebook, hype around social networks that do not exist, and living life online.

Or click here to download.

Clearspace Themes Explained

dawn — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:15:00 GMT

In this video, Jive Software's Nick Hill talks about how to create themes for Clearspace.

Or click here to watch the video.

Bug Day at Jive Software

dawn — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:07:00 GMT

What happens when Jive Software engineers take the day off of their regular jobs to squash bugs? Watch and find out ... stick around for the outtakes at the end.

And no, Jive engineers are not greenish colored elves. You can blame the videographer (me) for having the camera on some weird setting; however, the video has some really fun content that I wanted to share despite the poor quality of the recording.

Or click here to watch the video.

Plugin Day at Jive Software

dawn — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:54:00 GMT

Occasionally at Jive Software, our developers take a day off from their regular jobs to spend the day writing plugins for our products. After taking Friday off to write plugins for our new Clearspace product, we gathered at 4PM to do a quick review of our creations. This is what happens when a room full of Jive Software employees geek out over cool collaboration technology.

Click here to watch the video