Java based community server

A Community server is an application that helps manage weblog communities. It provides the ability to create an account, upload/download content, track some site stats, maintain information on weblog updates, and much, much, more. Most of the functionality is handled via XML-RPC or SOAP and is openly defined in the xmlStorageServer specification.

If you need a robust, powerful, community server, you can download the Radio Community Server for free.

Mainly it's my implementation of the xmlStorageServer using Java. I wanted a lightweight open-source version to play with to see want kind of interesting things it could be used for besides a weblog community.

Although I love Java and Servlets, EJBs and J2EE as a whole are getting way to fat, bloated, and over-hyped. Radio/Frontier has inspired me to look back to the web and it's simplicity and focus on building things that may actually be useful to people.

Based on my little EJB/J2EE speech above, here's some simple goals:

• Follow the xmlStorageServer spec. outlined on SoapWare.org
• Keep it simple and lightweight
• Use only open-source software
• All Java
• Learn something from it

Keeping with the goals above here's the outside software it currently uses:

• Jakarta XML-RPC
• Hypersonic SQL
• WebWork

Right here hopefully in the next few weeks. I'll post it to my weblog as soon as it's ready.

More to come...