EPiServer has released version 2.0 of their excellent community product Relate+. The package builds on EPiServer CMS 6 and EPiServer Community 4 to ease the deployment of full featured online community sites. EPiServer Relate+ 2.0 focuses on improving the experience for site members as well as site administrators.
For community members updates include making registration easier and blogging more fun. A new WYSIWYG editor makes it easier for bloggers to add images and MetaWeblog API support makes blogging from an iPhone or application such as Windows Live Writer possible. These features will make power users happy and should increase both the quantity and quality of the user generated content created.
Administrators and moderators will also find a number improvements aimed at making their jobs easier. With this release, community administration features have been more tightly integrated with the CMS dashboard. New gadgets for activity stats, content moderation, and abuse reports have been created and allow admin users to put these important daily functions right on their CMS homepages. For many organizations, online community moderation can be a labor intensive task and these changes could be real time savers.