cwg:

First, we are thrilled that you like the community platform. I'll try to provide a brief answer here but feel free to follow up with more questions.

We decided to write our own platform from scratch after being thoroughly disappointed with the state of existing online communities. Most of them have been cobbled together using various off-the-shelf and open-source components and after a while, the limitations really start to show.

The folks here at Capable Networks have a strong software development background so this wasn't exactly a daunting challenge for us - but I want to highlight a few key points.

First, we will continue to improve and expand the features of the platform so that we can deliver the most compelling online collaborative experience possible. This includes obvious(?) things like a unified search feature that provides results for all the content (e.g. blogs, forum threads, discussion, articles, etc.). It also includes more innovative features like maintaining your history across sessions so that it is easier to track down things you viewed days earlier.

The second and bigger goal for us is to be able to confidently deliver the most valuable content from the most credible members in the community. This is no small feat and resulted in us creating new patent-pending software to power the platform. There is a high-level overview of our Content Valuation Engine (CVE) here if you are interested.

You can expect many more improvements over the coming months. And please pass on any suggestions in our Website and Community Comments Forum

Thanks!

-The SlingCommunity Team