Posts From July, 2005

FCKeditor 2.0 Final Release

I just upgraded the source code in svn to use the new final release of FCKeditor. Those of you using the mojoPortal source code from svn can get it now. After I've had a chance to do some more testing I'll make a new release. I've upgraded this site to use it as well so I can test. So far so good.

Update:
I'm having a few issues with the new FCKeditor and trying to work through them. Its not allowing me to browse the server or upload files on mono. It works in IIS, I think there is a case sensitivty issue somewhere but haven't found it yet.

Also the css for the editor is displaying funky but appears ok when it renders outside the editor.

Using the VS.NET Web Page Designer with mojoPortal

For a long time my use of MasterPages has prevented the use of the VS.NET designer in setting up page layout.  Its never really bothered me because I'm an old school html guy and really never use the designer anyway so I didn't look into it too hard.  Since then several people have asked and expressed their wish for it to work in the VS.NET designer.  Well big thanks go out to Jan Hussaarts for figuring out why it didn't work and how to easily fix it.

It wasn't a problem with MasterPages itself, it was code I added to make it get the skin setting from the SiteSettings object stored in the HttpContext. The problem was that at design time there is no HttpContext so all it needed was a check to see if HttpContext is null before using it and now it works in the designer!

Its commited to svn for those of you working with the VS.NET Solution.

Release 20050710

I just posted a new release on the Download page.  This release adds the Search feature powered by DotLucene as well as advanced logging capabilities powered by log4net.

There are no changes to the table structures for this release but users of PostgreSQL and MS SQL will need to re-run the stored procedure scripts for upgrading from version 20050618.
You will want to replace every file except maybe your Web.config.

Be sure and back up your site and db before upgrading and as always if you have any trouble please post in the Forums.

The latest code is not yet commited to svn because I'm having connection troubles with the repository on Novell Forge.  Its never happened before so I'm optimistic they will have this fixed tomorrow. I'm not the only Novell Forge user reporting this problem today, I will commit the newest code as soon as this is working again.

Update 7/11/2005:
The problem with the svn repository on Novell Forge was fixed today and I commited the latest code and also put up a new zip file for those who haven't got hip to svn yet.

Making Good Progress on the Search feature

I'm making good progress implementing the site Search feature using DotLucene (not to be confused with Lucene.NET), big thanks to Martijn Boland for good advice and also for good code examples on using DotLucene in his Cuyahoga Web Site Framework.  His project is also a good reference for those who want to use NHibernate in ASP.NET.

The search is functional and working on this site, though it still needs some refinement before I make a release. The index for the search is maintened as content is created and updated so it will always stay in synch. Search results are filtered by role and the index is updated if view permissions for a page are updated so that the filtering is always correct.

Search is implemented in:
Html Content
Blogs
Forums
Event Calendar
Image Gallery
Links
Shared Files

The biggest challenge is getting good performance in building the index for an existing site which will be needed for users upgrading from older versions of mojoPortal. I've created a button to build the index for the whole site but the quandry I face is after the upgrade people should really never click it. Especially if the site gets really big say hundreds of pages or thousands of forum posts it would really be best to leave the indexes to manage themselves. But if the button is there, people will click it.

One option I suppose is to put the button in the page settings and make the user manually index each page in the site rather than the whole site. This would break it down to smaller chunks at a time but still would not be a good thing to do on the page that has the forums after you get a thousand posts as each post will be indexed.  I don't know of anyone currently using mojoPortal that has hundreds of pages or thousands of posts so maybe I shouldn't worry about it too much. Building the index will definitely be an Admin only feature.