Overview for Internet Service Providers

This document provides Internet Service Providers with an overview of the features of the ASP.NET Community Starter Kit that were designed specifically for them. In this document, you learn how to create multiple communities, set community quotas, modify the sample community content, localize community content, and handle security issues.

Scenarios for using the Community Starter Kit

There are two ways that an ISP can host the Community Starter Kit. An ISP can install a single instance of the Community Starter Kit or an ISP can install multiple instances of the Starter Kit.

A single instance of the Community Starter Kit can support multiple communities. For example, the same instance can host both the DotNetUsers.org Web site and the SuperCodeFantatics.com Web site. Each community hosted by a single installation can have a completely different directory structure and page layout. The administrator of a particular community can customize the appearance of the community through an HTML form interface.

When multiple communities are hosted by a single installation, all the communities share the same database. The data in the database is partitioned so that content added to one community is not displayed in another. For example, articles and downloads added to the DotNetUsers.org community will not be visible in the SuperCodeFanatics.com community site.

A theme can be shared among multiple communities or it can be made private to a particular community. The Community Starter Kit includes a folder named \Communities that has the following folder structure:

\Communities
	\Common
		\Themes
		\WebBoxes

	\Community1
		\Themes
		\WebBoxes

Themes and Web Boxes added to the common folder are shared among all communities. Themes and Web Boxes added to a particular community folder (such as Community1) are private to that community.

The second scenario for hosting the Community Starter Kit involves creating separate installations for each community site. This scenario makes sense only when a user needs to modify the code for the Community Starter Kit. For example, a user might want to add new modules to the Community Starter Kit. In this scenario, the user cannot share the same database with other users.

Adding New Communities

You can add new communities by using the ISP Admin Pages. By default, these pages are located at:

	http://localhost/CommunityStarterKit/ISPAdmin

You need the ISP username and password to login to the ISP Admin Pages. You selected an ISP username and password when you installed the Community Starter Kit. The ISP username and password are stored in the Web.Config file.

When you create a new community, you supply a domain and subdomain for the community. The Community Starter Kit uses the domain and subdomain to distinguish one community from another.

Community Quotas

The Community Starter Kit supports quotas. You can use quotas to prevent users from uploading too much content to the database server.

There are two types of quotas: Community Quotas and User Quotas. A Community Quota applies to all images and downloads uploaded to a community. A User Quota applies to the images and downloads uploaded by a particular user. The Community Quota can only be modified within the ISP Admin page. An ISP can set particular quotas for individual community sites. The User Quota, on the other hand, is set within the Edit Users section of the Community Admin pages. A person running a community can configure different quotas for different users.

Quotas only apply to two types of community content: images and downloads. Quotas do not apply to articles, links, and so on. If a user attempts to add an image or download to a community site, and either the community quota or the user quota has been passed, then the user will be prevented from adding the new resource. A community administrator can view the current quota used by going to the Add Download or Add Image page.

Modifying the Sample Community Content

Sample community content is automatically installed whenever you create a new community (the Lunar .NET site). This sample content is copied from the sample database tables in the CommunityStarterKit database. For example, there is a Community_SampleArticles database table which contains the sample article content, a Community_SamplePhotoGallery table which contains sample image content, and so on.

If you want to display your own sample content when a new community is created, then you can modify the content of these sample tables. The ISP Admin Pages include two pages named ExportSampleContent.aspx and ImportSampleContent.aspx which you can use to change the contents of the database tables that contain the sample content. See the Community Starter Kit Documentation for more details.

Localization

The Community Starter Kit can be easily localized for different languages. The content displayed by the pages in a community is contained in page skins. Page skins are fragments of HTML that determine the appearance of a page. Content displayed to users is never contained in the compiled source code.

You can modify any of the Page Skins in the Themes folder using any text editor. For example, if you need to create a Spanish language version of the Login page -- so that the text Login appears as Conexión-- then you can modify the Users_Login.ascx page skin. The Users_Login.ascx page skin for the Default theme is located at:

 

            Communities\Common\Themes\Default\Skins\ContentSkins\Users_Login.ascx

The Community Starter Kit detects the preferred language settings of a person's browser and displays dates and times, numbers, and currency amounts according to the preferred language. For example, if you set your preferred language in Internet Explorer (using Tools, Internet Options, Languages) to German, then the date Thursday, December 05, 2002 5:51 PM is displayed as Donnerstag, 5. Dezember 2002 17:51.

Finally, all database content is stored in Unicode columns. For example, ntext and nvarchar columns are used instead of text and varchar columns.

Security

When hosting multiple communities with a single installation of the Community Starter Kit, the only information that you should supply to the administrators of each community is their community username and password. In particular, you should never supply any of the following:

The ISP administrator username and password - The ISP administrator has the power to add, delete, and modify communities. If you provide this information to an administrator of a particular community, then the administrator could delete all other communities.
The database login - When multiple communities share the same installation, the communities all share the same database. If you provide database login information to an administrator of a particular community, then the administrator could access (and delete) all the content of other community sites.

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