Technology Overview
Although we're quite proud of our technology, we understand that social media isn't about technology -- it's about people. Your technology should work so well that your people don't have to worry about it. And the people who provide the platform should understand that you and your people come first. Always.
Communifire is built with the latest in technology platforms, using the ASP.NET 3.5 Framework, C#, MS AJAX, jQuery, and Microsoft SQL Server as the database.
Self Hosted or SaaS
Install and run Communifire on your own servers or use ours.
Either way, you still maintain full control. With Communifire, you own the data,
the users, and all information in the
community. We will never market our services (or services of others) to your community's
user-base.
Architectural Overview
Communifire's architecture is based on a scalable and robust N-tier enterprise SOA
architecture and contains fully object oriented code, an optimized database schema,
strongly typed objects & collections, data caching, and a unique state management system,
ensuring that Communifire can scale to accommodate the most demanding high-traffic communities.
Communifire is built on a flexible provider-based framework:
- Apply updates with ease - Communifire provider model architecture isolates the core platform upgrade process from affecting your custom individual modifications
- Flexible and extensible - Makes interaction with external components a breeze by allowing you to override our code or tap into 'hooks' that are called before and after events
- Use any database you like - Gives you the flexibility in how you store your data. There's no need to change or modify existing application code to use alternate tables or databases for your data storage requirements
- Makes writing custom providers as simple as possible - by providing a robust and well-documented set of base classes from which developers can derive provider classes of their own
Since Communifire comes with a default implementation for all provider based features (such as the ForumsProvider, BlogsProvider, UserProvider, etc.), the provider model offers the best of both worlds -- to those who are content with the default implementation, the system just works as expected; for those that need to customize the system, they can do so without upsetting the existing code or programmatic logic.
User Interface
Why should your brand suffer under someone else's look and feel? Communifire lets you easily customize your entire community by adjusting a single style sheet.
The UI layer in Communifire is a Web Application Project created in ASP.NET 3.5 and VS 2008. It contains the graphical display components and files
such as ASPX, ASCX, MasterPages, stylesheets, images, resource files, and so on.
- Resources such as styles sheets, javascript files, images, icons, etc. are located in the /Assets folder
- Web pages use CSS based styles using only "div" tags. Tables are only used when it absolutely makes sense to use them.
- The look and feel of the front-end can be easily modified by just changing the CSS file
- Web pages are properly segmented into their own respective folders
- The web project uses ASP.NET MVC framework routing engine (System.Web.Routing) to create extension-less URLs (for SEO optimization)
System Requirements
Below is a list of the compatible operating systems, databases, web browsers, and recommended hardware.
| Development Platform |
Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 with C# using Visual Studio.NET 2008, MS AJAX, jQuery |
| Database |
Microsoft SQL Server 2000/2005/2008 |
| Webserver |
IIS 6.0 or above |
| Hardware |
At least 2GB RAM, Pentium 4 and above, 1.0GHz and above |
Supported browsers
Communifire is supported to work on the web browsers below:
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8
- Mozilla Firefox 2, 3
- Google Chrome
- Apple Safari
Flexible, Scalable, Customizable
- The platform can interact easily with your own existing applications
- Customize the layout, look, and feel to match your own brand
- Handle high peak user load within a single server, cloud, or web farm environment
- Extensive and easy to understand source code allows for easy customizations
Security
Communifire is built with security in mind, protected against SQL injection attacks and malicious
JavaScript code. Communifire uses CAPTCHA image technology to discourage and prevent spammers from
automatically submitting your commenting and registration forms. Communifire can run as a public
community or can run as a private community protected behind a login and/or a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
Exception Handling Framework
Errors happen -- even to the most stable of applications. While we'll never be able to prevent
errors from happening entirely, we can control how your application responds to and recovers from
the error. Communifire's built-in framework logs the exception within code, along with all the
information our technical team needs to find, assess, and fix the error. After informing your
user of the error, the system logs it in the database and informs our technical team. Our
organized and well-documented source code means most errors are simple to fix.
URL Mapping
Switching to Communifire from an existing website? Keep your search engine rankings.
Communifire lets you take them with you by mapping your old URLs to the new ones using
dynamic redirects.
Email Queue & Throttling
Large communities means large amounts of outgoing email. And large amounts of outgoing
email can overload a mail server fast. Communifire's intelligent email queue and throttling
system allows you to control the amount of email that is sent out over time. All emails within
the platform are sent directly into a queue -- and then you as an admin can specify the number
of emails and the frequency they are sent out to your members.
Dynamic User Interface Properties
Have some advertisement or opt-in form scripts that you need to paste into your pages?
There's no need to drop that code into Communifire's user interface. With dynamic properties,
you can specify and create zones (or areas) to display any kind of content
you can imagine.