Custom Ad System Using WebAPI And MVVM Part 1

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:58:41 GMT

One of my customers wanted a very simple ad system. He wants to be able to publish ads via web, so they'll be reflected in his iOS native app built on top of Xamarin.iOS and MvvmCross. In this series of two posts, I'll be talking about how to expose custom Orchard's manager content via WebApi and take it from a client built with MvvmCross. So the first part, this post, is about the server side and soon I'll publish the client side.

Weekly Podcast 05/21/2013

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:59:00 GMT

Meeting notes:

New websites: http://www.orchard.com.au/, http://daytonabikeweek.com/, http://www.aispro.com/ , http://www.10thdegree.com/, http://nato.hr/, http://www.comair.co.za/, http://www.go2see.ru/, http://cwrmobility.com/, http://telbru.com.bn/, http://www.lycia.it/, http://www.campbellskitchen.com.au/
Nick demos inline editing again, this time convention-based. TinyMCE being integrated, not yet complete.
Ken contributed a decision workflow activity.

Status:

data migrations running transactionally now
manage query permission
fixed placement editor
server garbage collection by default
applying the right permissions on blogs and widgets
the webforms engine is gone (but the support for other view engines is still there)
... and more bug fixing

Triage:

213 active for 1.7, 12 proposed before triage. 221 after.
Some of the non-critical issues will be fixed in 1.7.1, releasing a few weeks after 1.7

Brought to you by: http://english.orchardproject.hu

Content Part Development Checklist

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:21:17 GMT

Here's a high-level checklist you can run through so you don't forget anything when building content parts...

Media Manager And Image Editor In 1.7

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:18:11 GMT

Orchard 1.7 contains a new media manager as well as a number of features to help process and edit media within Orchard. All of this is still in development, but I am seeing new built-in media content types like Audio, Document, Image, and Video; Image Editor and Image Profile content types to edit images and process images; a Media Location Term to integrate media into the Taxonomy Module; Media Libraries that allow you to logically group media that appears in your media storage; new Content Parts that allow you to add libraries and galleries to other content types, like Pages and Blog Posts; and a more user-friendly interface supporting drag-and-drop of media within your Media Libraries. This is a lot of new media management features in Orchard 1.7 to take in at one time, so let's start simple and look at the Image Editor.

Creating A Theme From A WrapBootstrap Template - Part 4

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:14:34 GMT

Sorry that it's been a few weeks since the last post, I've been incredibly busy and haven't had a chance to sit down and write the next installment, but here we are finally and ready to start making this theme look more like the template. In our previous posts, we created the Document and Layout files which loaded our JavaScript and stylesheet files, and also defined the way our basic HTML structure is going to look including our Orchard zones.

Orchard University Course In The 2013 Spring Semester Ended

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:43:00 GMT

As you may have heard, the Orchard Hungary Team hosted a university course at the Óbuda University's John von Neumann Faculty of Informatics this semester. The course started in the middle of February and ended today with the "final" 9 participants (forming 5 teams) presenting their projects. Let's see them in the order of presentation:

Weekly Podcast 05/14/2013

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:53:51 GMT

Meeting notes:

New Orchard websites

https://www.rapidadvance.com/, http://dmh.co.at/, http://www.winecast.com/, http://weve.com/, http://www.magelia.org

Progress:

Site settings.txt now have a dictionary, enabling custom site settings that you can put in the config file. Piotr has the same implemented for modules, that he'll push this week.
Hostcomponents.config now has lots of settings that enable performance tuning.
Memory consumption in 1.7 is much lower than in 1.6. A vanilla site will run under 60MB in 32bits.
oEmbed media import module built during Outercurve hackathon. Discovers media properties in Vimeo, or YouTube, Flickr etc. videos. No need to even create a template. Still missing size settings.
Media work still needs picker implementation, plus a number of gaps.

Triage

46 proposed before, 0 after. 233 active for 1.7 after triage.
Please review the list of active 1.7 bugs and vote on what you care about (everybody do your own mini-triage this week).

Brought to you by: http://english.orchardproject.hu

Weekly Podcast 05/07/2013

Wed, 08 May 2013 10:32:00 GMT

Meeting notes:

Announcements

new web sites: http://aeries.com/, http://www.amv.fr/, http://jaydata.org/, http://tpstr.com/ (@stanleygoldman), http://thefinerlist.com/ @stanleygoldman), https://www.rapidadvance.com/, http://dmh.co.at

Status

taxonomy navigation provider
bug fixes
new #{} token: if there is one #{ } block, it switches to that as the token delimiter. Useful for scripts with tokens in them. Also, {{{sometoken}}} would work and be evaluated as {whateverthevalueis}. One can now also use {#{sometoken}}. Escape for #{ is ##{.
nHibernate upgraded to 3.3.3
long-running worflow distributed across web sites: new Signal workflow activity, which is a named event. Web request activity, with associated controller that can trigger signals, which itself has a token that gives the URL for the action. Suggestion: being able to create a listener URL. Fix needed: querystring and form values from a callback need a little work to be really usable.
Content type definitions are loaded once up-front now.
Localization part on widget: what should the behavior be? If you have not provided a translation, it assumes that it's the default.

Triage

203 active, 52 proposed before. 221 active, 26 proposed after.

Brought to you by: http://english.orchardproject.hu

Running With SSL

Fri, 03 May 2013 05:32:00 GMT

An important part of any production site is protecting user logins and data. Many sites can be built without the need for SSL because they do not have users authenticating to them or updates are only done in staging environments. For sites that do allow users access to secure data such as a profile, credit card processing, or client statements we need to make sure we protect their data from being intercepted by a third party. Secondly, for login scenarios in production we also need to make sure user credentials are protected in transit from client to server.

When we are building a site using Orchard CMS things are a little different than a normal site, but much of it is the same. First off the two scenarios many developers face are whether or not to protect the entire site under SSL or just the login/secure pages. This is a decision everyone needs to make for themselves, but I usually fall on the side of running the entire site under SSL. Nowadays encryption/decryption is much faster than before and making sure there are no pages that might not be protected is much more important. Many companies now run their entire site under SSL for these very reasons. Moving forward I will discuss adding SSL to Orchard and supporting these two secnarios.

Theme Selection Per Action

Fri, 03 May 2013 05:05:14 GMT

I had a need on a custom web application project recently to use more than one theme in Orchard, one for the standard front-end of the website and one for a back-end portion of my custom module. After asking a couple of questions, the suggestion was made that the best solution for this was to create an ActionFilterAttribute and attach it to the ActionResult in the Controller for every Action I wanted to use the different theme on. I had never created an ActionFilterAttribute before, nor tried to apply it to Orchard theming, so I thought writing up my findings may help others.

Creating A Theme From A WrapBootstrap Template - Part 3

Fri, 03 May 2013 05:00:44 GMT

In our previous post, we completed the header and navigation containers in our Layout.cshtml. In this post, we're going to work on the main content container and the footer. I decided to break up the Layout.cshtml file into multiple blog posts because there is so much going on in this file to define the site structure that a single blog post would have been too long. The bulk of the coding in this file is going to be in the main content container that we're working on today. Let's get started.

Creating A Theme From A WrapBootstrap Template - Part 2

Fri, 03 May 2013 04:58:00 GMT

In our previous post, we setup the bulk of the file structure for our theme including scripts and styles and created the document.cshtml file that determines when and where they all get loaded. This post is going to concentrate on the layout.cshtml file which is going to create the basic HTML structure for the website. This time, we're going to copy the layout.cshtml file from the TheThemeMachine theme which is the default built-in theme that comes with Orchard. The file can be located in the Orchard.Web project under Themes/Themes/TheThemeMachine/Views. Copy the layout.cshtml file and paste it in to the Views folder of your theme.

Creating A Theme From A WrapBootstrap Template - Part 1

Fri, 03 May 2013 04:51:48 GMT

If you're a Twitter Bootstrap fan like myself, then you're already familiar with how easy it is to work with the styles and scripts included with Bootstrap. If you haven't discovered WrapBootstrap yet, you're in for a treat. WrapBootstrap is another website that sells templates, however, all of the templates on WrapBootstrap are built using Twitter Bootstrap. They also include some of the most useful tools for designing your website including things like Font Awesome and jQuery scripts for just about anything you can imagine... all optimized to work with Twitter Bootstrap.

Version 1.7 Previewed

Wed, 01 May 2013 17:37:50 GMT

.NET based CMS Orchard has reached the 4,000,000 module and theme download mark, and is now readying its next release, version 1.7, for a June 2013 launch. It's a major release, and it will debut features like drag and drop multiple image imports, image processing and integrated slideshows.

An Open Source CMS That Is Ready To Harvest

Wed, 01 May 2013 17:04:10 GMT

It may not be top of mind for most people yet, but Orchard has rapidly become a robust option for a CMS on the .NET platform. It’s free, open source and already powering online stores for major brands. Now, the Orchard project team is on the verge of launching major new media management features that will rival the best-known CMSs.

Weekly Podcast 04/30/2013

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:37:08 GMT

Meeting notes:

A security vulnerability has been found in all versions of Orchard. See http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Patch-4-30-2013 for details.
IRC: The #orchard channel is very active these days. It's a fun place to hang out and chat with other Orchard users. http://webchat.freenode.net/ is a web interface to IRC if you don't want to install a client.
Bug fix week: pull requests integrated, ~20 bug fixes.

Brought to you by: http://english.orchardproject.hu

Security patch recommended for all versions of Orchard

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:17:00 GMT

Background

A non-persistent XSS vulnerability has been discovered in the Orchard.Comments module that is distributed with the core distribution of the CMS. The module could in some circumstances let an external website render custom scripts on an Orchard website. This vulnerability might ultimately be used to gather your credentials if you further authenticate on the targeted Orchard website.

All released versions of Orchard are vulnerable and need to be patched immediately.

We are releasing today (April 30, 2013) a new version 1.6.1 of Orchard 1.6 that has the patch in place. This new version is replacing the previously available download. If you are downloading Orchard 1.6.1 today, you do not need to take any additional steps. The latest 1.x development branch is already patched as well. We are also releasing patch files for each version of Orchard from 1.0 to 1.6 that can be applied to existing web sites.

Mitigation

If you don't use the Comments module in Orchard, you can simply disable it in the Modules section of the Dashboard.
If your theme doesn't render the Messages zone, you are also safe, even if the Comments module is activated.

Action Required

Apply the patch for your version, update to Orchard 1.6.1, or update to the latest 1.x.

Orchard 1.6.1: https://orchard.codeplex.com/releases/view/90325

For older versions of Orchard, we are releasing patch files that can be applied on top of a running instance of Orchard. The archive for each of these patches contains a Modules folder that has the right structure to be copied into the root directory of an Orchard site. If you are using a source version, you need to copy the contents of the zip file into src/Orchard.Web.

1.6 patch: https://orchard.codeplex.com/downloads/get/671068
1.5 patch: https://orchard.codeplex.com/downloads/get/671066
1.4 patch: https://orchard.codeplex.com/downloads/get/671070
1.3 patch: https://orchard.codeplex.com/downloads/get/671074
1.2 patch: https://orchard.codeplex.com/downloads/get/671075
1.1 patch: https://orchard.codeplex.com/downloads/get/671076
1.0 patch: https://orchard.codeplex.com/downloads/get/671077

Weekly Podcast 04/23/2013

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 12:38:59 GMT

Meeting notes:

Bug fixes (home page bug, etc.)
Quick demo of using(Capture(Layout.ZoneName)) {...} to send razor rendering to a different zone. It's a lightweight way to do the same thing as creating a shape and adding it to a zone.
Media update: now available on 1.x branch, lots of polishing has been done, drag and drop of image in folders, responsive view of folders, delete.
Demo by Nick on inline editing: inline editing is a setting of parts. But overall, FAIL :) Needs to be refactored around shapes, with a way to explicitly map a display shape to an editor shape.
Zoltán has looked at integrating Glimpse as an Orchard module. Not quite working because of reliance on http modules.
Should we remove the URL field in the comments form? Bertrand to provide new setting to implement it.
48 proposed before triage, 15 after. 227 active for 1.7.

Brought to you by: http://english.orchardproject.hu

Oxford Economics: A Success Case

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 06:40:18 GMT

The specific challenge of this project was to provide a long-overdue modern user experience for the company’s website which consisted of two major areas dealing with marketing and providing customers access to their subscription products. The website was expected to receive an average 1000 visitors and 4000+ page views daily.
The marketing team needed to update the marketing and pay-walled site regularly using simple and effective tools in contrast to the old website which offered little direct manipulation tooling.

From a design perspective, the new site had to be clean, elegant and simple to navigate. Oxford Economics wanted to position themselves as the top economic consultancy in the world, by conveying their global presence, a strong sense of gravitas, trustworthiness and expertise.

A big challenge was to migrate over 20 thousand subscription products to the new backend without interrupting on-going access via the old website whilst the new one was being constructed.

The old system had little documentation making it extremely difficult to decipher how its features should really work.

Workflow Module

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 06:15:14 GMT

Looking forward to the release of the Orchard Workflow Module, which will probably be released around the same time as Orchard 1.7. The Workflow Module will probably replace the Orchard Rules Engine, which I have thoroughly enjoyed up to this point. The Orchard Workflow Module will have similar events and actions just like the Orchard Rules Engine, but offer quite a bit more functionality with various decision points that shape the workflow. I know a lot of clients would like to be able to have a workflow on how content is created, reviewed, approved, and published, and this is exactly what the new Orchard Workflow Module will address along with many other possibilities.

Recent Posts and Articles

Custom Ad System Using WebAPI And MVVM Part 1

Weekly Podcast 05/21/2013

Content Part Development Checklist

Media Manager And Image Editor In 1.7

Creating A Theme From A WrapBootstrap Template - Part 4

Orchard University Course In The 2013 Spring Semester Ended

Weekly Podcast 05/14/2013

Weekly Podcast 05/07/2013

Running With SSL

Theme Selection Per Action

Creating A Theme From A WrapBootstrap Template - Part 3

Creating A Theme From A WrapBootstrap Template - Part 2

Creating A Theme From A WrapBootstrap Template - Part 1

Version 1.7 Previewed

An Open Source CMS That Is Ready To Harvest

Weekly Podcast 04/30/2013

Security patch recommended for all versions of Orchard

Background

Mitigation

Action Required

Weekly Podcast 04/23/2013

Oxford Economics: A Success Case

Workflow Module