Blog netaddICTs

Building custom umbraco sections

Dirk — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:08:31 GMT

Filling the gap of the umbraco.tv series on building custom sections: Find out how to build a multilevel custom tree using the Northwind database.

Quick comparison: document api vs nodeFactory

Dirk — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:06:05 GMT

A small comparison of using the document api versus the nodeFactory class for displaying umbraco data on the front end. Read more about it here.

Macro parameter chaining

Dirk — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:58:09 GMT

Did you know you can do parameter chaining on macros? Don't know the concept? Read on!

translation features in umbraco

Administrator — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:21:50 GMT

A client of mine was asking how he had to use the translation features in umbraco. Honestly, I haven't used it before but have started to explore how those features can be used in umbraco. Have a look at this article and let me know your thoughts on the last question.

Fixed blog

Dirk — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:06:43 GMT

Wow, just notices how long it took since my last blog post. I'm back, and reason for my delay was an error in my umbraco installation which disabled my blogging platform. Quite of annoying, but it's back up and running.

And whilst I'm here, I might as well share a new umbraco package action I've been working on as part of my spare project 'Protected Media'. It's a package action which allows to inject a complete section into your website's web.config. Read the complete article here .

I'll also share the code to be included in the wonderful Package Actions Contrib project mainly run by Richard. I'll also cross post on the wiki just in case...

Oh, and I might be my last post...

before revamping this site. I got a little bored with the current design... which is basically a Wordpress theme I've slighlty adapted to fit my blogging needs...

Protected media goes Codeplex

Dirk — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:13:14 GMT

Hi all,

It's been a while since last blog post. Guess I must have been busy doing great stuff. And I have. It's been two fantastic month building umbraco sites and add on packages. And that's the reason for this new blog post.

I've been asked too many times now when the 'protected media', which I've demoed at the last Benelux user group meeting, would be packaged up for the community. It still hasn't been :(

And for that reason, I've decided to go open source with this package to let the wonderful umbraco community participate in the design and implementation.

If it's still unclear what protected media is all about, read up this article on this site. If you'd like to contribute to the project, feel free to contact me at dirk@netaddicts.be and I'll be happy to add you to the list of developers.

Be aware though, current code is far from complete and it's been ported from old v3 code (for which it was originally designed)...

I will also continue to work on this and other projects in the future.

Xslt debugging

Dirk — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:33:18 GMT

Hi all umbracians... Yesterday, I was able to debug some xslt from an umbraco powered website. It turned out not to be as difficult as I though it would have been... Here's what I've done to get xslt debugging working using umbraco's latest nightly build combined with Warren's excellent CWS2 package

Feel free to add some comments, I'm sure other solutions are possible... It would be great to hear about those as well.

umbraco and Lucene.net

Dirk — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:11:05 GMT

I've recently been involved in a small project that required some advanced search functionalities. I've bundled my experiences in a Short article and tips on using search facilities in umbraco using Lucene.net

umbraco quick tip #1: umbracoUrlAlias and specifying complete new path

Dirk — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:24:12 GMT

Lots of people are aware of those nifty hidden gems in umbraco. And today I'll introduce another one which I came across a few days ago. It's the 'umbracoUrlAlias' property alias. It can be useful in cases where you'd like to restructure some parts of the umbraco content tree. Let's take an news section example and start from this:

-Content
--News
---2009
----4
-----8
------A news item created on March 8th

Assume your client want to keep the tree structure as is (As it makes it easy for him/her to know when posts have been created/updated, but doesn't want users who visit the site to enter the complete path /news/2009/4/8/a-news-item-created-on-martch-8-th.aspx. Instead, the user should be able to enter /news/a-news-item-created-on-march-8-th.aspx.

In this case, 'umbracoUrlAlias' migth become the programmer's best friend. All you need to do is to have an extra property of type 'textstring', and alias = 'umbracoUrlAlias'. For each of the news item, enter news/name-of-the-item (Replace name-of-the-item with the corresponding new item's node name, NO LEADIND SLASH AND DO NOT ADD THE .ASPX EXTENSION) and the news item will also be available from /news/name-of-the-item.aspx.

Ok, got it?

Let's add another example (a real life example I ran into last week) where I am dealing with profiles (Basically, people that register on the site) and projects (People can add any number of projects). Content tree had to be structured as:

-Content
--Profiles
---Profile-1
---Profile-2
----Projects
-----Project-1
----Other stuff folder
---Profile-3

and so...

In this case, 'Project-1' is available from the address /profiles/profile-2/projects/project-1.aspx whereas the client requested that a project is always available from the address /projects/project-1.aspx.

Solution: Again, add a new property of 'textstring' type, alias = 'umbracoUrlAlias' and enter projects/project-1 in the field (for project-1 that is).

Pretty neat stuff, isn't that?

And it's not finished yet. Assume 'Project-1' has a number of child nodes as in following tree structure:

-Content
--Profiles
---Profile-1
---Profile-2
----Projects
-----Project-1
------Child-1
------Child-2
----Other stuff folder
---Profile-3

Both child nodes will be available from /profiles/profile-2/projects/project-1/child-1.aspx (/profiles/profile-2/projects/project-1/child-2.aspx) as from /projects/project-1/child-1.aspx (/projects/project-1/child-1.aspx) without the need to add the property for those child nodes.

Bottom line: It doesn't matter how deep the content is stored inside umbraco, it can always be retrieved using a much more simple url/path if you're adding a 'umbracoUrlAlias' property.

Happy coding!

umbraco podcast #8

Dirk — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:06:30 GMT

umbraco MVP 2008/2009

Dirk — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:43:30 GMT

Although not yet officially stated, I've been awarded with the umbraco MVP status for 2008/2009. I've received a nice and friendly mail from Niels confirming my new status last November just before I left for the level 2 training in Copenhagen. For that matter, I've added a second badge on the home page. Shameless self-promotion, but man, I'm sooo really proud of this.

Protecting media files from unauthorized downloading

Dirk — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:40:55 GMT

A small introduction to a new package which is currently still in development. It has been demoed at the Benelux user group meeting last Saturday in A'dam.

'How to protect your media files from unauthorized downloading'

For more info and links to other presentations and demo, follow this link

CMS Demo @ CMS Innovation 2008

Dirk — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:12:43 GMT

Hi guys, it's been a while due to some heavy workload but have promised to write up a small blog post about our first demo experiences. First things first, here's some nice pictures taken while demoing (It must have been fun I guess...)

Last picture says it all... It was great. Didn't know what to expect, and didn't get as much audience as the other tracks, but we were quite satisfied with the result. I guess we've been heavily practising our presentation skills. Due to some stupid copy/paste action, I've removed the demo material from my local disk. I'll be sharing the material as soon... as I return from holidays.

What's more to expect when I get back: An article about the level 2 training experiences (Ok, that's three weeks ago, or even longer, but didn't find the time...), tips 'n' tricks I've learned and try to put into practice and much more.

Hope to see you soon!

Cheers,

Dirk

Happy 2009

Dirk — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:12:13 GMT

A rather small blog post, with a single message:

Happy 2009! Let's hope 2009 will become another great umbraco year!

umbraco demo op CM Innovation 2008

Dirk — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:55:57 GMT

Op donderdag 4 december zullen Tim Geyssens (http://www.nibble.be) en ikzelf een demo geven over de nieuwste versie van umbraco v4. Meer informatie over CM Innovation 2008 kan u terugvinden op de site http://cminnovation.eu/

Agenda: http://development.webalive.net/cm-innovation/documents/agenda/track-1.xml?lang=nl

Heading to CPH in three weeks from now

Dirk — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:11:42 GMT

Oh yes, I've just booked my seat for the Level 2 training in three weeks from now. Have I told you how excited I am? I really am, I'll be learning some neat new stuff about the latest umbraco release. Oh man, I can't wait to leave (But I do like home as well...)

http://umbraco.org/blog/2008/10/29/umbraco-course-in-november---all-about-umbraco-4

Do you attend the training as well? Do you want to share some beers? Leave a comment and we'll find a way to organise a pre training get together!

Hope to meet you soon!

Personal umbraco rambling

Dirk — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:38:36 GMT

It's been a fabulous month! Lots of stuff has been going on in the umbraco world:

° umbraco v4 is about to enter its beta 2 status.

It should be the last beta release before we go into the alpha stage. It has been a great release so far. New features which were introduced for v4 have been further developed and polished including the Live editing feature, master pages support and support for document type inheritance. Each one of those features makes umbraco a real CMS killer application. Oh, and for those who don't twitter, Niels has also announced xslt debugging for umbraco from within vs.net and svn/tfs versioning support. Can't wait to see that happen.

umbraco has also be nominated for "Best Other Open Source CMS". It's no longer possible to vote for it!

° Release of umbraco Pro.

Excert taken from the umbraco.org website:

"Umbraco pro is a commercial offering for every professional or company working on a professional level."

umbraco Pro includes both the "Courier" and "Concierge" products. If you don't know about those new products, have a look here.

° CGUS08

Last week, CGUS08 was held at Chicago. More than 30 participants have gathered to talk about all things umbraco. More info and presentation slides can be found on the official umbraco.us website.

And, Richard who's also contributing to the forum4umbraco project has won the Package contest. Congrats Richard! Great job! Ace package. Hope to see a live demo at one of our next Benelux umbraco user group meetings.

° Doug Robar has joined the umbraco company as Evangelist.

Best man for the right job. Our top most poster on the umbraco forum has been appointed Evangelist. As from now one, Doug will spread the word about umbraco all over the world. He's start conquering US... Congrats Doug and good luck on the job.

° Last but not least, umbraco.tv has been launched...

"Get instant access to more than 5 hours(!) of Umbraco Video tutorials made by umbraco founder Niels Hartvig and umbraco guru Per Ploug Hansen."

If you haven't signed up yet, this is the time. Look here for more info.

And, what have I been doing lately. Hmm, I've been evaluating umbraco even more, been setting up some proof-of-concepts for our forum4umbraco project, in co-operation with Billy Koch and Richard Soeteman and have been thinking about some new cool 'features' I'd like to work on during the coming weeks. Here's my personal wish list:

A validation framework allowing to add validation to standard/custom datatypes. Image you need a date for a document, but wishes to restrict that date to a date in the future... Currently, this is not supported. I'll be looking into this to see what is possible within the existing setup.

I'm also having a closer look at the new .net event model. Haven't played much with it, but one thing I'm missing already is the ability to cancel events. For example, what if you wish to cancel a save operation because of... whatever. Could be anything. Might do some code hacking to prepare a proof-of-concept. I really think it would be a bonus to the system. Just need to convince others... ;)

Lately, we've had a discussion on document type inheritance. I didn't like the idea at first as I've always found it more intuitive to create 'Property sets' which can be reused by multiple document types. Ok, my idea didn't make it, but I have been thinking about how to extend this functionality using the existing code base. So, I've been thinking about extending the existing data types to allow for a 'Combined datatypes', ie. having a custom datatype that is made up of other existing datatypes. Need to sort out some things first, but I might give it a shot sometime.

"forum4umbraco". Although it has been quiet lately, it surely doesn't mean we haven't been progressing. We've not written a single line of code, but we do know where we want to go. More about this later on.

Enough for now. Need to get to work again.

the 'ultimate navigation'

Dirk — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:20:15 GMT

A great idea, a great forum and community. Put those two together and you'll get a new package, called the 'ultimateNav'. Have a look at the article about how to install and use it. If you think it could even be optimized or want something else to be included, feel free to add a comment here. I'm sure we can add some more useful stuff.

Codepicker v0.2

Dirk — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:46:08 GMT

Our original 'Code picker' that I've released a while ago has been adapted a bit. It's now possible to also choose the column that will be used for content publishing whereas the first version expected a hard coded 'Description' column.

For example: Assume we wish to let content editors choose from a list of available countries. Instead of using the standard dropdown list and entering the values manually, we'll choose from a list of countries that are available in the database.

First, create a new table in the database 'Countries', holding two columns 'Id' and 'Description'. Secondly, create a new datatype called 'Country picker' and set its render control to 'Code picker' (Choose from the dropdown). Hit 'Save' to enter the configuration options. From the available tables, choose the 'Countries' table. Once table choosen, the system will look up all columns for that table. Choose the table that will hold the value that is published on 'Save and Publish' of any content that will be created based on this datatype.

At this point, you'll only need to drop a property of the newly created datatype 'Country picker' onto any of your existing or new document types and you're all set.

Currently, this datatype only supports MSSql. Still have to look into things needed to support MySql/VistaDb.

Any suggestions or comments are much appreciated. Please report bugs on the forum or in the comment form.

Best of all, the 'Live editing' feature supports this new datatype. No strings attached! It has been tested on the latest build (Change set 39462)

Download the package here.

Google chrome

Dirk — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:44:45 GMT

Amazing browser, fully compatible with umbraco v3 and v4. Guess I've found a new way of browsing the web. Fast, elegant, the way 'I' want it to be.