Progress is coming along nicely on the Commerce Server Starter Site. It will be released in two waves, with the first wave coming next week:

• Community Technology Preview – Available at the end of next week (~August 25th), this build is code/feature complete with full functional testing. A partial/preliminary documentation-set will be included to get the site up and running.

  This build is not for production usage, as it has not undergone a complete set of exhaustive performance tuning and optimization. It is for sample and preview purposes only to serve as a guideline for building end-to-end Web sites with Commerce Server 2007 – there will not be a supported in-place upgrade path to the official release-to-web version.

• Official Release to Web – Available in October 2006, this will be the final build of the Starter Site. It will include a complete set of documentation and be fully performance/stress tested and optimized for the most demanding of commercial e-commerce sites.

  This build will be supported for production usage.

The CTP build will be made available through Microsoft Connect. I will be posting specific download/access information as soon as it is live and available.

As an aside, this is my first post using the new Windows Live Writer Beta – which is a very cool blogging utility.