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Commons In A Box 1.0

Boone Gorges Releases 6 Comments »

The Commons In A Box team has a holiday gift for you: It’s Commons In A Box version 1.0!

The last few weeks have seen a string of beta releases of the Commons In A Box package, driven by the extremely helpful testing and feedback of an intrepid group of CBOX Pioneers. Many thanks go out to those who have been putting Commons In A Box through its paces.

Have you been waiting for Commons In A Box to leave beta before trying it out? Now’s your chance. Download v1.0 through your WordPress Dashboard (Plugins > Add New > search for “Commons In A Box”), or from the wordpress.org plugin repository.

Questions or comments about Commons In A Box? Features you wish it had, or bugs that you’ve found and would like to see fixed? Join our growing community of users. If you’re a developer, check out commons-in-a-box and cbox-theme on Github.

Happy Holidays to all – now get building!

Commons In A Box 1.0-beta4

Boone Gorges Releases 1 Comment »

I’ve just released Commons In A Box 1.0-beta4. This is our fourth – and hopefully last – beta version of Commons In A Box. We’ve made a few changes since the last beta came out:

  • Compatibility fixes for WordPress 3.5. This includes fixes to the Commons In A Box theme’s dashboard panel, and an upgraded version of BuddyPress. As of 1.0-beta4, Commons In A Box officially requires WordPress 3.5 (most functionality will work on earlier versions of WordPress, but we will no longer be supporting these versions).
  • A number of important bugfixes to the theme admin panel
  • We’ve modified the way that Commons In A Box configures discussion forums on a new installation, and written up a guide that explains how legacy forum content can be handled
  • Improved internationalization support, which means that Commons In A Box can now be localized into any language

As always, our team sends a huge thanks to those users who’ve been testing Commons In A Box through our beta period and reporting issues. Do you have problems to report, questions to ask, or suggestions to make regarding Commons In A Box? Check out our community pages.

ProfHacker Reviews CBOX in The Chronicle of Higher Education

Scott Voth Reviews No Comments »

On Dec 4, The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s ProfHacker Brian Croxall posted “Build Your Own Academic Community with Commons in a Box,” a comprehensive review of CBOX.

He talks about how easy it is to set up:

Setting up a CBOX website is five-steps simple and clearly explained with the site’s installation guide. I was able to go through the whole process in under ten minutes’ time, where most of that was waiting for my web host… I then installed the CBOX plugin, made a few more adjustments (as explained in steps three, four, and five), and I was ready to go! My site isn’t all that pretty or populated yet, but I’ve now got the tools to build the community.

He also focuses on CBOX’s potential uses in the classroom, and how it can “invigorate” students’ use of social media by letting them create groups for projects and use forums to discuss issues, and conveniently respond to threads via CBOX’s reply-by-email functionality.  He also sees how professors can create a community of students for all their students, where they can “overlap … learning and experiences with that of others…”

What if you’d like to run a blog, a discussion forum, and a wiki for your students to use? Or what if that community that you want to reach out to is much, much larger than a classroom? In that case, I’d recommend you check out Commons in a Box…

Commons In A Box 1.0-beta2 Now Available

Boone Gorges Releases 1 Comment »

We’re pleased to announce the second public beta of the Commons In A Box software, version 1.0-beta2. This version addresses a number of bugs unearthed in the first beta period, and adds some notable features. Here’s a brief summary of what you can expect in version 1.0-beta2:

Reply By Email - One of the new features in Commons In A Box 1.0-beta2
Reply By Email – One of the new features in Commons In A Box 1.0-beta2
  • New A La Carte plugin: BuddyPress Reply By Email. RBE allows users to interact with your Commons In A Box-powered site from the comfort of their email inboxes.
  • New Recommended plugin: BP Group Announcements. This plugin replaces the “What’s New” update box on group home pages with a new Announcements tab, where group admins and mods can post messages for group members.
  • Theme improvements: The Commons In A Box theme team has been hard at work fixing bugs and implementing enhancements, including better responsive CSS, better styling for forum threads, improved performance of the Theme Admin panels, improved Slider performance, improved appearance of user and group navigation, and more.
  • A new Settings page, where Commons In A Box will provide fine-grained control over BuddyPress and other plugin-specific options.

Many thanks go out to those who tested Commons In A Box during the first beta period, and special thanks to those who reported bugs.

Current users of Commons In A Box should receive an update notification in the WordPress Dashboard that a new version is available. And, as usual, you can download the latest version of Commons In A Box from wordpress.org/extend/plugins/commons-in-a-box. Questions or comments about version 1.0-beta2? Visit our community pages.

Maker Commons – A Community of Makers

Scott Voth pioneers 1 Comment »

Spearheaded by Tim Owens, instructional technology specialist in the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at the University of Mary Washington, Maker Commons is using Commons In A Box to grow a community of open individuals anxious to share “experiences, wisdom, failures, and successes surrounding maker culture and the DIY ethos.”

Designed along the lines of his “Makerspace,” which fosters a community “hackers, makers, and tinkerers” by providing a physical space on campus, Maker Commons provides a virtual space for a “maker” community to grow, collaborate, and share.

The site is just getting started and is open to everyone “passionate about bringing hands-on learning to our schools and communities across the world.”

Here is a screenshot of the site’s homepage:

CUNY Academic Commons Launches Commons In A Box

brianfoote Uncategorized 2 Comments »

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

New York, NY — November 19, 2012 2:00 PM EST

Contact Information:
Matthew K. Gold, Ph.D.
Director, CUNY Academic Commons
commons@gc.cuny.edu

CUNY ACADEMIC COMMONS LAUNCHES COMMONS IN A BOX & COMMONSINABOX.ORG

The CUNY Academic Commons, an initiative of the City University of New York, is proud to release:

 

Commons In A Box – A free, open-source platform for community connection, collaboration, and communication.


With support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the CUNY Academic Commons team has produced a stand-alone version of its award-winning open-source social media platform that connects faculty, staff and graduate students across CUNY’s 24 campuses. The Commons In A Box software package makes it easy for institutions and groups to download, install, and customize community spaces for their communities. The Modern Language Association, the premier international organization for scholars of literature and language, has already adopted the Commons In A Box as the platform for a new MLA Commons that will serve the organization’s 30,000+ members beginning in January 2013.


Commons In A Box, or CBOX, offers a suite of features designed to give users of all skill levels the ability to create and host vibrant online communities with complete user control.  Built upon the WordPress and BuddyPress platforms, CBOX allows the members of a community to create personal profiles, join or create public groups to facilitate collaboration, and set up blogs to promote work, events, and conferences.  CBOX also provides:


  • Out-of-the-box functionality with an intuitive set-up that guides site administrators through each step of installation.
  • A powerful, responsive, highly customizable theme developed for community engagement.
  • Responsive design for easy viewing on many devices, including tablets and smartphones.
  • Collaborative document creation and file sharing.
  • Reply-By-Email functionality for quick, on-the-go communication.
  • Compatibility with many other WordPress and BuddyPress themes and plug-ins.
  • Expansive wiki options.


CBOX will be useful to any organization that is looking for a shared space in which to build an engaged community of users and developers. Find out more about Commons In A Box here: https://commonsinabox.org

 

– The Commons In A Box Team

 

 

About CUNY Academic Commons

The Academic Commons of The City University of New York is a social networking platform designed to facilitate connections and collaboration across the 24-campus City University of New York system. Built by the community for the community, the site has fostered a membership body that seeks to use the Academic Commons as a means of fulfilling its highest aspirations for integrating technology into its academic missions of teaching, research, and service. The CUNY Academic Commons seeks to support the public educational mission of the City University of New York through the active  development of free and open source software  released and broadly disseminated for the public good.

 

 

MLA To Launch CBox Site – January, 2013

Scott Voth Uncategorized No Comments »

In her October, 2012 Library Journal article, MLA to Launch Scholarly Communication Network,  Meredith Schwartz describes how the Modern Language Association, under the directorship of Kathleen Fitzpatrick, is building its MLA Commons based on “Commons in a Box” software.

CBox, as @kfitz notes:

“… is working toward a federated commons-of-commonses … developing greater connections across scholarly societies as well as with universities and other higher education organizations.

The MLA Commons is set to launch in January, 2013.

CBOX has its roots in the CUNY Academic Commons, which in turn was made possible through funding from The City University of New York itself.

CUNY Logo

CUNY Academic Commons Logo

City Tech logo

The CUNY Graduate Center has directly contributed to the CUNY Academic Commons, housing the project since its inception, and has contributed to CBOX through its GC Digital Initiatives.

CUNY Graduate Center Logo

CUNY Graduate Center Digital Initiatives Logo

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