Hey everyone,

My nonprofit has recently acquired Sharepoint (and its web functionality), and asked me to design an online learning community for its volunteers.

My experience is primarily with PHP and Ruby on Rails, so my understanding for what's possible - and not - within the Sharepoint structure is limited.

I forsee the design of elements outside of what's standard in the sharepoint templating system; e.g., I'd love to develop a collaborative ajax-like (what's the MS equivalent?) design tool, and also, to revise the threaded message system so it's a little more like PHPbb (e.g., with a rewards system, etc).

Two questions:

1. Is this possible within Sharepoint? What kind of a person would we need for this task? Or is Sharepoint highly configurable ONLY within the frameworks provided by MS?

2. Are there examples of online communities based in sharepoint? e.g., modified threaded discussion boards, etc? Would be helpful to see it in action!

Thanks in advance!


--Dave

http://www.bitculture.org/