Chinese Software Developer Network

The CSDN community website is where Chinese software programmers seek advice. A poster describes a problem, posts it in the forum with a price in CSDN points, and then waits for replies. On some popular boards, a poster will get a response in a few hours, if not minutes. Most replies are short but enough to point out the mistake and give possible solutions. Some posts include code and may grow to several pages. The majority of posts are written in Simplified Chinese, although Traditional Chinese and English posts are not uncommon. .

Topics are mainly IT related and focused on programming, but political and life topics are also active. The forums were closed for two weeks in June 2004. This was likely for political reasons, because many political words, such as the names of political leaders and organizations, have been banned in posts since then. However, political discussions with intentional misspellings are still active.

The site hosts many IT blogs, but the large number of bloggers makes the server slow. In December 2005, Baidu rated CSDN as one of the top Chinese blog service providers.