As many of you know mojoPortal is in the Windows Web Application Gallery and can be easily installed using the Platform Installer. However when we make new releases of mojoPortal it can be several weeks before we get the new version into the Web Application Gallery. We usually wait a little while to make sure we shake out any bugs before submitting updates to the Gallery and then once we do submit it it may take a few days to a week before it is updated there.

Now we have a custom product feed that can be used in the Platform Installer and we can update our own feed immediately when we make new releases. Our custom feed also has packages for SQL CE, SQLite, PostgreSQL and Firebird Sql packages of mojoPortal, in addition to the package for MS SQL, whereas the only package we have in the Web App Gallery is for MS SQL.

The product feed is brand new and I just revamped our article Installing mojoPortal Using the Web Platform Installer to provide full step by step details about how to add our product feed and install mojoPortal.

Once you've added our product feed to the Platform Installer a new mojoPortal tab appears and shows all of our latest packages for .NET 4.

The Platform Installer can install SQL Express if you don't already have it installed. Of course the packages for SQL CE and SQLite are the easiest to install because they are file based databases and have no database software that needs to be installed. You can install the packages for PostgreSql or Firebird but for those packages you would have to manually install the database server software and set your connection string in user.config.

We're always looking for ways to make things easier and I've been meaning to get this product feed put together for quite a while now. I once had made a feed as a static xml file but it was not easy to keep up to date so I ended up not keeping it up to date. The new feed is a custom .ashx file that I can easily edit with the new file information and it generates the feed, so it will be much easier to keep it updated as we make new releases of mojoPortal.

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Don't forget to join us for the next mojoPortal Online User Group Meeting on August 24, 2010 at 7PM EDT.

Topic: How to integrate jQuery plugins in mojoPortal

Presenter: Joe Audette, founder of mojoPortal

Target Audience: Beginning to Intermediate ASP.NET developers

Not much of the content will really be mojoPortal specific, so this presentation should be useful for those doing any ASP.NET WebForms development.

What will be covered?

• Wiring up the plugin script so that it loads after the main jQuery scripts
• Wiring up instance specific javscript to create your instance of the plugin based on existing markup or control ids
• Various ways to add the CSS needed for a plugin
• Implementing Custom UserControls with jQuery plugins
• Implementing Re-useable Server Controls that encapsulate plugins
• Specific jQuery Plugins that will be examined: jQuery Cycle, jCarousel, EasySlider, jQuery UI Tabs and Accordion

Originally I was going to present on using ZedGraph, but there have been a lot of questions in the forums lately about using jQuery plugins so I think this presentation will be more helpful. I will do a presentation on ZedGraph sometime in the future.

Each month we have different presenters, so far we have had some really good presentations by David Dean, Joe Davis, and Steve Land. If you would like to present at a future meeting let us know, we'd love to have your help!

Mark your calendars, I hope to see you there!

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UPDATE 2010-08-24

Looking forward to tonights meeting, it is completely booked, but in the past we've had a significant number of no shows. If you've signed up but aren't going to be able to make it please contact Yamisee so they can free up the seat for someone else. If you want to attend but were not able to reserve a seat, there is a pretty good chance that not everyone will show up. I'd recommend that you contact Yamisee right at 7PM when the meeting is to begin, if we have seats available at 7:10PM due to some no shows, we may be able to squeeze you in. I'm pretty excited about the material I will be presenting and think it will be very helpful.

UPDATE 2010-08-25

Thanks to all who attended the user group last night, especially David Dean of Yamisee for hosting the event for us every month. You can watch videos of previous sessions on this page at Yamisee. I've also created a .zip file containing the examples from my presentation http://download.mojoportal.com/tutorials/mojousergroup-20100824.zip

This is just a quick post in follow up to my previous post SQL Server Compact 4.0 and mojoPortal, to provide some updated information. We recently released mojoPortal 2.3.4.8, and I've updated the package for SQL CE recently to contain migration scripts so that it is easy to migrate to SQL Server.

I've also created some new documentation.

• Using SQL CE with mojoPortal
• Using WebMatrix to run the SQL CE Version of mojoPortal
• Using WebMatrix to Migrate mojoPortal from SQL CE to SQL Server
• Using WebMatrix to Install mojoPortal from the Web App Gallery

WebMatrix includes IIS Express web server which is much easier to use on your local machine than IIS but has all the features of IIS. Once you install WebMatrix, you can right click a folder in Windows Explorer and choose "Open as a Web Site with Microsoft WebMatrix". So you can just unzip the mojoPortal package and right click the wwwroot folder to launch a mojoPortal site on your local machine. If using SQL CE you don't need to even need to configure a database, it just works, but for other mojoPortal packages you would have to set the connection string for the database. 

One could also use WebMatrix for light mojoPortal feature development, perhaps at some point I will make an article showing how to use the mojoPortal Hello World examples with WebMatrix. While WebMatrix is not designed to scratch the same itch as Visual Studio, it is a useful tool even for folks like me who really live in Visual Studio all day long. I encourage you to check it out, especially if you are interested in working with the SQL CE version of mojoPortal.

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Just a quick post to mention that 5 more videos have been completed in the developer series of videos. Here is the full list of videos so far and more are on the way soon. The newest videos are at the bottom of the list. The series is aimed at teaching how to build custom features that plug into mojoPortal by demonstrating step by step how to implement a guest book feature. Once the series is completed I will also make the source code available.

1. Getting the code with TortoiseSVN
2. Source Code Overview Part 1
3. Source Code Overview Part 2
4. Custom Solution
5. Hello Web
6. Hello Web Part 2
7. Hello Guest Book
8. Concepts Part 1
9. Concepts Part 2
10. Debugging in IIS
11. Create a Table Using the Setup System
12. Using The Setup System to Run Upgrade Scripts
13. Generating a Data Access Class
14. Generate the Business Layer
15. First Guestbook Submission
16. Form Layout
17. Form Layout and Data Binding
18. Upgrading from svn and Converting to VS 2010
19. CSS Layout
20. Using a WYSIWYG Editor and Captcha
21. Default Button and Input Validation
22. Protecting Against Untrusted Content
23. Supporting Pages Part 1
24. Supporting Pages Part 2
25. Supporting Pages Part 3
26. Enforcing Security Part 1
27. Enforcing Security Part 2
28. Implementing the update method

UPDATED 2010-05-11: added 3 more videos 26, 27, and 28

Also don't forget the mojoPortal online user group meeting is coming up on May 18, 2010 at 8PM EDT.

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Just a quick post to let people know about new training videos available. I am making it my focus for this month to produce a lot more tutorials to answer common questions and especially to help developers get started with custom development. I still have a ways to go with the developer tutorials, but thought I would go ahead an post links to videos I've completed so far.

Installation and Configuration

• Installing mojoPrtal in IIS 7.5 with MS SQL
• Hosting Multiple Sites Based on Host Names - with a primer on DNS resolution

Developer Series

I've begun a series of clips where I plan to implement a simple Guestbook feature as a way to cover important concepts. 

1. Getting the code from svn trunk
2. Introduction to the Source Code Part 1
3. Introduction to the Source Code Part 2
4. Creating a Custom Solution and Project
5. Hello Web Part 1
6. Hello Web Part 2
7. Guestbook first steps
8. Concepts Part 1
9. Concepts Part 2
10. Debugging in IIS
11. Create a Table in the db using the setup system
12. Create stored procedures with an upgrade script using the setup system
13. Generating a data access class
14. Generate the business layer
15. First Guestbook submission achieved
16. Form Layout 
17. Form Layout Part 2 and data binding

Just getting started so far, lots more clips to produce to complete the Guestbook tutorial. I'm planning to cover development of business and data access classes and how to add supporting pages to your feature as well as how to make your feature searchable. I'm working only from an outline not a script, so the videos are mostly improvised and I stumble on a few things here and there, but rather than edit them out, I think it is helpful since you may also stumble a little bit, so learning to work through the stumbles is part of the process.

Each clip will be less than 10 minutes in order to fit them on YouTube, but they are in high definition so the video quality should be pretty decent.

UPDATE 2010-03-08 -added items 8 - 17 to the list above.

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