mojoPortal Blog https://www.mojoportal.com/blog http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification mojoPortal Blog Module en-US webmaster@mojoportal.com (mojoPortal) 120 webmaster@mojoportal.com (mojoPortal) webmaster@mojoportal.com mojoPortal no mojoPortal 2.7 We're pleased to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.7, which has a lot feature enhancements and fixes as you will see below. We're also releasing updated versions of Form Wizard, Event Calendar Pro, Site Membership Paywall, Web Invoice, and Fund Raiser.

Where to Get It?

Head over to our GitHub Releases Page.

Highlights

  • Google Maps Fix
  • New Image Gallery
  • MySQL 8 support
  • pgSQL and SQLite support for SuperFlexi
  • Form Wizard form editing experience improvements

New Feature: Better Image Gallery

  • Beginning of a new image gallery. Currently replaces the Image Gallery (Simple Folder Version), will replace the other Image Gallery soon.
  • Uses Razor Views the same way the Blog Post List View module does.
  • Default layout (view) uses BlueImpGallery
  • Learn more here: Getting Started With The Better Image Gallery.

SuperFlexi

  • pgSQL and SQLite support.
  • Allow editing when user is in AllowedEditRoles.
  • Added "SkinVersionGuid" static token.
  • Added WebApi support for retrieving SuperFlexi data.
  • Added [dbo] to all object references in mssql scripts.
  • Added Pre/Post TokenStringWhen True/False for CheckBoxes.
  • Fixed MaxItems needing high number to work properly.
  • Fixed bug where not selecting solution would break site.
  • Fixed bug where changing Solution would cause an error condition on first click of edit link.
  • Fixed bug in MySQL data layer where Int32 dbtype was used when Guid should have been used.

Blog

  • Added optional "Default Post URL Prefix" setting. Allows for automatically placing blog posts in a URL hierarchy, e.g., some.domain/my-blog/my-first-post.
  • Added logic to Remove post from Search Index if "EndDate" is set to before current date.
  • Added logic Remove post from Search Index if "IncludeInSearch" is set to false. Previously, this was only checked when creating a post, not when editing.
  • Added logic to check for Heading control on page when UsePostTitleAsPageHeading is true. This setting would hide the blog title if the page heading was no longer on the page if the ShowPageHeading setting was set in the DB from a previous skin.
  • Added logic to allow BlogPostListModule to work in ModuleWrapper.
  • Changed post title and subtitle fields to not allow HTML. Someone actually thought this was a XSS issue but only people who could add HTML to the post body (thus able to add script) could set the title and subtitle fields. SMH…

Forums

  • Removed old inline styling on table elements
  • Standardized on "thread" vs "topic" and capitalization of other phrases/words

Survey

  • Added submission limit for authenticated users.

Shared Files

  • Added granular permissions for Roles on files and folders.

mojoPortal Core

  • Added support for MySQL 8 and SSL connections to MySQL servers.
  • Added SQLite database auto creation. If SqliteConnectionString value is "defaultdblocation", mojo will copy the seed database (/data/sqlitedb/mojo-seed.db.config) to  (/data/sqlitedb/mojo.db.config). This will prevent accidentally overwriting the existing database.
  • Added page deletion confirmation dialog.
  • Added .webp to the allowed image file extensions.
  • Added WebUser.IsSkinManager method.
  • Added new control "EmbedSVGSprite" to allow easier embedding of SVGs in code.
  • Added display settings to separate settings/delete from move buttons on PageLayout buttons.
  • Added override for UIHelper.AddConfirmationDialog to allow for HtmlButton in place of WebControl. Allows for attaching Confirmation Dialogs to HTML5 button elements.
  • Added AlertPanel to allow for easier and standardized skinning of alert messages.
  • Added SelectFolder function to FileManager.
  • Added ICustomField, Options, Attributes, and DropDown to ModuleSettings. Makes adding dropdown options easier, removes need for special controls for those types of fields. ICustomField is like ISettingControl but it has ability to add additional Attributes to the control. These attributes can be used by the custom control in any way the developer wants. They are also used by the TextBox, CheckBox and DropDown field types in the ModuleSettings.
  • Added API Key functionality to Google Maps.
  • Added iframe embed option for Google Maps, enabled by default. Doesn’t require an API Key.
  • Added SetupFooter options.
  • Added CSV_Splitter to MSSQL datalayer. Will create a list of SqlDataRecord from a list of values. This new list is used to populate a TVP (Table-Valued Parameter) in a stored procedure.
  • Added StringHelper.IsIn(). string extesion to easily check if string is in an array. Example:
    string color = "blue";
    string[] colors = {"blue", "green", "red"};
    if (color.IsIn(colors))
    {
        // do something
    }
  • Added Set_Root_Cookie function to mojocombined.js.
  • Added .woff2 to web.config.
  • Added UIHelper.GetDictionaryFromString(). Converts a semicolon and pipe delimited string to a string,string dictionary.
  • Added XMLHelper.GetKeyValuePairsAsStringBuilder and XMLHelper.GetKeyValuePairs.
  • Added Browse Files permission to allow users to use the file manager but not make any changes or upload new files.
  • Changed location of "Design Tools" to Admin Menu.
  • Changed to Newer/prettier/better/fantastical markup for error page.
  • Changed UIHelper.AddConfirmationDialog to allow for more than one onclick call.
  • Changed the rendered order of CssClass and ExtraCssClasses on BasePanel. (extra is now second).
  • Changed RolesThatCanDeleteFileInEditor to always include ContentAdmins.
  • Changed FriendlyUrl Suggestions to use optional url prefix.
  • Changed permissions to allow ContentAdmins to delete in File Manager.
  • Changed permissions to allow ContentAdmins to see FileManager link.
  • Cleaned up System Log page when logging to database.
  • Cleaned up controls in built-in features, added SkinIDs to buttons, converted panels to FormGroupPanel.
  • Fixed some capitalization issues in MySQL db scripts.
  • Fixed "Skin Manager" CSS editing to allow editing CSS files in sub-directories of a skin.
  • Fixed OpenID (janrain) issue preventing logins.
  • Fixed bug where Site Search Module wasn’t using the feature filter from the module settings.
  • Fixed caching issue in FileManager by disabling caching. This was causing issues with the FileSystemServiceToken which would prevent users from using the File Manager.
  • Fixed reference to non-existent 404notfound.aspx file in web.config
  • Fixed FileManager for folder-based multi-tenancy.
  • Fixed folder url recognition in folder-based multi-tenancy. No longer need to create folder and add empty default.aspx file.
  • Fixed saving of FirstName and LastName on create in ManageUsers.aspx
  • Fixed buggy regex for CustomCssClass settings in several modules. Consecutive spaces in submitted input were causing the regex validation to lockup.
  • Removed DetectPageNotFoundForExtensionlessUrls to fix issues with Routing (new file manager).
  • Removed GreyBoxIsLoadedFromSkin in code and user/web.config.
  • Removed LessUtility from DesignTools.
  • Removed unused images and css from data/style.
  • Removed unused icons and images from data/SiteImages.
  • Removed more corner rounding controls.
  • Removed FeatureIcon/ModuleIcon and PageIcon settings.
  • Removed Twitter and Flicker modules that no longer work due to drastic changes in service APIs.
  • Replaced several hard coded instances of image file extensions.
  • Replaced long string concatenation with string interpolation (not complete, work-in-progress).
  • Replaced ugly icons used on PageLayout for moving content with FontAwesome 5 SVG sprite.
  • Replaced a lot of the old ugly icons used throughout project with simplified icons. Planning full replacement of these icons with something else later.
  • Standardized Authentication Checks and Access Denied redirects. Had about 10 different process flows before.
  • Standardized use of NonCmsBasePage across admin page.

Web Store 7.5.0.1

Web Store can be downloaded here.

  • REQUIRES mojoPortal 2.7
  • Added support for MySQL 8 and SSL connections to MySQL servers.
  • Added proper SkinID to buttons so they will match styling of the rest of the site
  • Removed the now defunct Google Checkout
  • UI Improvements, including several new Display Settings

Form Wizard 2.7

Form Wizard can be purchased in the store. If you already own a license, go to My Profile under your avatar on the mojoPortal site to download the latest version.

  • REQUIRES mojoPortal 2.7 (version numbers being the same is just a coincidence).
  • Added support for MySQL 8 and SSL connections to MySQL servers.
  • Added a lot of Display Settings.
  • Added SkinIDs to submit and previous buttons.
  • Added Question Alias to divs wrapping each row in rendered form. Allows for selecting specific questions by targeting data-question-alias in script.
  • Changed field/question editing to use pop-up modals. Framework based skins and skins with Bootstrap 3.7 work with this automatically. For others, see this.
  • Changed Slider question to use HTML Slider Input by default.
  • Changed Slider Range inputs to textboxes.
  • Changed FormUtils.GetAttachments to public so it can be used in SubmissionHandler.
  • Changed HTML Question to use mojoEditor (will use whatever editor is default in mojo).
  • Changed ugly icons used for moving question options to FontAwesome.
  • Fixed Question disappearing when editing.
  • Fixed submit buttons being disabled when using pages.
  • Removed SliderMaxRangeLimit option.

Event Calendar Pro 3.5

Event Calendar Pro can be purchased in the store. If you already own a license, go to My Profile under your avatar on the mojoPortal site to download the latest version.

  • REQUIRES mojoPortal 2.7.
  • Added support for MySQL 8 and SSL connections to MySQL servers.
  • Added "Use iframe Embed for Map" option for Google Maps.
  • Added a lot of Display Settings to help with skinning.
  • Fixed issue where customer company input was not showing on ticket purchase form when "Show Address on Free Event Registration" was disabled.
  • Moved ticket options to separate tab in event editor.
  • Removed Bing Map support.
  • Renamed "Sales Management" to "Administration".

Web Invoice 1.8

Web Invoice can be purchased in the store. If you already own a license, go to My Profile under your avatar on the mojoPortal site to download the latest version.

  • REQUIRES mojoPortal 2.7.
  • Added support for MySQL 8 and SSL connections to MySQL servers.
  • Added optional Invoice Fee.
  • Added Email CC option.
  • Added Email BCC option.

Fund Raiser 1.3

Fund Raiser can be purchased in the store. If you already own a license, go to My Profile under your avatar on the mojoPortal site to download the latest version.

  • REQUIRES mojoPortal 2.7.
  • Added support for MySQL 8 and SSL connections to MySQL servers.
  • Added a lot of Display Settings to help with skinning.
  • Removed CornerRounder Controls

Site Membership Paywall 1.1

Site Membership Paywall can be purchased in the store. If you already own a license, go to My Profile under your avatar on the mojoPortal site to download the latest version.

  • REQUIRES mojoPortal 2.7.
  • Added support for MySQL 8 and SSL connections to MySQL servers.

Joe Davis  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2-7 webmaster@mojoportal.com https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2-7 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2-7 Sat, 20 Oct 2018 05:00:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.6 Today, we're pleased to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.6. We had planned on releasing this version much sooner but we kept adding features! In the future, we're planning on releasing about once per month. Larger features will take more time but our community shouldn't wait for smaller enhancements.

With this release, we're introducing SuperFlexi and the Blog Post List modules. We also have a lot of enhancements and new features for existing modules. Finally, we've made some improvements to Framework and we're releasing a new free skin called "Scout", which can be downloaded from the mojoSkins project.

Where to Get It?

Head over to our GitHub Releases Page.

SuperFlexi

The SuperFlexi module is intended to serve as an easy templating system that works as a go-between for front-end developers and users. Developers can easily create "Solutions" that determine, to a large extent, the module's uses; controlling both what kind of input users can store in the database and what markup is created on the page. Users can then simply select a "Solution" in the module settings, and create their content with straightforward easily-understood forms, which will then be rendered as determined by the developers defined markup.

SuperFlexi aims to give end users much easier control over their content, even when that content might normally be quite complicated (as in the case of sliders, tables, structured or gridded HTML, and many other things). Possible uses for SuperFlexi are virtually limitless and we're really excited to be adding it as a core module in mojoPortal 2.6.

With mojoPortal 2.6, we're including 8 solutions; Accordion, Banner Slider, Icon Blocks, Image Blocks, Personnel List, Quick Links, Social Media Links, and Tabs. Each of these is demonstrated on the mojoPortal Demo Site. Please note, SuperFlexi does not currently support SQLite and PGSQL. We should have support for those database platforms in a couple of weeks.

To learn more about SuperFlexi, check out the documentation. We've also created a new Forum, just for SuperFlexi.

Blog Post List Module

So, for a very long time, the official guidance for showing a list of blog posts on pages other than the page your blog is on was to use the Feed Manager to consume your blog's RSS Feed. This meant that the Feed Manager had to make an http(s) connection back to your site, consume the feed, cache the feed contents in the database, and then query the database for the cached contents. Granted, the connection and subsequent caching only happened on a set interval but it was very unnecessary. We decided to cut out the middle-man (Feed Manager) and create a module which connects directly to a chosen Blog module and displays the posts. We went a step further by creating a Razor View Engine for this new module. Yes, you read that right, Razor. You can create Razor views to control the display of this new module.

To learn more about the Blog Post List module, head over to the documentation.

Blog Updates

We spent some time on the Blog and besides the wonderful new Razor-enabled Blog Post List, we have added Post Featured Image, Blog Featured Post, and automatic Meta Content creation for Facebook, Twitter, and Schema.org.

Post Featured Image

You can now easily add a featured image to each of your blog posts. This image will be used in the meta elements added to the page for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets. The image is also treated a bit special by the Blog in that it is shown at the top of posts. More on the Post Featured Image.

Featured Post

This feature allows you to set a single post in your blog as "Featured". That post will always be at the top of the post list, even when using the Blog Post List module. More on the Blog Featured Post.

Automatic Meta Content Creation

Sharing posts on social media is a lot easier now because the special meta content markup that is necessary for sites like Twitter and Facebook to show correct titles and post images is now automatically added when you create a post. You can even edit the meta content that is created by editing the post and clicking the "Page Meta Data" tab (we're gonna change that to "Post Meta Data" in the next release).

Other Blog Updates

  • Added Display Settings for the Blog module to allow for easier skinning via CSS classes
  • Updated to actually move the blog navigation in markup instead of changing places with CSS * floats for easier styling
  • Cleaned up a lot of the default markup
  • Panels with no child elements will no longer be rendered
  • Added option to include comment body in comment notifications
  • Added SkinID="Blog" to CommentsWidget
  • Removed "Feed Links". These were links to old MSN, Yahoo and other defunct feed managers.
  • Added option to allow Post Title to be used as Page Heading when the PageHeading (or PageTitle) control is used in the layout.master for the skin

ASP.NET 4.6.2

mojoPortal now requires ASP.NET 4.6.2, which was released in August of 2016. Most hosting providers already support 4.6.2 so you should be fine upgrading your site. If your host doesn't support it and you purchase a hosting plan with i7MEDIA, we'll move your site for free.

TLS 1.2

mojoPortal will now enforce using TLS 1.2 for outgoing connections. This is important for connections to payment processors like Authorize.Net, WorldPay and PayPal.

Site Settings

The Site Settings page has a lot of options for configuring your site. We're actually working on moving more stuff from the web.config to the UI so it'll be easier to configure your site. Knowing that we are going to be adding even more to Site Settings, we implemented a few changes and reorganized some things to make using the Site Settings page easier. In the future, we plan on breaking this single page up into several smaller and more task oriented pages. In this release, you'll notice the following:

  • "Site Title" field moved to the General tab
  • "New Site" link removed (to add another site, go to Administration > Site List)
  • Skin options grouped on the General tab
  • Content Editor options grouped on the General tab
  • Registration options grouped on the Security > Main tab
  • User Account options grouped on the Security > Main tab
  • "Avatar System" option moved to User Account group under Security > Main tab
  • Password options grouped on the Security > Main tab
  • Security > OpenID tab renamed to "3rd Party Auth"
  • OpenID options grouped on the 3rd Party Auth tab
  • Windows Live options grouped on the 3rd Party Auth tab
  • "Host Name Mapping" and "Folder Name Mapping" moved to a single tab called "Site Mappings".
  • "SMTP Settings" tab renamed to "Mail Settings"
  • "Mail Settings" tab is always visible with information on how to enable the fields there. New sites will, by default, use this area for SMTP settings. You can enable this on your site by following the instructions here.
  • "Default Email From Address" and "Default Email From Alias" moved to "Mail Settings" tab
  • Reordered Recaptcha Site/Secret keys to match order on Recaptcha site
  • Added several contextual notes throughout the Site Settings page

Change Log

This change log isn't exhaustive because a lot of changes are already listed above. If we didn't list it above, it should be listed below.

Core

  • Updated mojoPortal to ASP.NET 4.6.2 and C# 7
  • Updated mojoPortal source code to use latest NuGet package management
  • Added RazorBridge method to allow use of MVC Razor Templating in Web Forms controls
  • Added MVC HTML Helper for internal Avatar and Gravatar use in Razor templates
  • Added Link control for inside/outside markup of the link
  • Added AutoEscapeStringForCsv method for exporting data in CSV format
  • Updated Gravatar in Forums to link to mojo user profile by default
  • Fixed File Manager/Page Picker for folder sites and sites running in a virtual directory
  • Moved First Name and Last Name fields to the General tab in the User Profile.
  • Added option to include comment body in notifications
  • Added ExportDynamicListToCSV method to ExportHelper
  • Added ImportHelper with GetDynamicListFromCSV method
  • Removed calls to jQueryFileTree and removed from ClientScripts
  • Removed calls to jQueryLayout
  • Removed call to greybox from Contact Form
  • Fixed possible XSS bug in help dialog, reported by Jarrod Farncomb of TSS (CVE-2017-1000457).
  • Removed WebStore from core (will be available as a separate download from the AddOn store)
  • Cleaned up user.config.sample file
  • Standardized on "Login" instead of "Sign In" (both were used before now)
  • Added Security Protocol information to "Security Advisor" (Administration > Security Advisor)
  • Added CombinePath method to DiskFileSystem file system provider.
  • Added FolderVirtualPath property to WebFile
  • Added NameProperty and ContentProperty to ContentMeta. This allows for creation of meta elements with custom names <meta property="foo" value="bar" /> instead of only allowing for <meta name="foo" content="bar" />

Skinning

  • Added FormGroupPanel control for settingrows to control their classes
  • Updated Site Settings page to use new FormGroupPanel control
  • Updated the Layout.Master.cs to expose SiteSettings (siteSettings), PageSettings (currentPage), isCmsPage and isMobileDevice to the Layout.Master for richer skinning functionality (Check out the layout.master in the Nature theme)
  • Updated CSSHander to allow for "https://" and non-http-specified ("//my-domain.com/") url calls
  • Updated Avatar.cs with new ExtraCssClass property
  • Cleaned up markup of CommentsWidget
  • Added themeable properties to CommentsWidget to help with skinning
  • Added themeable display settings for Contact Form
  • Cleaned up markup of the RelatedNewsletterSetting control
  • Cleaned up markup of HTMLCompare feature (used by version history)
  • Fixed Inline Editing in HTML Module for selecting files/images
  • Fixed CSSHandler for HTTPS URL calls
  • Fixed missing CKEditor Image2 Alignment Classes
  • Added InsideTopMarkup to replace LiteralExtraTopContent in BasePanel
  • Added InsideBottomMarkup to replace LiteralExtraBottomContent in BasePanel
  • Removed the .LESS CSS Utility from the Administration area. We recommend using a tool like Prepros for LESS management.

Joe Davis  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2-6 webmaster@mojoportal.com https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2-6 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2-6 Tue, 03 Oct 2017 20:11:00 GMT
Picking up steam mojoPortal has been getting some media attention lately, like this article from HostingAdvice.com. We've got some exciting new updates coming soon too, including new modules, expanded blog features, and new content creation tools. We've been working hard on things and hope to have a release ready soon.

We can truly appreciate a CMS that simplifies content entry and management for novice website owners without compromising the functionality demanded by seasoned developers. Kudos to the mojoPortal team for optimizing web development for folks across the board!

Thanks to the community for remaining patient as we work on these updates. mojoPortal is going to be better than ever.


Isaac Hall  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/picking-up-steam webmaster@mojoportal.com https://www.mojoportal.com/picking-up-steam https://www.mojoportal.com/picking-up-steam Fri, 28 Jul 2017 15:39:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.5 The team here at i7MEDIA is so very excited to release mojoPortal 2.5! This is our first release since taking over the mojoPortal project and we're already gearing up for the next one! 

Where to Get It?

Head over to our GitHub Releases Page.

Major Updates

  1. A new File Manager has been added which replaces all three managers in previous versions.

    Using the new File Manager

    FEATURES

    • Create folders
    • Upload multiple files
    • Delete files and folders
    • Copy files new
    • Move files from one folder to another new
    • Rename files and folders
    • Compress multiple files into a .zip file new
    • Extract a .zip file into the current directory new
    • Download single files and download multiple files as a .zip file [3] new
    • Edit document type files [1] new
    • Preview image files
    • Select files/mojoPortal pages to return to the WYSIWYG editor
    • Search files in currently viewed folder new
    • Change manager view between List and Grid new
  2. The new Page Manager

    Page Manager Pro has been added to the mojoPortal core. Now, everyone can enjoy easier page management with the new Page Manager. Drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to move pages while the enhanced UI makes understanding a site's hierarchy much simpler, particularly on larger sites. We're still building the documentation on this feature but it's really self-explanatory.

Minor Improvements and Changes

  • CKEditor 4.6.2 (image2 extension is included by default now) with new moono, moono-dark, and moono-lisa (default) skins.
  • Image File Extensions are now configurable using web.config settings.
    <add key="ImageFileExtensions" value=".gif|.jpg|.jpeg|.png|.svg" />
  • Updated to Colorbox 1.6.4 and changed Colorbox theme configuration. See Important Skin Changes.
  • Added "RssFeedLinkFormat" display setting for Blog. See Important Skin Changes.
  • Added web.config setting to control showing feed links with https. Defaults to true. Set to false if this causes you problems with a feed reader.
    <add key="UseSSLForFeedLinks" value="true" />
  • Added Framework as the default skin and removed Artisteer skins. Artisteer is still supported but we recognize that the included Artisteer skins aren't very pretty so they have been removed from the release.
  • Renamed "Page List" and "Add/Edit Pages" to "Page Manager".

Bug Fixes

  • Removed non-existent local-fs.pubxml file reference from mojoPortal.Web.csproj
  • Fixed renaming of files on upload so all files are renamed properly.
  • Removed unneeded apple-touch-icon.png from the root of the install. This was causing the mojo dog image to show up on tablets. Skin developers should follow these instructions for adding touch icons to their skins.
  • Fixed WebStore FlexCartLink where IncludeCartTotalWhenZero did not do anything.
  • Fixed WebStore FlexCartLink where ModuleGuid was actually supposed to be StoreGuid. Neither are really needed so we don't do anything with ModuleGuid on this control anymore.
  • Fixed an issue where when you create a new site it wouldn't copy over folders inside a skin that were more than 1 level deep.

Joe Davis  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2-5 webmaster@mojoportal.com https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2-5 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2-5 Tue, 14 Mar 2017 15:24:00 GMT
mojoSkins Project Release V1.0 Our team at i7MEDIA have been developing mojoPortal skins for a long time, and we've done a lot of fine-tuning of our skinning process over the years. Now we want to make the fruit of our labor, the Framework skin, available for the whole mojoPortal community, for free! In light of this, we've just launched our new mojoSkins project with a version 1.0 release. This first release comes as a package of 5 skins: Framework v3.3.7, and four skins created out of Framework using Bootswatch.

Expect Much More to Come!

Framework was always intended to be a very basic skin which we would then build our designs on top of. With this new project, we're going to have to change that direction a little bit, making improvements for its use by all of you. For instance, because it's been a very long time since any of our clients used the Webstore feature in mojoPortal, the current version of Framework in this release doesn't include styles for it. We will be fixing this, as well as adding styles for all of the Pro modules in the near future, fixing any bugs that arise, and making quality-of-life improvements for the end users where we can.

We want to ensure that everything is as good as possible while also keeping the skins as small as possible, since after all Framework is intended to be a base that you use to build your own design on top of, which is why we are also going to be adjusting mojoPortal's core code to better suit being used with skinning systems like Bootstrap and will adjust the Framework skin as needed to reflect those changes. We believe we can greatly reduce the amount of CSS needed in Framework by doing this (though it is already reasonably small).

While the skins in this first release are primarily targeted at other developers, who we want to provide with a solid foundation for skin creation in mojoPortal, we believe they will work well for anyone, developer or not, who wants to create a very clean mojoPortal site.

How Can I use it?

Using the new skins from this project is incredibly easy, here's the step-by-step:

  1. Download the skins from here.
  2. Extract the zip file you just downloaded.
  3. Each of the skins is included in the root of the zip in their own folder. Choose which skin(s) you'd like to use, and copy those folder(s) into the Data/Sites/1/Skins directory in your mojoPortal installation.*
  4. Sign into your mojoPortal site as an administrator.
  5. Click "Administration", then "Site Settings", and on that page, scroll down until you find the select input labeled "Skin".
  6. Your new skin(s) should be visible in the drop-down, select it and hit save.

That's it, you should now see the skin on your own site!

* Note: If you have a multiple site install, change the /1/ in the path described in step 3 to be /#/, where # is the site number of the mojoPortal site you'd like the skin to appear on.

How can I contribute?

We have already begun tracking issues in the project's GitHub repo, and look forward to community involvement as the project evolves. Please report any issues you notice, and feel free to do a pull request if you've managed to fix an issue yourself.

You can also create your own Bootswatch skins out of Framework, and submit them for inclusion in the project, which would be an awesome help.


Isaac Hall  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoskins-project-release-v1 isaac@i7media.net (Isaac Hall) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoskins-project-release-v1 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoskins-project-release-v1 Fri, 10 Feb 2017 20:54:00 GMT
A New Beginning It is an exciting day for the mojoPortal project! First, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Joe Davis. I am the Founder and President of i7MEDIA and a longtime supporter of mojoPortal. On Friday, February 3, 2017, I and Joe Audette, Founder of mojoPortal, completed an agreement for the sale of mojoPortal to i7MEDIA. This sale includes the open source project and the commercial modules available on the mojoPortal website from Joe Audette's company, Source Tree Solutions.

I have been using mojoPortal since 2008 and supporting it since 2009. I started my business in 2008 and set out to find a good content management system I could use to build websites for my customers. After a lot of trial and error, I came across mojoPortal and I was immediately drawn to its ease-of-use and friendly forum, fostered by Joe Audette. After 9 years of building sites with mojoPortal, contributing to the core, and providing support to my own clients and those around the world through the forums, I am thrilled that I, and my company, are able to ensure the further development of mojoPortal.

Rest assured mojoPortal will remain open source and there are no plans to change that. We (i7MEDIA) do, however, have plans for expanding mojoPortal to help it stay relevant and to provide the best .NET CMS platform on the market today.

You're sure to be wondering what Joe Audette has to say about all of this. Well, he is very enthusiastic about the new life of mojoPortal:

It gives me great satisfaction to know that I have created something that so many people have found useful and that it will continue to be used and supported by a top community member and his organization. Joe Davis and i7MEDIA have always been the most qualified consultants for mojoPortal other than myself, and I've always had great confidence in referring customers and projects to them over the years. Joe Davis has been a good friend and has been my go to guy when I needed to refer a customer or project that I did not have the capacity for. Whether you need design help, hosting, or custom feature development, i7MEDIA is the team you want with years of experience. mojoPortal was my baby for over a decade, and my baby is in good hands! Long live mojoPortal!

Joe Audette, mojoPortal Founder

What's Changing?

Basic Stuff

At first, we're going to focus on changing small things that will save site owners and site builders time. Some of these items are:

  • Ensuring that settings are logically organized and labeled properly.
  • Removing unnecessary markup (empty divs, excessive <br> elements, etc…).
  • Consolidating DB scripts.

Developer Support

Development of add-ons for mojoPortal isn't necessarily hard but there is a bit of a learning curve and quite a few steps one must take to prepare a working development environment. Our focus will be on cutting down on the number of steps and making the process easier overall. We will also explore possible MVC and WebApi implementations of some features, especially administration features like the File Manager. 

Additionally, we want to engage with the developers already using mojoPortal to get them contributing code to the project. GitHub provides a very simple mechanism for generating pull requests so if you have code you would like to contribute, we would be very grateful.

Beautiful Design

It has always been possible to create beautiful sites with mojoPortal but the built-in skins were not good examples. We're fixing that and we're committed to making sure that mojoPortal is seen as a designer-friendly CMS. To make that happen, we're going to implement some new functionality which will allow UI developers to include options for site owners to control various aspects of their skin.

Documentation Audit

mojoPortal is a fairly well-documented system but there is a lot of stuff that is just not needed anymore, other things have changed, and there's a lot that isn't documented. 

Commercial Add-On Pricing and Licensing

We're working on the licensing and pricing for the commercial add-ons. Some of them are going to be released as open source and others will see their prices change. The server licenses are back and are generally at a lower price than before. To see the new pricing, take a look at the store (we've renamed the page "Add-Ons" because in the near future we're going to have a marketplace so others can sell or list their own add-ons).

Licensing has changed for all commercial add-ons with regard to updates. Now, each purchase of an add-on will give the purchaser a year of updates to that add-on. If you purchase Form Wizard Pro on February 5, 2017, you can continue to download updates to the module through February 5, 2018.

When's the Next Update?

We expect to release a new version in the next couple of weeks with several small fixes, a few clean bootstrap-based skins, and a brand-new file manager to replace both of the current file managers and the link and image picker used in the WYSIWYG editors. That's right, one file manager that does it all. 

We Need Your Help

We purchased mojoPortal and we're committed to it being a success, again. We will need your help to make this happen. If you would like to help with documentation, let us know. If you would like to contribute code, check out how easy it is to submit a pull request. If you would like to help others looking for help, subscribe to the forums.

Here's to the Future of mojo!

I am very excited about the future of mojoPortal. We soft-launched the mojoPortal website over this past weekend and I have already received a few inquiries about what's going on and some messages of support. Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the forums or send us an email.


Joe Davis  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/a-new-beginning joe+mojoPortal@i7media.net (Joe Davis) https://www.mojoportal.com/a-new-beginning https://www.mojoportal.com/a-new-beginning Mon, 06 Feb 2017 14:56:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.4.1.0 Released mojoPortal 2.4.1.0 is now available on our download page. This is a minor maintenance release.

What's New?

  • Upgrade to AjaxControlToolkit v16.1
  • Upgrade to newer, more user-friendly ReCaptcha - Thanks, Joe Davis of i7MEDIA
  • Update to the new preferred endpoint for Authorize.NET
  • various minor bug fixes

new user friendly recaptcha

Note that there are corresponding updates to our add-on products that also use AjaxControlToolkit because they need to use the same version as mojoPortal, so whenever you upgrade to a newer version of mojoPortal you should also download and install the latest version of any add-on products that you have purchased. Just login to this site with the account you used to purchase, click the "My Account" link at the top of the page and download the latest version from your purchase history.


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2410-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2410-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2410-released Mon, 11 Apr 2016 12:12:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.4.0.9 Released mojoPortal 2.4.0.9 is now available on our download page.

What's New?

  • Upgraded to the new more stable version of Ajax Control Toolkit version 15.1 which is now maintained by DevExpress.
  • CKEditor upgraded to version 4.4.7 from 4.4.6
  • TinyMCE upgraded to 4.1.9 from 4.1.7
  • added basic flat rate shipping price to products in WebStore - by Joe Davis of i7MEDIA
  • added config settings to control whether non download webstore orders require authentication
  • added option to FlexMenu to control rendering of href when page is not clickable
  • fixed bug incorrect redirecturl if using ConfirmRegistration.aspx
  • fixed bug in poll - incorrect handling of utc vs local time for isactive
  • fixed bug where ssl redirects were not correctly detecting proxy server settings
  • fixed a bug that prevented shared files uploads when using an ssl proxy server
  • fixed bug in list/link folder sites with relative file urls
  • fixed bug in FlexMenu when using the ChildNodesPerUl option and a page is hit which shouldn't be in the menu, it's still counted
  • fixed bug custom profile dropdowns did not support required
  • fixed bug in webstore where shipping panel was not shown on confirm order page when cart had shipped items
  • fixed unlocalized string on register page

Note that there are corresponding compatibility updates for each of our add on products. Existing customers can get the updated versions of our add on products by logging in to this site as the user with the purchase history, click the "My Account" link at the top of the page and then click "Order History".

As with all releases of mojoPortal, when upgrading you should make sure you use the new Web.config file and restore any customizations such as the machine key from your old one. This is especially important for this release because there are quite a few changes and additions in Web.config and some of them are subtle such as control declarations for ajaxcontroltoolkit which changed only by case of a few letters.

UPDATE 2015-05-08 This new version of AjaxControlToolkit seems to be broken in medium trust web hosting, I have reported the problem here. Anyone hosted in Medium Trust should not upgrade to this version of mojoPortal until this is resolved.

UPDATE 2015-05-11 We were able to implement a workaround to get past the medium trust error. We have now uploaded a new package on our codeplex page named mojoportal-2-4-0-9-mssql-net45-mediumtrust-deploymentfiles.zip which is pre-configured to work in medium trust hosting. There were some changes in code to support this configuration so mojoPortal.Web.dll was modified, Web.config was modified, and AjaxControlToolkit.StaticResources.dll had to be deleted from the bin folder to complete the workaround.


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2409-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2409-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2409-released Wed, 29 Apr 2015 13:55:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.4.0.8 Released mojoPortal 2.4.0.8 is now available on our download page.

A few weeks ago we released mojoPortal 2.4.0.7 in which we had changed to using NuGet package manager for some of our dependencies and updated to the latest version of AjaxControlToolkit via NuGet. Since that version of the toolkit came out over a year ago, in September 2013 we thought it should be stable, but as it turned out there are numerous major problems with that version of AjaxControlToolkit and we began to get reports of those problems from our community members who upgraded to the new release of mojoPortal.

As a result we were forced to go back to the previous version of the AjaxControlToolit that we were using which is the January 2013 release, which we know to be more stable.

Since our add on products Event Calendar Pro, Form Wizard Pro, and Web Invoice Pro also depend on the AjaxControlToolkit and must use the same version as mojoPortal, we also have released updates to those products to keep them in sync with mojoPortal.


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2408-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2408-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2408-released Thu, 18 Dec 2014 15:07:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.4.0.7 Released mojoPortal 2.4.0.7 is now available on our download page.

This release is a maintenance release with minor bug fixes and updates to newer versions of some components. This release requires .NET 4.5, we no longer provide packages for 4.0 or 3.5

What's New?

  • CKEditor upgraded to version 4.4.6 from 4.4.3
  • TinyMCE upgraded to 4.1.7 from 4.1.2
  • Upgraded to latest version of Ajax Control Toolkit
  • Upgraded to latest version of log4net
  • fixed bug in NeatHtml where addthis script interferes
  • fixed bug where inline editor in html content was not using extraplugins from config file
  • fixed bug where content admins were not allowed uploads
  • changed to use universal analytics by default now that google has migrated everyone to that
  • various other minor bug fixes

Note that there are also corresponding new updates available for our add on features for compatibility with the new versions of AjaxControlToolkit and log4net.


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2407-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2407-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2407-released Tue, 02 Dec 2014 19:42:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.4.0.4 Released mojoPortal 2.4.0.4 is now available on our download page.

In one sense this is a minor upgrade with a few improvements but this is also a significant release in that it marks a change in our target framework from .NET 4 to .NET 4.5. Since mojoPortal is now compiled against the .NET 4.5 framework, any code that depends on it must also be compiled against the newer framework, so we have also released corresponding compatibility updates for all of our add on products.

In terms of web hosting, you can host either .NET 4 or .NET 4.5 compiled code under .NET 4.5 hosting and most hosts should probably be updated to .NET 4.5 by now. .NET 4.5 is really still the .NET 4 framework with some additions, it is considered an in place upgrade of the framework, so it may not be easy to know for sure whether your hosting has been updated to .NET 4.5 or if it still is running an older .NET 4 framework.

If you do get errors about the framework version after deploying the upgrade, we have a separate download with replacement Web.config and bin folder which has a version of the dlls compiled for .NET 4. Using these files should get things working again if you are still using .NET 4.

We have a similar package of replacement files that should in theory also support  .NET 3.5 but at this point we are not officially supporting .NET 3.5 any longer and we hope very few people download that package.

Changing our target framework to .NET 4.5 allows us to start moving forward with the use of some of the great new things that the .NET team has been working on such as Web API. In fact this release has a new plugin system that allows features to plugin their own Web API Routes, and we implemented a small custom web api in our forum feature to handle moderation before sending posts to the forum subscribers as discussed below.

Forum Improvements

This release includes a new per forum setting for Roles That Can Post. We've had several requests for making read only forums and also for limiting posting by role so that only premium members could post. This is useful for example if you are selling site membership levels with Site Membership Pro.

It is now possible also to configure the forums such that notification email is not sent until a moderator approves the post for sending to the list. We really needed that on this site because we have our forums configured to include the post message in the notification email and we had several occasions where someone would register late at night and post a few spamy forum posts that got emailed to our subscribers and this in turn hurts the reputation of our email system. Note that the settings for this are per forum and you must add the moderator emails in the settings so that the moderator gets notified of the new post. The moderator will see new link buttons on the post for either sending the post to the list or marking it as sent so that it does not get sent to the list. There is also a setting to allow users that are marked as "Trusted" in the user management page to have their posts sent to the list without moderation so that you can avoid delays for posts from your active trusted community members.

There are also new settings per forum that control whether new posts get included in the google site map for the forums by default or whether new posts get a NOINDEX meta tag added by default. On this site we've found that forums can be a mixed bag in terms of SEO value, some threads may have worthy content and others may not. You can always edit a thread after the fact to set whether it is included in the google site map or whether it gets a NOINDEX meta, these new forum level settings just control the default for new posts.

This release also includes upgrades to CKEditor 4.4.3 (from 4.3.4) and TinyMCE 4.1.2 (from 4.0.21). We've also included the new moono-dark skin for CKEditor which you can enable by adding this in user.config:

<add key="CKEditor:Skin" value="moono-dark" />

ckeditor moono-dark skin

If you have a dark site skin you might like that better than the default editor skin.

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UPDATE 2014-09-10

We have been receiving some reports of problems with mojoPortal 2.4.0.4 under .NET 4 hosting. At this time we do not have a solution for those problems (except to migrate the site to 4.5 hosting) so we do not recommend anyone to upgrade to mojoPortal 2.4.0.4 unless you have .NET 4.5 hosting. It can be difficult to determine whether your hosting is 4.0 or 4.5 because 4.5 is really like a service pak for 4.0 that has been out for 2 years now, and if you look under Administration > System Information it will say version 4.0..... even if you are hosted under 4.5. So the best thing to do is ask your host if you have 4.5 or not, and if possible move your site to 4.5 hosting before upgrading.

The problem with our 4.0 build seems to be that even though we target 4.0 in Visual Studio when compiling it, it ends up being compiled for 4.5 because when 4.5 is installed it replaces 4.0. Visual Studio is supposed to use a reference version of 4.0 when compiling projects that target 4.0 but in practice sometimes it does not work and we think this may be the problem with our build. We do not have any machine with Visual Studio that don't also have 4.5 installed so we cannot be sure that our build is really targeting 4.0 as it should. If someone has a machine without 4.5 installed and they have Visual Studio 2013 Pro then they could compile their own build that targets 4.0, but going forward we are not confident that we can produce such builds.


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2404-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2404-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2404-released Fri, 18 Jul 2014 19:03:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for May 2014 For this month we have 5 sites all with nice professional designs by our friends at Evolve Creative Group in Akron Ohio. 

Buckeye Veterinary Clinic

Buckeye Veterinary Clinic website

Columbiana County Dept of Jobs and Family Services

Columbiana County Dept of Jobs and Family Services website

Towpath Credit Union

Towpath Credit Union website

Wiremen's Credit Union

Wiremen's Credit Union website

Controlled Access Turnstiles

Controlled Access Turnstiles website

Show us your stuff! We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-may-2014 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-may-2014 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-may-2014 Wed, 28 May 2014 16:58:00 GMT
Minor Update For Page Manager Pro I've just posted a minor update to our Page Manager Pro add on product. We've added a link to page permissions in the command menu along with an indicator of whether a page is public or protected by roles.

Page Manager Pro with new permissions link

This is a free update for existing customers who have already purchased Page Manager Pro, the latest version can be downloaded from your purchase history under the "My Account" link at the top of the page after signing in as the user who purchased.


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/minor-update-for-page-manager-pro joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/minor-update-for-page-manager-pro https://www.mojoportal.com/minor-update-for-page-manager-pro Tue, 13 May 2014 19:35:00 GMT
Mobile Kit Pro 2.0 Released I'm happy to announce the release of version 2.0 of our add on product Mobile Kit Pro. This update adds support for unclickable pages that just expand when clicked instead of navigating, and also includes a new skin i7MEDIA-mobile1 provided by our friends at i7MEDIA

mobile skin by i7mediamobile menu styled by i7MEDIA

A lot of people don't realize that mobile skins using Mobile Kit Pro can be styled any way you like just like normal skins. Really the most important feature of Mobile Kit Pro is its MobileMenu control which by default is styled using jQueryUI styles but can be styled using any CSS and CSS classes. The new i7MEDIA skin now included in Mobile Kit Pro provides a good example of this flexibility. If you're not a web designer yourself but would like to have a custom mobile design you should contact i7MEDIA. They have done numerous custom mobile skins for their clients using Mobile Kit Pro and they are experts in all aspects of mojoPortal.

This is a free update for existing customers who already purchased Mobile Kit Pro. Just login to this site using the account that you used to purchase Mobile Kit Pro and you can always download the latest version from your purchase history under the "My Account" link at the top of the page. If you haven't already purchased Mobile Kit Pro now is a good time to make your site mobile phone friendly with Mobile Kit Pro.


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mobile-kit-pro-20-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mobile-kit-pro-20-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mobile-kit-pro-20-released Thu, 08 May 2014 18:48:00 GMT
Page Manager Pro - for easier management of large site hierarchies I'm happy to announce the availability of our new add on product, Page Manager Pro, available now in the mojoPortal Store starting at $49 for a Single Installation License. If you have a large site hierarchy with hundreds or thousands of pages you may find that the built in PageTree.aspx included in mojoPortal becomes unwieldy, Page Manager Pro is a drop in replacement for PageTree.aspx  designed to address that problem with an easier drag and drop solution for moving pages around in the site hierarchy. We developed this add on based on requests from some of our customers who have very large sites and we have received  a lot of positive feedback so far. You can try it out on our demo site to decide if you like it better than the built in PageTree.

Page Manager Pro Screen Shot


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/page-manager-pro-for-easier-management-of-large-site-hierarchies joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/page-manager-pro-for-easier-management-of-large-site-hierarchies https://www.mojoportal.com/page-manager-pro-for-easier-management-of-large-site-hierarchies Tue, 15 Apr 2014 18:46:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.4.0.3 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.4.0.3, available now on our download page.

What's New?

  • Added support for Google News Site Map generation in the blog feature making it easy to submit news articles for syndication by google news.
  • Added a new Custom Javascript Module by Joe Davis of i7MEDIA that makes it easy to add custom javascript to a page. 
  • Upgraded from CKeditor 4.3.2 to 4.3.4
  • Upgraded from TinyMCE 4.0.12 to 4.0.21
  • Added config setting to support using html email for newsletter confirmation instead of the default plain text confirmation message
  • Add string extension method JsonEscape() to StringHelpers class
  • Fixed a bug in indexhelper where the item could be indexed 2x in some cases creating duplicate search results
  • Fixed bug extra closing ul in forum alt lists
  • Fixed bug where DateOfBirth profile property was not mapped to the corresponding field in mp_Users table
  • Implemented new EmailValidator control that uses regex client side but server side just tests if the address is valid with System.Net.Mail.MailAddress to reduce performance load of server side regex
  • Implemented correct json escaping for editor style and content templates, should prevent problems with quotes in the content that previously results in javascript errors
  • Fixed bug where ExtendedValidElements from TinyMCE4.config was not being rendered by the TinyMCE editor
  • Added support for display ad (doubleclick) tracking in google universal analytics
  • Moved charset above title in layout.master of included skins
  • Updated Italian Resources from Diego Mora
  • Fixed bug in Nivo Slider themes in Image Gallery

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Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2403-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2403-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2403-released Mon, 14 Apr 2014 17:11:00 GMT
Ecommerce Features Updated to Support PayPal Express Checkout Just a quick post to mention that all of our mojoPortal ecommerce add on features have been updated to support PayPal Express Checkout in addition to PayPal Standard which they already supported in previous versions.

We've added a new documentation article Using PayPal Express Checkout which explains the needed configuration to enable PayPal Express checkout.

The updated features include:

These are free updates for customers who already purchased these add on products.

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Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/ecommerce-features-updated-to-support-paypal-express-checkout joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/ecommerce-features-updated-to-support-paypal-express-checkout https://www.mojoportal.com/ecommerce-features-updated-to-support-paypal-express-checkout Mon, 27 Jan 2014 17:23:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.4.0.2 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.4.0.2, available now on our download page. This is primarily a maintenance release with new versions of the editors and bug fixes, but probably the coolest thing in this release is the ability to drag and drop images into the editors. The images will be resized according to the default reiszing config settings and by default the resized image will link to the full size image. Of course if you need better control over the resizing, you can still use the image toolbar item to open the dialog where you can set the resize options before upoloading.

What's New?

  • upgrade CKeditor from 4.2.2 to 4.3.2 (This should resolve some issues that the previous version had with IE 11)
  • upgrade to TinyMCE 4.0.10 to 4.0.12
  • upgrade to newer version of the time picker extension for jquery datepicker - this fixes some localization problems with the time picker
  • upgrade from jPlayer 2.4.0 to 2.5.0
  • We implemented plugins to support dragging and dropping images into CKeditor and TinyMCE (works only in modern html 5 web browsers). When images are dropped into the editor they will be uploaded and automatically resized according to the default image resize config settings, and by default the resized image will link to the full size image.
  • add support for Google Universal Analytics
  • implemented DateOfBirth as a default profile property, add support for year range to the datepicker used in date profile properties
  • modifications to make the colorbox in image gallery responsive
  • implemented new control SkinFolderCssFile for conditionally adding an extra css link based on role or url
  • add support for page heading with PageTitle control
  • add support for view all link on forum threads to show all posts in one page for a given thread
  • add support for folder browsing in file dialog and filebrowserTextBoxExtender
  • fix bug related sites mode permission settings were not synced across sites from the permission edit page
  • fix bug where blog category selection was lost when adding a new category on a new post
  • fix bug in blog where m4a file attachments were not treated as audio
  • fix bug where author avatar was not shown in blog detail view unless author bio was also shown
  • fix bug in blog where unchecked show download link for media attachments was not respected in detail view
  • fix forum unsubscribe bug in mssql data layer
  • fix bug in Video Player where flash fallback was not working due to incorrect url for the swf file, this prevented .flv video files from playing

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2402-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2402-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2402-released Wed, 22 Jan 2014 16:21:00 GMT
Updated Skin Exporter Plugin for Artisteer 4.2 We've just released an updated version of our free Skin Exporter Plugin for Artisteer 4.2. The package also still contains the previous version of the plugin for Artisteer 4.1.

The main difference for the new version is that Artisteer 4.2 now uses the latest version of jQuery so the jQuery Migrate plugin does not need to be enabled from the layout.master file exported by the plugin. There were also a few CSS tweaks to fix some issues with jPlayer layout that were caused by the Artisteer CSS.

For those who have already obtained our free plugin please just click the "My Account" link and download the latest version from your order history. You do not need to make a new transaction in our store to get the update, just download it again to get the latest version.


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/updated-skin-exporter-plugin-for-artisteer-42 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/updated-skin-exporter-plugin-for-artisteer-42 https://www.mojoportal.com/updated-skin-exporter-plugin-for-artisteer-42 Tue, 26 Nov 2013 17:36:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.4.0.0 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.4.0.0 available now on our download page. This is primarily a maintenance release with new versions of the editors and bug fixes.

What's New?

  • Upgrade to CKeditor 4.2.2 from 4.2.1
  • Upgrade To TinyMCE 4.0.10 from 3.5.8
  • Upgrade to jplayer 2.4.0 from 2.3.0
  • implemented a new wrapper control for jqueryui autocomplete, used to lookup a single user for edit permission in feature settings
  • On new installations, a custom machine key is automatically generated and updated by the setup page
  • fixed bug links in forum notification email need to have URL params HTML decoded for plain
  • fixed bug improve the logic for auto-generated login name
  • fixed bug in blog feed where the home page URL was used for the channel URL instead of the blog page
  • fixed inconsistent feed autodiscovery URL in the blog
  • fixed unencoded parameter in WebStore FlexCartLink
  • fixed broken spell checker in TinyMCE
  • fixed bug where security tab was shown in module settings and page settings for users who could not change anything there
  • fixed bug content adminstrators role should not be filtered out from roles that can view the member list
  • fixed bug password recovery email template for German should be utf-8 encoded
  • fixed bug email should not be case sensitive for authentication
  • fixed bug where blog media attachment uploads failed in IE
  • fixed bug in MySQL data layer where page publish mode was not saved on update
  • fixed bug where images uploaded from the editor were always resized even when the checkbox was not checked
  • fixed bug FlexMenu was not using property ChildUlCssClass

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2400-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2400-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2400-released Thu, 14 Nov 2013 18:45:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for October 2013 We have two sites to share this month. The first one Backup Power Solutions, was designed by our friends over at i7MEDIA.

Backup Power Solutions - Website Designed by i7MEDIA

Next we have Altogether Better, designed by our friends across the pond at DMSQD Creative Marketing Communications.

Altogether Better website

Show us your stuff! We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.​

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-october-2013 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-october-2013 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-october-2013 Thu, 31 Oct 2013 16:07:00 GMT
Fund Raiser Pro I'm happy to announce the release of Fund Raiser Pro, available now in the mojoPortal Store, or take a test drive on our demo site!

Fund Raiser Pro is an add on feature for mojoPortal content management system. It provides the tools you need to do fund raising/crowd funding on your own web site. It has similar functionality to sites like Kickstarter.com and indiegogo.com but you host it in your own site and control it yourself and collect payments via PayPal or any of the ecommerce gateways supported in mojoPortal.

You can also define contribution levels and/or allow users to contribute any amount they want (within lower and upper limits that you can define). Your fund raising campaign can have a target date for reaching a fund raising goal or it can be open ended with no end date, or you can change the end date if you need more time to achieve the fund raising goal.

You can show or hide progress toward your fund raising goal, you can show or hide contributor profiles. Contributors can control their own privacy settings for what is shown on the contributor profile and the administrative settings allow you to make things even more private. That is, you can hide information that users marked as not hidden, but you cannot show information that the user chose not to show. For example the contributor can show or not show their name, city, state, country and contribution amount for example. As administrator of the site you could choose not to show the city and state and country even if the contributor said it was ok to share that information. In some cases you may want to show the contribution amount, in other cases you may not or the contributor may not want to show that information. You can optionally allow users to edit their own contribution profile or change privacy settings. 

You can also allow people to post comments and you can post updates to keep people informed on the progress of the campaign or project. You could also use the mojoPortal Newsletter feature to keep in touch with your contributors and encourage additional contributions. If you have defined levels and are allowing users to contribute arbitrary amounts, then a subsequent contribution can move a contributor up to a higher level by aggregating with his or her previous contributions. There is also integrated social sharing using the add this widget to encourage sharing your campaign on social networks such as Facebook and twitter.

Fund Raiser Pro - A fund raising and crowd funding solution for mojoPortal web content management system

Fund Raiser Pro - Admin Menu

Fund Raiser Pro - edit contribution levels

You can try it out on our demo site to test both the front end for contributing and the back end for managing the fund raising campaign.


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https://www.mojoportal.com/fund-raiser-pro joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/fund-raiser-pro https://www.mojoportal.com/fund-raiser-pro Wed, 25 Sep 2013 18:29:00 GMT
Form Wizard Pro 2.6.1.2 Released We've just released a small update to Form Wizard Pro that adds support for grouping items in a dropdown list question.

grouped items in a dropdown list

The form editor also shows the grouping and allows assigning and editing groups on items.

grouped items in edit view using ListBox

Note that this release of Form Wizard Pro requires mojoPortal 2.3.9.9 (released yesterday) because the support for grouping items was implemented in the mojoDropDownList and mojoListBox controls which are part of mojoPortal. These controls extend the ASP.NET DropDownList and ListBox controls which don't provide any support for grouping.

As usual this is a free update for customers who already purchased Form Wizard Pro and can be downloaded from your purchase history by logging in as the user who made the purchase and clicking the "My Account" link at the top of the page, you'll find it under the "Order History" tab.

If you don't already have Form Wizard Pro, check out the product page, it is an essential add on product for easy custom forms and simple surveys in your web site powered by the free mojoPortal Content Management System.


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/form-wizard-pro-2612-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/form-wizard-pro-2612-released https://www.mojoportal.com/form-wizard-pro-2612-released Fri, 20 Sep 2013 16:12:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.9.9 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.9.9, available now on our download page. This release is a minor update with a few bug fixes and improvements.

What's New?

  • Upgrade to CKEditor 4.2.1
  • added support for 'optgroup' to mojoDropDownList and new mojoListBox
  • added options for alternate email from address and alias for forum notification
  • shared files added config setting for cache header of non-attachment downloads
  • added setting in the blog to allow showing calendar navigation on post detail page default to true
  • added generic.browser file so new browsers are assumed to support cookies
  • new configuration option for mutli-site installations that use related sites mode it is possible to configure all sites to use the same media folder for user uploads by adding this setting as true
    <add key="UseSameContentFolderForRelatedSiteMode" value="true"/>
  • fixed bug in forums where user threads page in multi-site installations with related sites mode showed forum threads from other sites
  • fixed bug in forums where unsubscribing from notification did not work unless authenticated
  • fixed bug in pgsql data layer that caused an error when creating a newsletter
  • fixed bug where janrain inputs were not shown in site settings unless the legacy open id was enabled in web.config
  • fixed bug in folder child sites where facebook like in HTML content feature had a relative URL for the URL to like
  • added required field validator for module title in content wizard

Stay tuned, we will soon be announcing an update to Form Wizard Pro that uses the new support for 'optgroup' in dropdown list questions, and we are also about to release a new add-on product, Fund Raiser Pro that depends on this new version of mojoPortal.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2399-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2399-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2399-released Thu, 19 Sep 2013 14:23:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.9.8 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.9.8, available now on our download page. This is primarily a bug fix release. 

What's New?

upgrade from CKeditor 4.0.3 to 4.2
upgrade from TinyMCE 3.5.7 to 3.5.8
Some work is also in progress to support TinyMCE 4.x but so far there are still some issues with the file browser integration so we did not upgrade to that branch of TinyMCE just yet.

Thomas Nicolaïdès - implemented clickable folder crumbs in Shared Files

WebStore -  implemented a cart link that can be embedded in the layout.master file so it can be on every page.
To use this you first add a control declaration at the top of your layout.master file like this:
<%@ Register Namespace="WebStore.UI.Controls" Assembly="WebStore.UI" TagPrefix="webstore" %>

Then you can add the control anywhere you want on layout.master. I put it with the other top navigation links as in this example:

<div id="wraptopnav">
    <div class="topnav">
        <ul>
        <portal:WelcomeMessage id="WelcomeMessage" runat="server" RenderAsListItem="true" ListItemCSS="firstnav" />
        <portal:HomeLink id="HomeLink" runat="server" RenderAsListItem="true" />
        <portal:MobileSkinLink ID="mobileskin" runat="server" RenderAsListItem="true" />
        <portal:LoginLink id="LoginLink" runat="server" RenderAsListItem="true" />
        <portal:LogoutLink id="LogoutLink" runat="server" RenderAsListItem="true" />
        <portal:RegisterLink id="RegisterLink" runat="server" RenderAsListItem="true" />
        <portal:UserProfileLink id="UserProfileLink" runat="server" RenderAsListItem="true" />
        <portal:MailboxLink id="MailboxLink1" runat="server" RenderAsListItem="true"  />
        <portal:MyPageLink id="MyPageLink1" runat="server" RenderAsListItem="true" />
        <portal:MemberListLink id="MemberListLink" runat="server" RenderAsListItem="true"  />
        <portal:SiteMapLink id="SiteMapLink2" runat="server" CssClass="sitelink" RenderAsListItem="true"  />
        <webstore:FlexCartLink id="cartlink1" runat="server" PageId="490" ModuleId="733" ModuleGuid="4482d498-ea94-48dc-b4cd-b28b6abb0ad2" IncludeItemCount="true" IncludeCartTotal="true" LiteralTopMarkup="<li class='topnavitem cartnav'><span class='ui-icon ui-icon-cart'></span>" LiteralBottomMarkup="</li>" CssClass="sitelink" />
        </ul>
    </div>
</div>    

You must configure the pageid moduleid and ModuleGuid to match those values for your WebStore. The example extra markup uses the cart icon from jqueryui.

added module setting for date format in comments feature
added a new setting in html content to disable the click event for slide show slides so that clickable content within the slides can be clicked
added a Web.config option to lookup paramterized urls for 301 redirect - false by default

made it possible to style tables and mojoGridView using jqueryui, to do this you need these settings in theme.skin:
<mp:mojoGridView runat="server"
    TableCssClass="jqtable"
/>

<mp:mojoGridView runat="server" SkinID="FileManager"
    TableCssClass="jqtable"
/>

<mp:mojoGridView runat="server" SkinID="SharedFiles"
    TableCssClass="jqtable"
/>


added an option on FlexMenu for StartingNodePageId
added a Web.config option to show publish workflow icon for unsubmitted draft
made the contact form set the focus to the email box if there is any email validation error
fixed a few region specific languages in ckeditor that were not previously available

made email template editor also edit the plain text version of the template
added a Web.config option to limit Active Directory to root DN

fixed bug in Forums where thread subject was unfiltered in page title element causing a potential XSS vulnerability. Anyone using the forums should definitely upgrade to get this security fix.
fixed bug in Forums where non editors could not edit their own older posts even when the settings was -1 which should allow it.
fixed bug in mssql data layer for Forums where unsubscribe was returning false even on success causing the wrong message to be shown to the user.
fixed bug in sqlce data layer where redirect list paging did not work
fixed bug in comment system don't show user inputs for name, email, and url by default if user is authenticated
fixed bug in pgsql data layer when saving a module definition setting from the ui
fixed bug in blog when using jquery datepicker for calendar nav the date format in links was not correct if not using English
fixed bug in blog where blog sitemap did not work correctly if not using friendly urls
fixed bug Blog should use addthis accountid from blog settings if specified
fixed some validation problems in the blog feed, added some new settings for feed language, managing editor, iTunes categories, logo url
fixed bug in file manager where uploading to root folder failed
fixed bug in Shared Files, when editing a file in a sub fodler it would be moved to root folder
fixed bug in Shared Files where it was possible to make a child folder the parent
fixed bug Shared Files was not updating the upload date when a file was updated
fixed bug in parentpagedialog when configured to start fully expanded
fixed bug Janrain widget should use the new implementation by default
fixed javascript error in IE 8 when using the new file uploader
fixed bug inline editor should use style and content templates
fixed bug in authorize.net payment gateway where currencyCulture was not used to format currency. 
fixed bug sitemenu and pagemenu should set the ismobileskin property on flexmenu

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2398-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2398-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2398-released Mon, 29 Jul 2013 15:06:00 GMT
Artisteer Skin Exporter Update for mojoPortal 2.3.9.7 There is a minor update to our free Skin Exporter plugin for Artisteer 4.1 now available. Customers who already downloaded it before can get the update from their purchase history by clicking the "My Account" link at the top of the page and then click Order History.

New customers can complete the free transaction by adding the Artisteer Skin Exporter product to the cart and proceeding to checkout. For those who don't know Artisteer is a design tool for web sites that doesn't require knowledge of HTML or CSS click the graphic above to learn more about Artisteer.


Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/artisteer-skin-exporter-update-for-mojoportal-2397 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/artisteer-skin-exporter-update-for-mojoportal-2397 https://www.mojoportal.com/artisteer-skin-exporter-update-for-mojoportal-2397 Mon, 03 Jun 2013 17:25:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for May 2013 We have two sites to share this month, the first one is by our friends at DMSQD Creative Marketing.  Screen4 is a worldwide leader in maritime and workplace drug and alcohol testing solutions.

screen4 drug and alcohol testing

Next we have TheFitGirls.com designed by Rundalu Creative, that also has a custom calculate tracker feature.

The Fit Girls

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.​

Follow us on twitter or become a fan on Facebook

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Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-may-2013 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-may-2013 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-may-2013 Tue, 28 May 2013 18:16:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.9.7 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.9.7 available now on our download page.

The main new item this release is an all new file uploader with support for drag and drop, multiple file selection and a progress bar in modern browsers.

new file uploader

For many years we've used NeatUpload for file uploads which also provided a progress bar and multi file selection. Dean Brettle, the author of NeatUpload stopped supporting it in May of 2010 and now it has become a bit long in the tooth. It depended on Flash for multi file selection in some browsers and it did not work in medium trust hosting and was beginning to have some problems in newer versions of Firefox. Specifically it depended on a really old version of swfupload (which itself is now also an abandoned project). NeatUpload has served us well over the years but many of the problems that is solved are no longer existing problems or are easier to solve in modern web browsers so we felt the time had come to replace it.

We previously needed to provide a separate web.config file which enabled NeatUpload in Full Trust hosting but we no longer need any separate configuration, all the included features of mojoPortal "just work" in Medium Trust with no special configuration needed. Some of the file uploader features such as drag and drop, multi file selection and upload progress bar do not work in older web browsers but it does degrade to normal one at a time file upload in those browsers while modern browsers get the best user experience. NeatUpload is no longer included with mojoPortal so as long as you don't have any custom features that depend on it you can safely remove the /NeatUpload folder from your eisting installation after upgrading and remove the file Brettle.Web.NeatUpload.dll from the /bin folder. Developers are encouraged to look at how we implemented the file upload in mojoPortal features and replace your own use of NeatUpload in custom features to be consistent.

New Version of AjaxControlToolkit

We upgraded to the Jan2013 version (from July2012 version) of AjaxControlToolkit. Since this is used also in our add on products Form Wizard Pro, Event Calendar Pro, and Web Invoice Pro, we have corresponding upgrades to those add on products for compatibility with this release of mojoPortal.

Other Stuff

  • upgrade to CKeditor 4.0.3
  • upgrade to jQuery 1.9.1 and jQueryUI 1.10.2
  • upgrade from jPlayer 2.1.0 to 2.3.0
  • various minor bug fixes for things reported in the forums since the last release

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2397-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2397-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2397-released Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:38:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for April 2013 We've got 3 sites to mention this month.

Boy Scouts of America - Heart of America Council website was designed and implemented by our friends at i7MEDIA

Boy Scouts of America - Heart of America Council

Boost Marathon provides a world wide marathon calendar and sells training programs for both half marathon and full marathon. The site is used in 150 countries and in 20 languages. Traffic after only a couple of months is evenly distributed among US, Europe, South America and Asia. A cloud based hosting ensures quick response times everywhere.

Boost Marathon

Salary Solutions was designed by DMSQD

Salary Solutions

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.​

Follow us on twitter or become a fan on Facebook

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Joe Audette  ...Tweet This
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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-april-2013 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-april-2013 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-april-2013 Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:22:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.9.6 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.9.6, available now on our download page.

This release includes a number of bug fixes and a few other improvements since the previous release. The most interesting new feature is support for inline editing in the Html Content feature when using CKEditor which has also been upgraded to version 4.0.2. With inline editing, users with edit permissions can just click into the content and the editor will appear as shown below in a screen shot from our demo site.

inline editing with CKeditor

When you click out of the content if it has changed it is saved by an ajax post to a service url. There is a little lock icon that toggles enabling and disabling the inline editor. This was needed otherwise if a user had edit permission and wanted to click a link within the content, it would launch the editor instead of navigating to the link. The inline editor also works in iPhone and iPad. For now inline editing is only implemented in the Html Content feature but depending on feedback we may implement it in other features in the future. It can also be disabled in case you don't like it and the traditional edit link that goes to the edit page also still works. To disabled inline editing in an installation you would add this in user.config:

<add key="EnableInlineEditing" value="false" />

In the last release we introduced a new Recent Content feature as well as an RSS url that could retrieve recent content based on query string parameters that could limit the results to a specific feature. Since the Recent Content feature that plugs into CMS pages could be configured to show content from multiple features we decided it would be more user friendly to expose an RSS link directly in the feature that will use the settings from the feature so that the feed will include the same content as the feature on the page.

In the previous release we upgraded to the latest jQuery but we missed a few plugins that were not compatible which caused a few bugs in various places such as the image cropper and the file manager. These have been fixed. The jPlayer plugin used in our Audio and Video players also is still not yet compatible with the latest jQuery so we automatically load the jQuery Migrate plugin when it is loaded to provide compatibility until they come out with an update to the jPlayer plugin.

We also upgraded to the newest version of the NivoSlider jQuery plugin which is integrated in the Image Gallery feature. It now supports captions and the web size image will link to the full size image.

There was also a bug introduced in the last release for the forums where forum threads could be lost from the search index when other threads were updated. This has now been fixed and anyone using the forums should rebuild the search index again after upgrading to restore any missing forum items from the search index.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2396-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2396-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2396-released Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:13:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.9.5 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.9.5, available now on our download page. This is a significant update with many improvements.

UPDATE 2013-02-14 We have found that our .NET 3.5 package for this release is broken under medium trust due to an error generated by Lucene.NET. We are looking into a solution to this but for now, those hosted under .NET 3.5 medium trust should not upgrade. The best solution is to move to .NET 4/4.5 hosting since we are approaching the end of support for .NET 3.5.

UPDATE 2013-02-14 We were able to use conditional compilation to make the .NET 3.5 builds use the older version of Lucene.NET and this fixed the medium trust error for the mojoportal-2-3-9-5-mssql-net35-deploymentfiles.zip package. So it is now safe to upgrade .NET 3.5 installations.

What's New?

Recent Content Feature

Lots of people have asked if there is a way to show recently created or updated content. The challenge with this has always been that features are self-contained and pages are just containers for feature instances so the don't have knowledge of the feature content so there was not an easy way to list new content except at the feature level. For example features like the blog and forums expose RSS feeds so one could pull recent content from those feeds into a feed manager instance, but there wasn't a good way to do it for the HTML Content feature which is the main content feature. However, we recently revamped our internal search index to keep track of created and modified dates so that searches could be filtered by date (also new in this release). Once that was completed we realized that one way to get recent content in a feature agnostic way is to retrieve it from the search index based on the created or modified date. This is exactly what the new Recent Content Feature does. You can set a maximum number of days old to include, which features to include and whether to use the created date or modified date. So this now works with all features that support search. The Recent Content feature can be placed on a page like any other feature and configured as you wish. There is also now a Recent Content RSS feed that can be enabled and then used with the Feed Manager feature to show recent content. I'll be documenting how to do that soon but the stand alone Recent Content feature is probably more user-friendly for most people.

Search Engine Improvements

As mentioned above the internal Lucene.NET search engine has been revamped. In addition to the created and modified dates it can also store the author name and this can be optionally shown in the search results for features that populate it. We also upgraded to the latest version of Lucene.NET (3.0.3). As a result of these changes, after upgrading it is recommended to rebuild the search index so it gets populated with the new fields. There were some breaking changes so developers who have implemented their own custom features that support search and use our internal search engine should see the notes in this forum thread.

There is also a corresponding update to our Event Calendar Pro product to be compatible with the search engine changes. This is a free update for customers who already purchased Event Calendar Pro.

Blog Improvements

Previously the map settings for the blog were at the feature instance level which meant that all maps in all posts had to use the same settings. These settings are now per post so you can get more creative with maps in your blog posts. There is also a new setting if you want to show a search input in the blog.

Forum Improvements

There is a new setting if you want to automatically close threads older than a certain number of days. Individual threads can now be left out of the google site map for the forums and/or marked with a NOINDEX meta tag if you don't feel that the thread has any content of value. There are also new settings to allow showing the CMS page side content on the forum detail pages which is useful for ad placement for example.

Miscellaneous Improvements

  • Content Style templates can now be imported and exported thanks to Joe Davis of i7MEDIA
  • Upgraded to CKEditor 4.0.1
  • There is a new menu control named FlexMenu included in this release. Unlike the ASP.NET Menu and Treeview controls it does not add any javascript so you can add your own if needed and not get any conflicts that those menus are prone to.
  • Updated the CDN settings to use jQuery 1.9 and jQueryUI 1.10.0. Also updated included plugins to compatible versions. However, if you are using any custom plugins or javascript that is not compatible with the new version of jQuery we have a way to include a compatibility script. See the important skin changes article for details.
  • Bug fixes for things reported in the forums since the last release.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2395-released webmaster@mojoportal.com https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2395-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2395-released Thu, 07 Feb 2013 15:09:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.9.4 Released I’m happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.9.4, available now on our download page.

Although it has only been a little more than a month since our last release, we’ve been very busy with more improvements some of which have been long standing requests.

What’s New?

Page Content Wizard

Most of you who are familiar with mojoPortal know how to add features to a page, but I've noticed on our demo site some people manage to create pages but then for some reason can't figure out how to add content by clicking the "Edit This Page" link. To make it more friendly for new users and for people trying mojoPortal for the first time on our demo site, we've added a simple widget for adding a content feature to a page. This widget is shown if user visiting the page has edit permission on the page and the page has no other content on it and is not configured to show the child page site map.

We’ve also added a new default profile field for AuthorBio. By default it is only available to Administrators, Content Administrators, Content Authors, and Content Publisher roles.

Forum Improvements

Reduced the number of Url parameters and added a site map for forum threads that can be submitted to search engines for greatly improved SEO in the forums feature. See the updated Site Map documentation for details.

Blog Improvements

Added support for showing an Author Bio at the bottom of blog posts.

Added support for a Sub Title per post, with theme.skin support to configure what element it renders as in the list an in the detail view.

Added support for multiple bloggers: A user in the edit roles for a blog can only edit their own posts unless the user is in the Administrators or Content Administrators roles. This can be disabled from user.config if you prefer the old behavior where any editor could edit any post.  See the updated blog documentation for details.

Added support for per category feeds. Now by default the feed icon on the category page has the category specific feed url.

Added support for post end dates. If an end date is specified, then the post will no longer be available to users not in an edit role. Other users who visit the post url will see a message saying the content has expired and the HTTP Status code 410 will be returned for search engines, and the post url will be removed from the google site map.

Fixed bug where the feed would return an error until a post was made from the UI.

Added options for showing the Author Photo/Avatar and/or an Author Bio at the bottom of Html Content instances.

Newsletter Improvements

Added support for some new token replacements that can be used to personalize the newsletter, with settings for fallback default values configurable on the newsletter definition. See the updated newsletter documentation for details. https://www.mojoportal.com/usingthenewsletter.aspx

Other Miscellaneous Improvements

Added a SkinID to registration page validators so they can be configured form theme.skin. Changed to dynamic display so that by default the error messages are shown inline next to the form fields.

Updated Italian translation from Diego Mora Updated the config settings to use the latest versions of jQuery and jQueryUI from the google CDN.Updated to the latest version of log4net.

Fixed bug where only admins could edit an html instance from within content manager (without the context of a page), and content admins were not allowed by mistake.

Fixed bug where Audio and Video features allowed upload media file types not actually supported in the features.

Fixed bug in internal comment system where site root was duplicated in the comment link in the notification email.
Fixed bug PayPal form element values should be attribute encoded not html encoded. Fixed bug in Image Gallery where Nivo slider did not work when the site was running in a sub folder rather than in the root directory.
Fixed a bug where if a user registered on the site after previously only signing up for the newsletter, duplicate newsletter subscriptions were not removed. This bug was introduced in version 2.3.9.3 when we added the newsletter opt in to the registration page.

The mojoPortal Team would like to wish our friends in the US a Happy Thanksgiving! We will be taking a few days off to enjoy time with our families and we are thankful to our community and customers who make what we do possible with your support and feedback.


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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2394-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2394-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2394-released Mon, 19 Nov 2012 20:00:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for October 2012 Our friends over at i7MEDIA have done lots and lots of design work with mojoPortal, and recently redesigned their own site. Not obvious from the screen shot is the mouse over menu effects on their home page, it's worth a click to check it out.

i7media site

 

SpearFysh is another new mojoPortal site recently brought to our attention and designed by  Evolve Creative Group.

SpearFysh site

 

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-october-2012 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-october-2012 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-october-2012 Tue, 30 Oct 2012 17:34:00 GMT
New Skin Available Mocha by i7MEDIA The HTML5mojo project is continuing to progress as more desings are contributed. Today we'd like to thank our friends at i7MEDIA who have released their second contribution to the project by adding the Mocha skin.

Mocha Skin by i7MEDIA

Check out the Mocha skin demo site which explains some of the features of the skin and has a download link. Its another beautiful design that shows what is possible with mojoPortal. Huge kudos to i7MEDIA for sharing this with the community!


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https://www.mojoportal.com/new-skin-available-mocha-by-i7media joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/new-skin-available-mocha-by-i7media https://www.mojoportal.com/new-skin-available-mocha-by-i7media Wed, 24 Oct 2012 17:01:00 GMT
New Skin Available Hi5 by GloriaTech Back in July we announced the HTML5mojo project to get more designers involved with creating nice skins for the community that show the possibilities with mojoPortal content management system. Since then we've had a nice contribution of the Swift Blue skin from i7MEDIA and this month we are happy to announce another new skin named Hi 5 from our friends at GloriaTech that has been contributed to the HTML5mojo project.

hi5 skin by GloriaTech

 

You can check it out on their Hi5 demo site and you can download it from the html5mojo download page.

Big thanks to GloriaTech for their contribution! We hope the continued progress with this project will inspire more designers to get involved.


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https://www.mojoportal.com/new-skin-available-hi5-by-gloriatech joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/new-skin-available-hi5-by-gloriatech https://www.mojoportal.com/new-skin-available-hi5-by-gloriatech Mon, 22 Oct 2012 18:13:00 GMT
Updated Add On Products for mojoPortal We've just uploaded updates to several of the add-on products in the mojoPortal Store.

WorldPay Support

All of the eCommerce products: Site Membership Pro, Web Invoice Pro, and Event Calendar Pro now support WorldPay as a payment gateway in addition to the already existing support for Authorize.NET, PlugNPay, PayPal and Google Checkout. We've had quite a few requests for WorldPay support, so we're very excited to finally deliver this.

Other Updates

Form Wizard Pro has also been updated to include custom email template editing for the notification emails.

These are free upgrades for existing customers who have already purchased these products, the latest version can be downloaded from your order history by signing into this site as the user with the purchase history and clicking the "My Account" link at the top of the page. However, these updates do require the latest version of mojoPortal.

UPDATE: I made another small change to the Artisteer skin exporter plugin and uploaded a new version 2012-10-15. It fixed a problem with the menu layout in some designs.

UPDATE 2012-10-18 I've made another fix in the skin exporter plugin to solve a problem where Chrome browser was using responsive layout as if it were a phone.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/updated-add-on-products-for-mojoportal-2012-10-12 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/updated-add-on-products-for-mojoportal-2012-10-12 https://www.mojoportal.com/updated-add-on-products-for-mojoportal-2012-10-12 Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:28:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.9.3 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.9.3, available now on our download page. This is a significant release with a lot of improvements.

What's New?

Support for WorldPay in the WebStore feature (also new releases to follow very soon adding WorldPay support to Site Membership Pro, Web Invoice Pro, and Event Calendar Pro)

Updates for Artisteer 4 and an updated skin exporter plugin for Artisteer 4

New improved internal comment system in the blog and as a standalone feature. Note that for MS SQL and SQL CE, the comments from the old blog comment system will be migrated automatically by the upgrade script, but for other database platforms you'll need to download a utility page that can migrate the data. Just drop the page into the root of your site then navigate to it while logged in as admin, then click the button to migrate the data.

Other blog improvements include support for media attachments in the blog for podcasting, and a new setting to show the post author avatar at the bottom of a post.  There is also a new blog display setting to allow use of jqueryui datepicker for calendar navigation

Site search as a content feature, right now it is just a simple way to add the search box to a page, it still navigates to the search results page but we may add more options for it in the next release that we didn't finish in time for this one.

We added newsletter subscriptions to the registration process, since we are no longer always redirecting to the user profile page after registration.

Updated to AddThis Widget from older AddThis button

We added some display settings for login module to allow use of Janrain social sign in, to allow not hiding it after sign in and showing the welcome message and user avatar.

Added option to show Janrain widget on SignInOrRegisterPrompt used in WebStore and other commerce features.

Added settings on WelcomeMessage to allow use of first and last name if populated
<portal:WelcomeMessage ID="WelcomeMessage" runat="server" RenderAsListItem="true" ListItemCss="firstnav" UseFirstLast="true" />

Upgrade TinyMCE from 3.5.5 to 3.5.7

Upgrade from CKEditor 3.6.3 to 3.6.5

Update google search to v2 api

Added bulk mail header to newsletter and forum notifications

Removed recaptcha theme web.config setting, use theme.skin so it can be set per skin

The source code solution now works with either Visual Studio 2010 or 2012

Added RoleEnabledHyperlink based on code from Joe Davis. This makes it easy to add a custom link in the layout.master file that you only want to be visible to members of specific roles.
<portal:RoleEnabledHyperlink id="yourid" runat="server" RelativeUrl="/your-url-relative-to-siteroot.aspx" AllowedRoles="Admins;Content Editors" UseSSL="false" RenderAsListItem="false" ListItemCss="" />

Added theme settings to control forum crumbs similar to admin crumbs

Fixed a bug where the disqus widget wasn't working correctly with disqus 2012 enabled

Fixed bug in css handler where background images declared as base64 strings were not working because the image base path was being appended

Fixed bug in cutepager where full postback was happening in updatepanels

Fixed a bug in treeviewadapter where the class attribute on child ul could be added twice

Fixed bug where sign in prompt showed registration link even when registration is disabled

Fixed bug in forum where unsubscribe was not working due to disabled viewstate on the container

Fixed bug in search input control where a div was rendering even when configured for link only

Fixed bug in blog where comment counts for internal comments were shown when using facebook comments

Fixed bug where admin menu did not show page tree link if user has some child page creation rights but is not admin, content admin, or site editor

Updated jqueryui skin to style new comment system as jquery ui widget

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2393-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2393-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2393-released Thu, 11 Oct 2012 18:55:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for September 2012 For this month's list of mojoPortal sightings, our friends over at TRIAD/Next Level let us know about a slew of sites they've launched recently using mojoPortal CMS. We've featured their designs many times in the past and they are always doing consistently great work for their clients. All of these sites are worth a look, though we're only including screen shots for a few of them in this post.

THOMARIOS is a diverse corporation, with comprehensive services in Construction Management, Design Build, General Construction, Commercial and Industrial Painting and Coatings, Powder Coating, Historic Spacecraft, Aircraft, & Building Restoration.

Thomarios Site

 

For well over a century, Summit County Children Services (SCCS) has improved the lives of abused and neglected children and their families by promoting child safety, permanency and well-being.

Summit County Children's Services site

 

Take a peek at some of these other sites brought online by TRIAD/Next Level, they all feature great designs and illustrate the flexibility of mojoPortal.

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-september-2012 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-september-2012 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-september-2012 Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:26:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for August 2012 Our friends at i7MEDIA have been very busy lately. In addition to sharing a nice new skin with the community, recently they have brought a few nice sites online using mojoPortal CMS.

Micromo has provided the widest range of high quality rotary and linear custom motion solutions to markets such as medical, defense and robotics. A member of the global FAULHABER Group, MICROMO brings together cutting edge, high performance and energy efficient technologies from around the world, such as brushed, brushless, stepper, thin profile, piezoelectric and linear dc motors, encoders and gearheads.

Micromo

 

Banking You Can Trust is an advocacy group for credit unions. In addition to the design work, i7MEDIA built a custom feature to help users find credit unions as part of this project.

Banking You Can Trust

 

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-august-2012 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-august-2012 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-august-2012 Wed, 22 Aug 2012 19:06:00 GMT
Swift Blue - A Nice Free mojoPortal Skin from i7MEDIA In a recent post I mentioned the new HTML 5 Skins project for mojoPortal which is aimed at getting more designers involved to produce nice modern skins for the mojoPortal community. Our friends at i7MEDIA have contributed their first skin, "Swift Blue", to the project and have setup a nice demo web site with intsructions and tips for using the Swift Blue skin.

Swift Blue Skin for mojoPortal cms

I really like the very clean calendar styling of this skin.

Swift Blue calendar style

Huge thanks to the i7MEDIA team for sharing this nice new skin with the mojoPortal Community! They also have some more skins in their pipeline that they plan to share soon, so stay tuned for more announcements in the near future. I'd like to encourage more designers to contribute and share and hope this gets the ball rolling.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/swift-blue-a-nice-free-mojoportal-skin-from-i7media joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/swift-blue-a-nice-free-mojoportal-skin-from-i7media https://www.mojoportal.com/swift-blue-a-nice-free-mojoportal-skin-from-i7media Wed, 15 Aug 2012 13:47:00 GMT
Announcing the mojoPortal Skin Exporter for Artisteer 4 We have supported Artisteer for several years now but there have always been a number of steps involved with converting an HTML export from Artisteer to a mojoPortal skin. But with version 4 Beta of Artisteer there is a new SDK that allowed us to develop a custom plugin to directly export a mojoPortal skin from Artisteer with 1 click.

mojoPortal Skin Exporter Plugin for Artisteer 4 Beta

We've decided for now to release this as a free plugin, but if you would like to support mojoPortal please consider buying me a few beers or coffee when completing your order for this free product. Artisteer has a very generous affiliate program so if you haven't yet purchased Artisteer or need to upgrade please click our ad first so that we get an affiliate commission on the purchase. As long as we continue to receive good commissions from Artisteer we will keep this plugin free.

See the mojoPortal Skin Exporter for Artisteer product page for system requirements, details and instructions.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/announcing-the-mojoportal-skin-exporter-for-artisteer-4 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/announcing-the-mojoportal-skin-exporter-for-artisteer-4 https://www.mojoportal.com/announcing-the-mojoportal-skin-exporter-for-artisteer-4 Thu, 02 Aug 2012 18:47:00 GMT
New Project - HTML 5 Skins for mojoPortal - We Need Designers!
HTML 5 Logo

I mentioned in our mojoPortal 2.3.9.0 release annoucement that we would soon be announcing a new project to get more designers involved with mojoPortal. This project is now on Codeplex at html5mojo.codeplex.com. We welcome any designers who would like to participate in this project to help showcase the design possibilities of mojoPortal CMS using HTML 5. You can read more about the goals and rationale for the project on the codeplex page, and contact me if you would like commit access to our Mercurial repository to add and evolve your own skins and designs. Or if you are not familiar or comfortable using Mercurial you can send the files to me and I will add them to the project. You can find participation guidelines here.

In mojoPortal CMS design is completely de-coupled from functionality so it can be styled in almost limitless ways by good designers. However, in spite of this, people often judge mojoPortal CMS by the included skins and since the few skins that we have been shipping with mojoPortal are created by developers who are not designers we believe that the included skins have not presented mojoPortal in its best light. Therefore we invite/beg real designers to get involved with this project to help produce some really nice looking modern HTML 5 skins for mojoPortal. We need your help!

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https://www.mojoportal.com/new-project-html-5-skins-for-mojoportal-we-need-designers joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/new-project-html-5-skins-for-mojoportal-we-need-designers https://www.mojoportal.com/new-project-html-5-skins-for-mojoportal-we-need-designers Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:17:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.9.0 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal CMS 2.3.9.0, available now on our download page.

What's New?

Full Support for HTML 5

New example skins based on Twitter bootstrap, and Zurb foundation, including better support for use of newer html 5 structural elements (like article, nav, and aside) configured from theme.skin. In these example skins we are using article and header for HTML Content and blog features and aside for page and blog side columns as well as nav to wrap the menus and paging links. There are some comments about the use of these elements as well as links to advice about their usage contained in the style.config file of the example skins. Studying the theme.skin files for these skins is a good way to learn about a lot of configuration options for layout and rendering that are not yet documented in detail elsewhere. These example skins are not prettied up, they are meant to be used as a starting point for designers who will pretty them up. Stay tuned for an announcement coming up soon about a new project for mojoPortal skins based on HTML 5, we will be looking for designers to participate in this project to help show off the full design potential of mojoPortal. The new example skins are in the extra-skins.zip file on our codeplex download page but later we will be moving them into the new project for HTML 5 Skins for mojoPortal where we hope to expand on the examples and get more designers involved.

We've also added support for LESS by integrating DotLess. .less files can be used in skins and will be combined and converted to CSS using DotLess by our CSS handler. We have one example skin based on Twitter bootstrap that uses raw .less files and one that uses only CSS. See the article Using HTML 5 with mojoPortal for more details.

We've also revamped most of the Administrative pages to make the markup more consistent and easier to style.

Support for Facebook Comments

We've added support for Using Facebook Comment System on pages and in the Blog as an alternative to our support for Disqus and IntenseDebate.
Requires adding this in layout.master file of the skin, just above the <form element:
<portal:FacebookSdk ID="fbsdk" runat="server" />
and a Facebook AppId must be entered either in Site Settings or in user.config

<add key="FacebookAppId" value="xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" /> 

The Blog also now supports showing related posts based on tags/categories.

Forum Improvements

Forum threads are now indexed as one item in the search index where previously each post was a separate item which could produce multiple search results for the same thread. Use of the new indexing approach requires adding this to user.config:
<add key="Forum:AggregateSearchIndexPerThread" value="true" />
and rebuilding the search index. I think this change has helped a lot on this site, it is much easier to find things in the forums now using search.

HTML Content Improvements

New options in Html Content feature to show the created date, created by, last modified date and last modified by.
New option for highlighting the differences in text when comparing a draft to the live version or when comparing to version history

Image Gallery Improvements

Added an option to use Nivo Slider in the image gallery.
Added a config setting to allow automatically deleting images if the image gallery instance is deleted. By default, it does not do that since you may have used image gallery images in other content.
To enable it, add this to user.config:
<add key="ImageGallery:DeleteImagesWhenModuleIsDeleted" value="true" />

Newsletter Improvements

Added button to re-send verification email for unverified addresses
Added functionality to allow opting in all site members to a newsletter if they have not previously opted out of any newsletters

Miscellaneous Improvements

Changed from RewriteUrl to Server.TransferRequest (based on a config setting and only works in Integrated Pipeline mode), this makes IIS log the friendly URL instead of the real URL (ie Default.aspx?pageid=x) making the IIS logs more useful. With the EU cookie law and growing use of Do Not Track, it is becoming more problematic to rely solely on google analytics for traffic analysis, we expect to see more people going back to log analysis.

Upgrade to the latest June 2012 release of AjaxcontrolToolkit. This also required new releases of Form Wizard Pro, Event Calendar Pro, and Web Invoice Pro because they must use the same version of the toolkit controls as mojoPortal. Customers who previously purchased these add-on features can download the latest version from their purchase history under "My Account"

Form Wizard Pro also has some new features including an HTML question type that shows a simple WYSIWYG editor, an Email question type that automatically validates email. A new option to send the submitter a copy of the form submission data, if enabled it will be sent to each email address from an Email question type on the form. There is also a new option to allow redirecting to a different page after the form is submitted instead of just showing the thank you message.

Add support for settings width of google and Bing maps using a percent instead of pixels
New sorting options on the member list page to allow sorting by join date so it is easy to find new members
Updated to the new Bing Search API

New provider plugin system for user profile updated handlers to allow custom code to execute when a user profile is updated (thanks to Huw Reddick).
New provider plugin system for user pre-delete handlers allows custom code to execute when a user is about to be deleted

Upgrade to TinyMCE 3.5.4
Upgrade to a nightly build of CKeditor to resolve a bug where the file browser dialog would not open in Chrome web browser

various minor improvements and bug fixes for things reported in the forums since the last release.

As always, it's a good idea to backup your site and database before upgrading and review the upgrading documentation.

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2390-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2390-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2390-released Wed, 18 Jul 2012 19:11:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for April 2012 This month we have slew of very nice new mojoPortal sites designed by our friends over at TRIAD Communications/Next Level Interactive. They are very good designers and we have featured sites from them several times in the past. Both the TRIAD Communications site and the Next Level Interactive site also run on mojoPortal, though the Next Level Interactive site is mainly using Flash rather than Html for the UI. We love it when designers use mojoPortal not only for their customers but also for their own sites.

Here is a full list of new sites they let me know about recently followed by screen shots of a few of them:

All of these sites have very professional designs and are worth a look, here are screen shots of a few of them:

Rock and Recovery Site

The Burton D. Morgan Foundation

Leadership Akron

Qylex IT

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-april-2012 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-april-2012 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-april-2012 Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:33:00 GMT
Site Membership Pro 1.0.0.1 Released! I'm happy to announce the initial release of Site Membership Pro, available now in the mojoPortal Store. Site Membership Pro is an add on product for mojoPortal that makes it easy to monetize access to your premium site content.

Site Membership Pro

See the product page for full details. As with our other products, customers who purchase Site Membership Pro get free upgrades for the life of the product.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/site-membership-pro-1001-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/site-membership-pro-1001-released https://www.mojoportal.com/site-membership-pro-1001-released Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:49:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.8.5 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.8.5, available now on our download page.

What's New?

A new Control for Nivo Slider

Thanks to Matt Wilkinson who contributed a control that makes it easy to use Nivo Slider, a jQuery widget that does fancy slide show transistions. This control can be used in layout.master or in custom features. You basically add the control and point it to a folder that has images for the slide show. The images in the folder must all be the same size, and you must specify the width of the images on the control, so example usage is like this:

<portal:NivoSlider ID="NivoSlider1" runat="server" ImageFolder='~/Data/Sites/1/nivoimages' ImageWidth='618px' />

Then you also need to add one of these included skins for Nivo Slider to the style.config file of your skin:

<file cssvpath="/Data/style/nivoslider/default/default.css" imagebasevpath="/Data/style/nivoslider/default/">none</file>
<file cssvpath="/Data/style/nivoslider/orman/orman.css" imagebasevpath="/Data/style/nivoslider/orman/">none</file>

or you can copy and rename one of those and modify it as you like.

A new QRCodeImage control

QR Code

QR Codes are often used in printed materials to encode an url for a web page. There are apps for most smart phones and tablets that can scan the QR Code and navigate to the web page. We've added this control in the "PrinterFriendly" skin so that if people print a page on your site using the printer friendly view a QR Code will be included at the bottom automatically.

Since we don't update the skins in the site specific folders during upgrades you may want to copy the new version of the printerfirendly skin from /Data/skins to /Data/Sites/[SiteID]/skins or you can add it directly to the layout.master of your copy like this:

<portal:QRCodeImage id="qr1" runat="server" AutoDetectPageUrl="true" />

You could also use this control in custom features, you can encode any text value, if you set AutoDetectUrl to false and add the attribute TextToEncode="Any text you want to encode as a QR Code" you could use it for other purposes. The control uses the google charts api to generate the QR code image so it can't work if you are offline or your site is on a private intranet with no access to the internet.

Lots of Little Improvements

There is a new section in Site Settings for Company Info as well as some convenience controls to make it easy to show company info in the footer of your site by embedding some new convenience controls in your layout.master file that will automatically pull in the compnay info from site settings. Examples:

<portal:OrganizationControl id="oc1" runat="server" /> will include the company info marked up with Schema.org Organization markup. There are also a few literal controls that can be used separately:
<portal:CompanyPhoneLiteral id="litPhone" runat="server" />
<portal:CompanyFaxLiteral id="litFax" runat="server" />
<portal:PublicEmail id="litEmail" runat="server" />

There is a new Site Created Event Handler Provider system (usage is yet to be documented), contributed by Joe Davis that allows you to plugin custom code that can execute when additional sites are created.

Blog Category list and Archive list views now use the same settings as the main post list so that they show full posts or excerpts in a paged list instead of just titles.

There is a new setting in Image Gallery to automatically start the colorbox slide show when the page loads.

In the html content feature users with full edit permission can now publish a draft without submitting it through the approval process.

Improved usability for user role management on manage user page.

Made role permissions UI in page settings consistent with module settings where the links are under the security tab for improved usability

Added support for content on the login page.

Added count of members to role list in role manager page

When using LDAP Authentication with fallback to database authentication it is now possible to allow the users with database accounts to login with their email address in addition to the loginname.

Added config settings to make it possible to control the cache duration for 301 redirects or to disable caching.

Restored previously removed support to use cache dependency files based on a config setting to support small web clusters with a shared drive, where dependency files are the easiest way to clear the cache on all the nodes that share the drive without having to use a distrubuted cache.

Added rel="next" and rel="prev" meta links on paged Forums and Lists features to improve the SEO of those features.

Added support for checkboxlist questions in custom user profile with example in comments in mojoProfile.config.

Upgraded from CKeditor 3.6.2 to 3.6.3

Upgraded from TinyMCE 3.4.7 to 3.4.9

Updated to newest version of jcarousel

Update to newer version of google data libraries

Added custom body css class on closed page to make it easier to style the closed page.

Removed un-needed css class from artisteer theme.skin files, was causing a problem in webstore layout where it did not use the full page width.

Bug Fixes

  • fixed login, password recovery and registration issues when user exists but is flagged as deleted
  • fixed bug in profileview.aspx where custom profile boolean properties were not showing the images for true or false
  • fixed bug in PermissionEdit.aspx where All Users was not checked even if it was saved correctly in the database
  • fixed incorrect parameter type for compiledmeta field in MySql data layer
  • fixed bug in MySql data layer for database logging, incorrect parameter type
  • fixed a bug in the blog where an auto-generated excerpt was being used in the post list even when explicitely created in the editor
  • fixed bug in blog where detail view did not use the blogauthor override setting
  • fixed bug in blog - option to show side pane content and top and bottom content should work in all blog supporting pages
  • fixed bug where new user notification did not work in child sites when using related sites mode
  • fixed a bug in the editors where the unsaved changes warning from spanish resources was causing CKeditor to not work at all and causing unsaved changes prompt to not work in TinyMCE
  • fixed bug in SiteStatisiticsModule where it was hard coded to use 1 for the site id
  • fixed bug in newsletter administration where paging did not work
  • fixed bug in Flickr Gallery - don't specify a default size in flickr gallery script so it will not reduce image quality
  • fixed bug - check for null on all paypal IPN paramaters in webstore
  • fixed bug in webstore where media player was shown on offer detail page even when no teaser file was present

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2385-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2385-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2385-released Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:11:00 GMT
Site Membership Pro - Coming Soon! In our last newsletter I mentioned that I was working on a new add on product for mojoPortal named Site Membership Pro.

I've received quite a few emails expressing interest in this product and I'm happy to report that the first release is ready to ship and will be available soon in the mojoPortal store.

Site Membership Pro

However, Site Membership Pro depends on a few small changes I've recently implemented in the core of mojoPortal, so I'll have to wait until after the next release of mojoPortal before I can make it available. My plan is to make a new release of mojoPortal soon, I'm going through our project tracker looking for small things I can complete to round out a new release to make it worthwhile upgrade.

In the mean time, I've created a demo site to show the public facing side of the feature at smpdemo.mojoportal.com.  You can also try out the back end administration of the feature on our main demo site where you can login as the administrator, but you'll need to add it to a page manually and then you will see the "Settings" and "Manage" links.

What Is Site Membership Pro?

Site Membership Pro provides additional functionality on top of mojoPortal to make it easy to monetize access to your premium site content.

mojoPortal already provides role based security so that you can use roles to protect your premium content. For example you could create a role named "Members Only" and you could set that role as the only allowed View Role on pages in your site that contain premium content. However, managing the roles assigned to a user is a manual process in mojoPortal that can be done by Administrators, Role Adminsitrators or Roles That Can Manage Users. So one would have to go to each user who should be given access to premium content and add the user to the "Members Only" role.

Site Membership Pro provides the missing pieces to make it easy to sell membership subscriptions and automatically grant the user the role or roles that provide access to the premium content on your site when they complete a subscription purchase.

You define Membsership Levels which have a name and one or more roles that are provided with this level of membership. You could keep it simple and just have one level for "Members Only", or you could have multiple tiers of access like Gold, Silver and Bronze each providing different roles that protect sections of your site content.

Then you define Membership Product(s) which grant the user one of the Membership Levels (and the associated roles) for a specified number of days for a specified price. Products can be enabled or disabled and they can have begin and end dates that determine when they are on sale. A grace period can also be specified on the product such that users are not removed from the granted role(s) until after a certain number days after the actual expiration date.

When a user pruchases a membership product they are immediately granted the roles provided by the membership level when the payment has cleared. The begin and end dates of the membership are set at the time of purchase and a background task handles removing roles from the user when the membership expires or the grace period is over (if the user has not renewed).

You can also configure notifications on the products so that users can recieve reminders when their membership is coming up for renewal. Reminders can be configured as a specific number of days before or after either the end date of a membership or the end of the grace period. You can create multiple reminders per product so that you have a series of them to encourage renewal.

You can also define reminder templates for plain text email messages. Templates support some token replacement and you must assign a template to a reminder in order to save it. So the reminder will send a plain text email replacing the tokens from the template at the scheduled time if the user has not renewed.

The same background task that manages removing users from roles if their membership expires also handles sending the reminder messages.

Note that the reminders are intended to provide a link back to your site so the user can renew his membership before it expires. To renew, users have to go through the checkout process. Site Membership Pro does not retain any credit card information and does not automatically charge cards to renew subscriptions. Possibly in the future we will look into available APIs from PayPal and others for recurring payments but we have no plans to retain credit card information in the future. The risks and liability potential involved with retaining credit card information without proper infrastructure and staff to secure the data far outweigh the fact that it would be nice to be able to do that.

Since users probably don't want to go through the checkout process every month it is recommended to structure your membership products with fairly long durations like 6 months or one year as opposed to a month at a time. Free products are also supported so you could have one product that provides a free trial of Premium Access for a limited number of days and a One Year Subscription for $120 for example. You can also mark a product as available only for new members, so that existing members can't get the free trial offer.

Supports Authorize.NET, PlugNPay, PayPal, Google Checkout - ie the same payment systems supported in all mojoPortal ecommerce products (WebStore, Event Calendar Pro, Web Invoice Pro). I'm also investigating adding support for WorldPay for all our ecommerce products in the near future.

The initial release will support MS SQL and MySql, other database platforms may be supported later depending ion demand.

What Site Membership Pro Does Not Do

Site Membership Pro is NOT a replacement for the site registration system. User's must register or sign in to purchase premium membership, so they need to go through the normal registration process first to get a free account, then once they complete the membership purchase they are immediately granted the roles provided by the membership.

Site Membership Pro is not involved in protecting your premiumm content, that is done by configuring roles that can view pages in your site and is built in functionality of mojoPortal.

Site Membership Pro does not retain any credit card information and cannot automatically charge cards when membership renewal is due.

Site Membership Pro does not prevent an Administrator, Role Administrator or Roles That Can Manage Users from adding or removing users from roles.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/site-membership-pro-coming-soon joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/site-membership-pro-coming-soon https://www.mojoportal.com/site-membership-pro-coming-soon Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:04:00 GMT
Event Calendar Pro 3.4.0.5 Released I've just uploaded Event Calendar Pro 3.4.0.5 This is a minor upgrade with just a few little improvements that some customers have been asking for.

What's New?

Improvements to the event editor to get rid of some jumpiness that could happen when additional settings were shown or hidden based on checkbox selection. Previously this was done using UpdatePanel which was the cuase of the jumpiness. All UpdatePanels have been removed from the event editor page and the showing and hiding of things is done with jQuery making it much smoother.

Added settings to allow not requiring or showing address and phone fields on the registration form when the event is free.

Added a setting to use the Event Summary instead of Event Detail in the outbound feed. Often people consume the feed in the mojoPortal Feed Manager on their home page to show upcoming events but they don't want to show the full details.

Added a setting to control how far into the future events are included in the feed. Previously it was hard coded to 180 days, this is now just a default setting that can be changed.

Added more css classes on the body element in edit/admin pages

Added config settings to allow hiding the start and end time on List View and event Detail view if the start and end time is configured to the same value.

Updated the article Event Calendar Pro Tips and Tricks to cover some of the new and previously undocumented config settings.

Event Calendar Pro

We've got lots of plans for future enhancements for Event Calendar Pro, but wanted to get this small update out for the folks who requested these minor improvements. As with the previous release of Event Calendar Pro, this release requires mojoPortal 2.3.8.1 or higher.

This is a free upgrade for existing customers who have already purchased Event Calendar Pro. To download the new version just sign into www.mojoportal.com as the user who made the purchase, then click the "My Account" link at the top of the page and go to Order History. You'll be able to download the latest version from your order details.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/event-calendar-pro-3405-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/event-calendar-pro-3405-released https://www.mojoportal.com/event-calendar-pro-3405-released Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:28:00 GMT
Using the Blogsy iPad App With mojoPortal It seems like developing applications for the iPad is all the rage these days as it has become a very popular device.  I’ve thought about developing an iPad app for mojoPortal, it would be fun to learn how to develop apps for iPad and iPhone, but honestly my plate is pretty full just working on mojoPortal itself and add on products for it. So I got to wondering if there were any apps already in existence for the iPad that could work with mojoPortal similar to Windows Live Writer which is the best Windows desktop application for blogging. In case you missed it, in version 2.3.7.5 we improved our support for Windows Live Writer so that you can now edit CMS pages with Html content in addition to Blog posts. I thought it would be pretty cool if there is an iPad application that offers similar functionality as Windows Live Writer.

So I tried a few iPad applications including the WordPress app, BlogPress, and Blogsy. I found Blogsy to be the most feature rich user friendly one of the group. All of these apps support Wordpress and some of them support a few additional blogging platforms and since mojoPortal is much less known than the big blogging platforms I would not expect the developers of those apps to be interested in working on specific support for mojoPortal. So instead I decided to try to support more of the Wordpress API in mojoPortal so that these apps could be used with mojoPortal just as if they were using  Wordpress. I used all 3 of these apps in testing to make sure I was correctly implementing the Wordpress methods, but Blogsy is by far the best one that I could recommend to mojoPortal users who would like to blog from their iPad.

IMG_0012

In Blogsy you configure mojoPortal the same as if it were a self hosted Wordpress site. So you enter the url to your Blog page (use https if you have SSL installed) and your login credentials.

Now Wordpress of course is a PHP application (not a .NET app) and the Url for the API is yoursiteroot/xmlrpc.php (you don't enter this url in Blogsy but that is the url it will use to talk to mojoPortal) so we have a handler mapping in our Web.config file that maps requests for xmlrpc.php to our metaweblogapi.ashx handler. This probably only works in IIS 7.x and it may not work if you have PHP installed and configured for your site, but it does work for me.  I don’t have PHP installed so not sure what would happen if it is, but in most hosting control panels you can disable PHP for your site even if it is installed on the server, so hopefully it will work for you.

<add name="WordpressXmlRpcHandler" verb="POST" path="*xmlrpc.php" type="mojoPortal.Web.BlogUI.metaweblogapi, mojoPortal.Features.UI" preCondition="integratedMode"/>

When I first began work on the additional API methods and testing with Blogsy I was getting a lot of crashes. Adding an image from the iPad photostream for example was causing a crash after it uploaded the image to the server. But I contacted the Blogsy guys and they both helped me with advice that the images needed to be named a certain way with a prefix, and they also fixed things in their app to make it more robust and reduce the crashing and now it is working pretty well. I have a first generation iPad and suspect these apps work even better with newer iPads that have more memory available, but it works well enough even on my older iPad.

IMG_0009
You can create and edit posts, you can publish or post as draft. It supports inserting images from your Photostream, local storage, Fickr, Picasso, and even videos from YouTube. You can assign and edit categories. You can create and edit CMS pages with Html content in addition to Blog posts. The only missing feature is the ability to set the parent page of a CMS page so you can’t manage the site hierarchy the same as you can with Windows Live Writer, but who knows if enough people request it maybe they will add support for parent pages in a future update to Blogsy.

The additional support for the Wordpress API is included in mojoPortal 2.3.8.1 but I’m just now getting around to documenting it so that people know they can try it. If you have an iPad I hope you’ll give it a try. If you have any troubles with it or any feedback positive or negative let us know. In theory it should work with any Wordpress client. While Windows Live Writer is still the best Windows app for blogging, in the Mac world apps like MarsEdit should theoretically work though I haven’t actually tested it yet.

A quick shout of thanks out to the Blogsy guys for their help and support. I highly recommend you give their app a try if you have an iPad. Its very inexpensive ($5 if I recall correctly), I actually think they could get away with raising the price a bit because it is the best blogging tool currently available on iPad and they are very passionate about it and constantly improving it and listening to the feedback from their customers.

See also:

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https://www.mojoportal.com/using-the-blogsy-ipad-app-with-mojoportal joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/using-the-blogsy-ipad-app-with-mojoportal https://www.mojoportal.com/using-the-blogsy-ipad-app-with-mojoportal Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:18:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for February 2012 Our first site for this month's mojoPortal Sightings is Collins Language Pioneers in Dictionary Publishing Since 1819. Thanks to Vijay Karla for letting us know about this one.

Collins Language

 Our good friends at DM2 Creative Marketing Communications also submitted a nice site for Umbrella Collection.

Umbrella Collection

We also received a nice testimonial from the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. We featured their site in a blog post back in December 2010, when they first launched their site on mojoPortal. Recently they took their site mobile using our add on product Mobile Kit Pro.

California POST Mobile version

My name is Mike, I'm the web applications developer at the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST for short). We've been using MojoPortal at POST for over a year now. We recently bought and implemented a mobile site using your Mobile Kit Pro. Prior to this I had hand coded a JqueryMobile/HTML version of our mobile site with a small subset of the pages available on the full site. With MobileKitPro we now allow our users to access all the pages available on the main site on mobile devices. Over the past year and a half we have created custom modules for MojoPortal, I was very impressed that most of these modules worked with the new mobile site without much tweaking.

Thanks so much for your hard work on MobileKitPro.

You're welcome to come check out our site on your Android/iPhone at http://post.ca.gov

-Mike

We've had similar feedback from quite a few customers using Mobile Kit Pro, it really does make it very easy to deliver a good experience for iPhone, Android Phone, and Windows 7 Phone. Although we don't offically support Blackberry mainly because we don't have a device to test with, Mike also told us it is working well for their Blackberry users.

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-february-2012 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-february-2012 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-february-2012 Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:05:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.8.1 Released I’m happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.8.1, available now on our download page.

What’s New?

Security Updates

Stronger password hashing for hashed password format. Previously we were using MD5 without salt, but now we use sha512 with a random 128 character salt per user. Existing users will be automatically updated to the stronger hash the next time they login.

For encrypted passwords we’ve also updated to use a 128 character random salt per user. Existing users will be updated with a salt the next time they login.

In version 2.3.7.6 we changed the SSL behavior to keep users in a secure session once they sign in. After the release we noticed that the canonical url was using https for secure requests and http for insecure requests which could affect SEO since the canonical url should not vary. We’ve changed it in this release such that if the page does not require SSL and the site does not require SSL for all pages, then the canonical url will use http, otherwise it will use https. This way it will be consistent and not vary to make sure there is no inconsistency if search engines happen to crawl the pages using https.

When a user’s roles are changed, the role cookie will now be updated automatically on the next authenticated page request. Previously, if you added a user to a role or removed him from a role he needed to logout and login again to get the new role cookie.

Usability Improvements

We’ve made the role permissions more clear on Page Settings and Feature Instance Settings. There has been some confusion in the past about a special case of permissions. By default Administrators and Content Administrators can access and edit any content without adding them to the allowed roles, but we had a special case where if you set the allowed roles to only Administrators then the content could be locked down to only Administrators and Content Administrators would no longer have access. In the past this has not been an obvious feature from the UI and users who did not know about that feature would mistakenly check the box for Administrators, accidently locking out Content Administrators. We’ve now made it more clear in the UI with radio buttons above the role lists for Page and Content View and Edit Permissions like this:

page-permissions

Note that if you want to lock some content down so that only Administrators can access it, you should set both the page view/edit permissions and the feature instance view/edit permissions to Only Administrators. Otherwise if you only secure the page, Content Administrators can still access the content instance from Content Manager outside the context of the page security.

A related change is that now if you have more than 20 roles, by default we use separate pages for page and feature instance permissions, and the site level permissions have been moved out of the Site Settings page into their own pages. This was done because of a change in behavior in ASP.NET after a recent security update. Now if a page is using postback with more than 1000 form elements, it causes an error, and we moved these things to reduce the number of form elements on a page because if you have a lot of roles the checkboxes for each role for each permission adds up to a lot of form elements and combined with other form elements on the site settings page and hidden elements used for viewstate some users were getting errors when they would save site settings due to too many form elements. There is a workaround to allow more form elements but we wanted to make it work without doing that so it seemed like a better idea to reduce the number of form elements by not having as many things all on one page. We also did some viewstate optimization to reduce un-needed viewstate in some features.

We also added paging to the /Admin/SecurityRoles.aspx page which shows the users for a given role, and we made the feature instance settings page use the same skin as the page when using page specific skins.

Blog Improvements

The blog now shows the post categories for a post in the post list and in the post detail. We’ve also implemented more of the Wordpress API, so in addition to being able to use Windows Live Writer, it is also now possible to use Wordpress clients such as the Blogsy app for iPad. I’ll be documenting that soon but basically you configure it as if you were using Wordpress.

Html Content Improvements

Several people have reported problems when trying to use javascript in the Html Content Feature, the WYSIWYG editors such as CKeditor and TinyMCE tend to do some “cleanup” on the markup which sometimes removed things that people intended to be there. In CKeditor for example you could get around it by saving while still in Html view, but the next time you opened the content in the editor it would run the “cleanup” and mess up your javascript. For content instances where you are using javascript and just want to edit the raw html without interferance from the WYSIWYG editor, you can go into the settings and un-check the box for “Use WYSIWYG Editor?”, and then it will just use a plain text area when you go to edit that content instance.

Most Additional Language Resource Files are Now In a Separate Download

As the number of translations and partial translations of resource files has grown over time, it has added to the size of the download, but more importantly it has increased the amount of time it takes for the ASP.NET compiler to compile the files for the initial request when a site is first started up, or the application pool is recycled such as when deploying an upgrade. Each of those .resx files is compiled by the ASP.NET compiler and over time as we have got so many of them it has become too much and it adds significant time to the initial site startup. So we now have a separate languagepack.zip that has the additional languages. You can copy the language resource files you need from there into your /App_GlobalResources folder. For those upgrading, you may already have a lot of existing resource files in that folder that you don’t need. My advice would be to delete the languages you are not supporting in your site from the /App_GlobalResources folder just before upgrading. Do not delete the English resource files though because those are needed for fallback when other languages have missing keys. The English files are named without a language code like Resource.resx and BlogResources.resx whereas other languages have a language code like Resource.ru.resx and BlogResources.ru.resx for Russian. The main package now only contains the resource files for English and Italian and the other languages are all in the languagepack.zip

WebStore Improvements

The way payment gateways was plugged in in the past for card processing gateways like Authorize.NET and PlugNPay was kind of a mess, it is now a true provider model so that new gateways can be implemented in separate assemblies (dlls) and plugged in by configuration, so it should be easier now to implement new gateways. I’ll be documenting this soon. It doesn’t affect PayPal or Google Checkout because those are special cases where we don’t process the credit card payment on our own site, it happens at the PayPal or Google Checkout site and those payment gateways can be used in addition to a standard card processing gateway where the user doesn’t leave your site to complete the transaction. The new provider model is only for standard card processing gateways.

There was also some redundancy with the old way we implemented Authorize.NET and PlugNPay, they each had their own separate log for logging transactions which was redundant and would have only become worse if we kept adding new logs for each new payment gateway, so we now have a consolidated payment log used by all standard card processing gateways (ie ones that implement IPaymentGateway provider). The upgrade script will migrate existing data form the old Authorize.NET and PlugNPay Logs. Since our add on features Web Invoice Pro and Event Calendar Pro also use the payment gateways, we have corresponding upgrades of those features and you should upgrade them at the same time as you upgrade mojoPortal to make sure that going forward new transactions are being logged in the new common payment log (Note that this really only matters if you’ve been using Authorize.NET in those add on products).

In WebStore it is now also possible to move an order from one site user to another one on the AdminOrderDetail.aspx page. I’ve needed to do this in the past when the user who completed the order no longer works at the company that purchased a product so a different user needed to be able to get the product updates.

Miscellaneous

The Feed Manager now supports relative urls for use with internal feeds using the ~/ syntax to represent the site root.

When using Folder based child sites with related sites mode, closing the master site now closes all the sites

FCKEditor has been removed and is no longer included with mojoPortal because it is no longer kept up to date and doesn’t work well with newer browsers. CKeditor is the new generation of FCKeditor and we’ve included both of them for quite a while. Note however, that if you are upgrading from an older version, the FCKeditor files are still on disk from previouse installation, we are not deleting files during upgrades, so if you really wanted to keep using FCKeditor you could re-enable it by using a custom configuration file to plug in FCKeditor. But, my advice is don't use it, it has problems in newer browsers like IE 9 anyway and CKEditor is a better product.

Fixed a bug where the Janrain Engage sign in system wasn’t working correctly when using multiple sites with related sites mode, we’ve also updated to the newer Janrain Engage widget code.

Fixed some issues with theme caching where it wasn’t always loading the correct theme.skin file when using page specific skins.

Fixed a problem where the SiteRoot was being cached as a property on SiteSettings and then used in various places to build urls. The problem was that if you were accessing the site with more than one url such as using a domain name and by ip address, the cached site root might not be correct for the context of a specific request. This property has now been deprecated and all places in mojoPortal where we were using it are now using SiteUtils.GetNavigationSiteRoot() to make sure the site root is calculated in the context of the current request.


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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2381-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2381-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2381-released Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:29:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.7.6 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.7.6, available now on our download page.

The major highlight of this release are the new Audio Player and Video Player features contributed by our newest team member Kerry Doan.

Audio and Video Players

The New Audio and Video features based on jPlayer are also an exciting addition to the built-in feature set.

Audio and Video Players

Huge thanks to Kerry Doan for his hard work on these features.

There are also several smaller improvements and bug fixes for things reported in the forums since the last release, and there is a change in behavior when using SSL. We no longer redirect out of SSL on pages marked as not requiring it for reasons discussed in the new document Use SSL.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2376-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2376-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2376-released Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:16:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for December 2011 Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and are still enjoying the holiday season as we approach the new year!

This month is going by quickly but I wanted to get in our usual monthly post of mojoPortal sightings. DM2 Creative Marketing Communications has been cranking out the mojoPortal sites lately.  They were also the designers of last months sites, and of course we are fans of their work since they also created the design for this site.

Road Tankers Northern Ltd is the UK's leading tanker specialist.

Road Tankers Northern

Switch Training and Consultancy Limited provides training and consultancy to help organizations better manage their finances.

Switch Training

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-december-2011 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-december-2011 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-december-2011 Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:46:00 GMT
jPlayer Integration Coming Soon Thanks to Kerry Doan for implementing and contributing support for jPlayer in mojoPortal, the next release will include an Audio Player and a Video Player feature.

medai player screen shot

You can see it in action now on our demo site. We should be shipping another new release of mojoPortal that includes these features by the end of the month.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/jplayer-integration-coming-soon joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/jplayer-integration-coming-soon https://www.mojoportal.com/jplayer-integration-coming-soon Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:39:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.7.5 Released I’m happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.7.5, available now on our download page.

This is a significant release with lots of new goodness.

Improvements to Windows Live Writer support. A completely new implementation of metaweblog api with new support for Creating and Editing CMS pages in addition to Blog posts.

windows live writer

Support for Windows Azure AppFabric cache and new guidance for hosting mojoPortal on Windows Azure.

New option to close a site so that it can only be browsed by Administrators and Content Administrators.

New button in Add/Edit Pages (aka PageTree.aspx) to resort child pages of the selected page alphabetically.

Use of WYSIWYG editors CKeditor and TinyMCE is now possible in IOS 5 devices.

Upgraded to TinyMCE 3.4.7

AllowPersistentLogin setting has been promoted from a Web.config setting to a site setting.

Default roles for new root level pages has been promoted from a web,.config setting to site settings.

If you were using the Web.config settings for the 2 items above you will need to go into site settings and specify the settings there since the web.config settings are no longer used.

New permission for Roles That Are Allowed To Set Page Level Skins (when page level skins are enabled).

New feature to reset a guid parameter used in the URL for the csshandler, by resetting the guid you can force all users to re-load the CSS for the skin.

In permission settings, Administrators and Content Administrators roles are filtered out of role lists for permissions where they don't need to be added because they have intrinsic permission as special system roles.

File Dialog used in the editors now shows meaningful messages when a user's file system quotas prevent upload

Updated to jQuery 1.7.1 and jQueryUI 1.8.16 when using the Google

CDN

WebStore Improvements

There is a new provider model for OrderCompletedEventHandlers that allows developers to plugin custom code that will be executed after payment clears on an order.

It is now possible to checkout in webstore with a zero

balance

ForumImprovements

New setting to copy the posting user on the notifications.
New setting to suppress email notifications when a user edits an existing post.
New setting to limit the timespan in which a user may edit his post.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2375-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2375-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2375-released Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:34:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for November 2011 This month's mojoPortal sightings include Clearview, the UK's leading regional glazing industry magazine.

Clearview

and Total Waste Managers Ltd

Total Waste Managers

Both sites were designed by DM2 Creative Marketing Communications in the UK, the same designers who came up with the latest design for this site.

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-november-2011 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-november-2011 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-november-2011 Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:29:00 GMT
IOS 5 Finally Supports WYSIWYG Editors More and more people are accessing the web using smart phones and tablets and while much progress has been made to provide a good web experience for those devices, until now one major shortcoming has been the lack of support for use of web based WYSIWYG editors like CKeditor and TinyMCE. The problem has been that while the WYSIWYG editors would display ok, they did not trigger the keyboard input so they were not usable because clicking/touching them did not put the focus in the editor and did not bring up the keyboard. The best solution we could come up with was to force the use of a plain old textarea which would trigger the keyboard but required entering raw html making it more tedious to use and requiring knowledge of html from the user. We tried to make it a little better by using MarkitUp to at least provide a toolbar with some helpful html elements as shown below in this screen shot from an old iPhone 3.

iPhone 3 editor

HTML 5 actually defines a contentEditable attribute which is intended for use in making web pages editable but it wasn't supported in previous versions of IOS/Mobile Safari until now with the recent release of IOS 5. Fortunately for us the makers of the popular open source WYSIWYG editors have been working on this using the beta versions of IOS 5 so that now since the official release both of these editors can work in iPhones and iPads that have IOS 5. Shown below is a screen shot of TinyMCE used in iPhone 4S.

TinyMCE in iPhone

We've modified mojoPortal to take advantage of this and not force the plain textarea if we detect an IOS 5 device. This change is already in our source code repository and will be in the next release of mojoPortal. You can also try it out on our demo site using your IOS 5 device. For other devices we still use the textarea approach but I suspect that over time we will be able to enable the WYSIWYG editors for even more devices.

I'm very excited that this major limitation has been overcome in IOS 5 and especially for iPad which is a great web browsing experience and now is even better since you can actually edit your content easily. Huge kudos to the developers of TinyMCE and CKeditor for their great work in supporting mobile devices.

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/ios-5-finally-supports-wysiwyg-editors joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/ios-5-finally-supports-wysiwyg-editors https://www.mojoportal.com/ios-5-finally-supports-wysiwyg-editors Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:19:00 GMT
Form Wizard Pro 2.6.0.4 Released I've just uploaded a new release of Form Wizard Pro version 2.6.0.4. Like the previous version this release requires mojoPortal 2.3.7.0 or higher.

As always it is a free upgrade for existing customers who have purchased Form Wizard Pro (sign into this site as the user who purchased, then click the "My Account" link at the top of the page then "Order History").

Form Wizard Pro

For those who don't know, Form Wizard Pro makes it very easy for you to create custom forms and simple surveys on your site with drag and drop arrangement of the questions. It can be used for a variety of things such as custom contact forms, quote requests, job applications (it supports file uploads), simple surveys (multi page forms), etc. You can browse the submissions as a grid or page through them one at a time and you can export to Excel or Word. You can also import and export questions or even complete form definitions. Give it a try on our demo site.

What's New in This Release?

  • New setting to enable question aliases. Question aliases allow you to use a shorter question name in the grid views and data exports. This can be very helpful since long question text can be unwieldy as a column heading in a grid.
  • New setting to enable option aliases for list type questions (checkboxes, radio buttons, drop down list question types). Similar to question aliases, you may want to display a longer value to the user but use a shorter value as the actual result. For example you may show a list of stores and display the street address which is more understandable for the user who is submitting the form, but internally you may want to use store numbers as the actual submitted result.
  • A way to visually group questions. We added a new setting for "Flatten Pages as Groups", if chedcked then what would normally be a multi page form will have all the questions on a single page, but the questions will be grouped into divs with a CSS class="qgroup qgroup1" where the numeric part of the second class is based on the page number. This way you have a class that can be used to style groups consistently or style specific groups differently.
  • It is now possible to override the text on the "Submit" button.
  • Vertical layout instead of grid layout when exporting to Word.

The sales of our add-on products is what makes the continued development of mojoPortal possible. Why not make your site even better and support our work?

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/form-wizard-pro-2604-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/form-wizard-pro-2604-released https://www.mojoportal.com/form-wizard-pro-2604-released Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:54:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.7.0 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.7.0, available now on our download page.

Since the last release, the focus of our work has been on improved web farm support. We've completed abstraction layers for the file system and for caching, and we've implemented a log4net appender that can log to the database. We are still working on various providers that can plug into the new abstraction layers and other improvements, so our work on web farm support will continue into October. We've almost completed our support and guidance documentation for Windows Azure, we have some of the web farm documentation online now, but we will be completing that work and making an announcement about it soon. After that we will turn our efforts to more traditional types of web farms using the Amazon EC2 cloud, and the Microsoft Web Farm Framework.

So, for now much of the web farm improvements are just architectural changes that won't be things users will notice. Other highlights of this release include:

  • Implemented an option to log errors and informational logging to the database instead of the file system
  • Upgraded to TinyMCE 3.4.5
  • Upgraded to CKeditor 3.6.2
  • Upgraded to the latest AjaxControlToolkit
  • Updated to latest version of Recaptcha library
  • Updated the google maps to use the new v3 API, thanks to Jamie Eubanks for his work on this
  • Added Whois ip address lookup dialog in most places where ip addresses are displayed

Updated Add On Products

The update to AjaxControlToolkit required us to also make new releases of Event Calendar Pro, Form Wizard Pro, and Web Invoice Pro, because these features use the AjaxControlToolkit and they need to use the same version of the AjaxControlToolit as mojoPortal. So you'll need to upgrade these products at the same time as you upgrade mojoPortal. 

Event Calendar Pro 3.4.0.2 includes new links to allow users to easily add events to Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, Windows Live Calendar, and Outlook/iCalendar. We also added a new text area that can be shown during event registration to capture additional information from users who register or purchase tickets for events. You can provide instructions that will be shown above the text area to let your users know what additional information is needed. As mentioned above this version was also updated to use the latest version of AjaxControlToolkit to keep it compatible with the latest version of mojoPortal.

Form Wizard Pro 2.6.0.3 includes a minor improvement to allow file uploads to be configured as optional instead of required. It also was updated to use the latest AjaxControlToolkit for compatibility with mojoPortal 2.3.7.0.

 

Vote mojoPortal for the 2011 Open Source Awards

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2370-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2370-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2370-released Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:41:00 GMT
mojoPortal.com Gets a New Look! Thanks to our friends at DM2 Creative and i7MEDIA, mojoPortal.com now has a much nicer new design. Mark Asquith and the talented team at DM2 Creative came up with the design and Joe Davis of i7MEDIA did the conversion from a .psd file to a mojoPortal skin and also did lots of styling work for the features. I really love the new look and can't thank those guys enough for their great work. I hope you like it too!

Many of you may already know that I am not a designer myself, though I'm a pretty good mechanic when it comes to CSS and I can implement designs that others come up with, I lack any talent for creating designs from scratch. I'm just a developer, I can make it work well but I can't make it pretty, I need others to help with that.

The previous skin that we've used for the last 4 months or so was really something that Joe Davis had only intended as an example skin we could ship with mojoPortal, he never intended it to be the new design for mojoPortal.com, but I liked it and thought it was time for a change since the design we had before that was just some free design I had found on the internet. But after the change we got lots of complaints and only a few people said they liked it and I began to realize that not only am I not a good designer, I'm not really even a very good judge of design. However, I really did not want to go back to the previous design so I asked Joe and Mark to help, and this new design that we've launched today is the result of their awesome help.

the mojoportal.com facelift of 2011

Again huge thanks to Mark Asquith and his associates and to Joe Davis for making this site look great!

 

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportalcom-gets-a-new-look-2011-09-26 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportalcom-gets-a-new-look-2011-09-26 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportalcom-gets-a-new-look-2011-09-26 Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:19:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for September 2011 This month's mojoPortal sightings includes the ChurchTeams.com site designed by TRIAD Communications, as well as the TRIAD Communications site itself which they have recently re-done using mojoPortal.

ChurchTeams.com

TRIAD Communications, based out of Cuyahoga Falls Ohio, has done quite a lot of really nice designs with mojoPortal and we've featured some of their sites before. 

TRIAD Communications

Also this month we'd like to highlight Aquest IT based out of Greensboro, NC. They also have done quite a few sites with mojoPortal including their own.

Aquest IT

They also implemented 99Blocks Magazine, Downtown Greensboro's Magazine.

99blocks Magazine

Greensboro is not far from mojoPortal headquarters here in Charlotte, NC, so it is nice to see designers nearby using mojoPortal, and a good testament to mojoPortal to see design firms that not only use mojoPortal for their customers but also for their own sites.

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.

Don't forget if you haven't already, please vote for mojoPortal in the 2011 Open Source CMS Awards. Thanks to your nominations we are a finalist and now we need your vote.   

 


 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-september-2011 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-september-2011 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-september-2011 Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:01:00 GMT
mojoPortal is a Finalist in the 2011 CMS Awards! Thanks to your nominations mojoPortal is a finalist in the 2011 Open Source Awards in the Open Source CMS Category!

Vote for mojoPortal in the 2011 Open Source CMS Awards!

That means we've made it to the next phase of the contest which is voting, so now we need your vote! The competition is very tough every year and the finalists are all excellent contenders with larger communities than ours which makes it easier for them to get votes, so we are definitely the underdogs in this contest and we really need as many of our community members to vote for mojoPortal as possible. The voting phase is open from now until October 31, 2001, then the judges weigh in and the final winners will be announced on November 7, 2011. I know that voting seems like the same thing as nominating but nominations were just the first phase. Thanks to you we got enough nominations to make it to the finals but voting is even more competitive and we need your support now more than ever! So go vote for mojoPortal today!

Vote for mojoPortal in the 2011 CMS Awards!

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-is-a-finalist-in-the-2011-cms-awards joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-is-a-finalist-in-the-2011-cms-awards https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-is-a-finalist-in-the-2011-cms-awards Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:58:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for August 2011 This month's mojoPortal sightings were submitted by Mark Asquith of dm2 Creative.

Fitrite.info one is part of Sash UK, one the the UK's largest window manufacturers.

Fitrite.info

The new site for Altogether Better is helping them win a UK Prime Minister's Big Society award. Using mojoPortal, dm2 Creative was able to design, build, and launch this site all within one week!

altogether better

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have a high profile site or a design that you're particularly proud of, or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.

Don't forget, if you haven't already, please nominate mojoPortal for the 2011 Open Source CMS Awards. Nominations are open until September 9, 2011 and we need as many nominations as possible to become a finalist and make it to the next stage of the contest.

Nominate mojoPortal for the 2001 CMS Awards

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-august-2011 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-august-2011 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-august-2011 Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:35:00 GMT
Nominate mojoPortal for the 2011 CMS Awards Hello mojoPortal Community, its that time of year again and Packt Publishing has started their annual Open Source Awards and with your help we'd like to compete in the Open Source CMS Category.

open source awards

The first stage is the nomination stage and it requires a lot of nominations to get to the next stage which is voting, so we need your nomination. Please head on over to the Open Source CMS Nomination page and nominate mojoPortal! The competition is very tough every year so every nomination counts. 

The schedule for the contest is:

August  1 | Nominations Open
September 9 | Nominations Close
September  19 | Voting Begins
October 31 | Voting Ends
November 7 | Winners Announced

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/nominate-mojoportal-for-the-2011-cms-awards joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/nominate-mojoportal-for-the-2011-cms-awards https://www.mojoportal.com/nominate-mojoportal-for-the-2011-cms-awards Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:09:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for July 2011 Quite a few interesting new mojoPortal sites were submitted this month.

TRIAD Communications let us know about several new sites they have put into production for their customers.

The Gar Foundation

The Gar Foundation

and several others:

We also got a nice testimonial from the Webmaster of Academic Affairs and the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Florida.

Academic Affairs and the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Florida have adopted mojoPortal as our chosen CMS and we currently host 24 sites in mojoPortal (that number is due to increase even in the next week).

mojoPortal has served us well at the University level and I appreciate the support that you have provided to me in the past year as I've transitioned these sites into mojoPortal.

University of Florida Academic Affairs

UF Office of the Provost

The City of Escondido California recently added their Fire Department site to the growing list of sites they have built on mojoPortal, which include their main city site, Police Dept, Recreation, and Public Library.

Escondido Fire Dept

We'd love to hear about the sites you are bringing online with mojoPortal. If you have high profile site or a design that you're proud of or a site showing custom features you've built on mojoPortal, let us know, maybe we'll feature your site(s) in a blog post.

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-july-2011 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-july-2011 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-july-2011 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:37:00 GMT
Going Mobile with mojoPortal I'm very excited to announce that mojoPortal can now be optimized very well for major smart phones like iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 7.

Actually I have 3 related things to announce.

  • mojoPortal 2.3.6.7 is now available on our download page.
  • We have a new product available now, named Mobile Kit Pro (requires mojoPortal 2.3.6.7), that includes a custom menu we implemented just for smart phones and a skin optimized for smart phones.
  • Updated versions of Form Wizard Pro and Event Calendar Pro with compatibility updates for mojoPortal 2.3.6.7 and Mobile Kit Pro.

mojoPortal.com shown in Mobile Kit Pro mojoportal.com showing the menu in Mobile Kit Pro

See the Mobile Kit Pro product page for full details. You can also check out this site or our demo site using an iPhone, Android phone, or Windows Phone 7. My goal with Mobile Kit Pro is that you could just drop it in and set it as the mobile skin, and it would just work with most of your existing site content. In those few cases where you may have some content that doesn't work well even with Mobile Kit Pro applied, the new features in mojoPortal make it possible for you to make custom mobile specific versions of some content if you needed to or just leave some content out of the mobile experience. Of course this is the first release of Mobile Kit Pro and there will be free upgrades for future versions, so those who purchase it can provide feedback and impact the future of the product.

What's New in mojoPortal 2.3.6.7?

A lot of the work to make Mobile Kit Pro possible went into mojoPortal itself. We went through most of the features and in cases where the markup didn't lend itself well to the small screen size, we implemented alternate markup and made it possible to configure the use of the alternate markup from the theme.skin file. We also made a lot of different things about the rendering configurable from the theme.skin file, in some cases it is possible to override specific feature instance settings from the theme.skin. Even things like posting in the Forums from your smart phone should be a reasonably good experience.

Support for mobile specific skins, there is a new drop down list in Site Settings where you can specify the Mobile Skin for the site.

Simple but configurable mobile user agent detection is used to apply the mobile skin, see the Mobile Kit Pro product page for details.

Any page and any content instance in mojoPortal can be marked as for WebOnly, MobileOnly or the default All so that you have the ability to make mobile specific versions of your content if needed or leave out specific content from the mobile view if it doesn't work well on small screens. You will see a new dropdown list for this in Page Settings and on the General Tab in Feature Settings.

Some work has been done to combine javascripts as much as possible for better performance.

  • Added support for the Google Plus Button in the Blog
  • Upgrade to CKeditor 3.6.1
  • Upgrade to TinyMCE 3.4.3.2
  • Updated the CDN versions of jQuery and jQueryUI to the latest versions.
  • Updated translations, thanks to all of our translators!
  • A few bug fixes for things reported in the forums since the last release.

I think this is probably one of the most exciting announcements I've made since the beginning of the mojoPortal project, at least I'm very excited about it. It is very in keeping with our slogan "Advanced Web Sites Made Easy". Now mojoPortal can be a framework for developing custom mobile web applications as well.

Updates for Form Wizard Pro and Event Calendar Pro

As mentioned above we also did some work in Form Wizard Pro and event Calendar Pro so that they could also be optimized for mobile. These updates also require mojoPortal 2.3.6.7. They are free upgrades for existing customers, just sign in to the site as the user who purchased the product(s), and then click the "My Account" link at the top of the page, and then click "Order History".

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/going-mobile-with-mojoportal joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/going-mobile-with-mojoportal https://www.mojoportal.com/going-mobile-with-mojoportal Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:16:00 GMT
Small Updates for our Add On Products Event Calendar Pro 3.4

Compatibility updates for mojoPortal 2.3.6.6.
Added support for using Bing Maps as an alternate to Google Maps.

Event Calendar Pro

Form Wizard Pro 2.6.0.1

Compatibility updates for mojoPortal 2.3.6.6.
Fixed bug in email notification where if more than one email address was configured for notification it failed to send the email. This bug was introduced in version 2.6.

Form Wizard Pro

Web Invoice Pro 1.7.0.1

Compatibility updates for mojoPortal 2.3.6.6.
Added the ability to mark an invoice as paid in case payment came in through a different channel than online.
Fixed a bug where the payment due date was always 30 days after the invoice date even if you specified a different due date.

Web Invoice Pro

These are free upgrades for existing customers. If you previously purchased any of these products you can sign into this site (using the account that you used to purchase) and click the "My Account" link at the top and then "Order History". From there you can always download the latest version of the products you purchased.

Note that all of these updates require mojoPortal 2.3.6.6, so make sure you upgrade mojoPortal before updating or installing these add on products.

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/small-updates-for-our-add-on-products joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/small-updates-for-our-add-on-products https://www.mojoportal.com/small-updates-for-our-add-on-products Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:43:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.6.6 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.6.6, available now on our download page.

I know it might seem unusual to make a new release on a Sunday on a holiday weekend, but it just worked out that the new release was ready today and since it has some updates that community members have been waiting for I thought I should make it available as soon as possible.

What's New?

  • Added a new prompt in edit screens to prevent accidently leaving the page if there are unsaved changes in the editor. I know I have experienced occasions myself where I was working on a long blog post or article, and by some strange combination of keystrokes it canceled out of the editor and jumped back a page and lost my work. The new prompt will prevent that.
  • Made it possible to browse and preview skins from page settings and/or user profile when per page skins or per user skins are enabled.
  • Users in roles that can manage skins can also have access to user specific skins even if it is not enabled for users in general. This makes it possible to work on skin changes or new skins more easily before assigning the skin to the site in general.
  • Added support for the new google analytics feature that allows Tracking Page Load time, this is now enabled by default. Once you start capturing this data it is available in a new Site Speed report in the new version of Google Analytics.
  • Our homemade tweet this link stopped working recently after some changes at twitter, so we updated to the official widget. This works much nicer now because twitter now has their own URL shortening service to automatically shorten URLs when using their widget.
  • Upgrade to CKEditor 3.6
  • Added unit sales to some commerce reports.
  • Miscellaneous minor bug fixes for things reported in the forums since the last release.
  • Updated translations thanks to our awesome translation team!

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2366-released joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2366-released https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2366-released Sun, 29 May 2011 14:41:00 GMT
mojoPortal Sightings for May 2011 Imagine Cup 2011 Multimedu - PEARLS Team

Please join me in congratulating these guys on winning 3rd place in the 2011 Imagine Cup in Greece with an application they built on top of mojoPortal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XClqjmjXw24
Note that the audio portion of the video is in Greek, but if you enable closed captioning it has English captions.

A description of the project from Panos Kakoulidis:

Multimedu is the first complete system that allows students with special needs to have access to the multiple capabilties of the Internet, intergrating them to the academic and the wider community.

System consists of 4 interconnected subsystems that support the significant processes of learning and participation:

1. DICTIONARY
2. MULTIMEDIA LIBRARY
3. PARALLEL PRESENTATIONS
4. SOCIAL NETWORKING

Dictionary is a multilingual catalog of terms which is updated by the active contribution of the users. On each term, multiple descriptions are offered in the form of text, picture and video in sign language. Moreover, there is text-to-speech support.

Multimedia Library is a hosting space for every kind of archives with educational content (video-recorded lectures, notes, presentations etc) which are accessible not only to the students with special needs but to everyone.

Parallel Presentations is an online system which offers the ability to attend on lessons, labs and seminars to all users, including people with sight or hearing problems by supporting them with videos in sign language, text-to-speech, access to Dictionary etc. Furthermore, it supports distance learning with active participation and lesson recording.

Last but not least, Social Networking support promotes mass participation and communication. This is achieved with user's profile and contacts, user groups, multimedia private messages and forum. 

Based on viewing the video, I would describe the system as a learning management system that supports users with special needs by making it possible to have multiple ways of presenting the same material and a social networking aspect that enables crowd sourcing the creation of material in various formats to support the needs of the users.

It is always rewarding to see the things that people build on top of mojoPortal. By not building from scratch they saved a lot of development time and were able to focus much sooner on the functionality they wanted to build. They have plans to bring the system online in the future, so we will post about them again once it is possible to see the site, but for now you can get a pretty good idea of what they have built from the video.

California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST)

We've featured this site before, so I'm leaving out the image, but I thought it was worth mentioning again because they let me know about an award they won and an even bigger award that they are in the running for. Quoting Linda Sabella, Information System Analyst with POST:

I just thought you might like an update on our submission of our Mojoportal site for a “Best of California” award.  We did win an award.  We won for custom software that our programmers built on top of Mojoportal that allows peace officers to access records and course catalogs. Awardees listed here http://www.centerdigitalgov.com/survey/2581

After the awards closed, the State of California CIO, impressed by our use of Mojoportal,   recommended our site for a national award.  This submission is specifically for our use of a  content management system.  We have submitted the paperwork and will let you know if we are successful in winning an award. Website http://www.nascio.org/awards/2011awards/

mojoportal has been a great asset to us.  Thank you for all of your efforts.

The Space Needle 50th Anniversary site

Space Needle

For those who don't know, the Space Needle, is a monument in Seattle Washington that opened just in time for the 1962 Seattle Worlds Fair and has become "Seattle's favorite icon".

A few sites were submitted by Bibiana Garcia Zapata of Colombia

I'm the leader of a community in Internet named Avanet, we found mojoPortal and now We are so happy. We help others to mount their sites with mojo in our hosting with the multiple sites feature, :) It allows us to help and promote our slogan "digital altruism", our additional projects are

Our site is www.avanet.org
and these are the projects that we help
http://www.barcampmedellin.org
http://www.anti-depredadores.org
http://senageeks.avanet.org
http://www.nexos.net.co/

Avanet site

Thanks to all the community members who keep us informed of the sites they are building with mojoPortal! If you've done something interesting with mojoPortal we'd love to hear from you, and maybe we will feature your site in a blog post.

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-may-2011 joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-may-2011 https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sightings-for-may-2011 Tue, 24 May 2011 16:23:00 GMT
Form Wizard Pro 2.6 Released I'm happy to announce the release of Form Wizard Pro 2.6, available now in the mojoPortal Store.

form wizard pro

This is a significant upgrade with major new features. For existing customers who have already purchased Form Wizard Pro, it is a free upgrade. You can always get the latest version of purchased products by signing in to the site using the account that you used to purchase, then click the "My Account" link at the top of the page and then click "Order History", from there you can download the latest version of any add on products you have purchased.

Form Wizard Pro is the most popular add on product for mojoPortal CMS (requires mojoPortal 2.3.6.4 or higher) and a great addition to any site. With Form Wizard Pro you can easily create custom forms and surveys on your site and this release adds a number of the most requested new features including:

  • Support for File Uploads, you can configure it to allow up to 4 files to be uploaded as part of the form submission. You can even have the files included as attachments in the notification email.
  • A new plugin system that allows developers to implement custom Form Submission Handlers to do additional custom processing on the submitted data.
  • Support for per question custom CSS classes to make it even easier to style your forms.
  • A new setting that allows you to leave the details out of the notification email in case sensitive data is being submitted that you would rather not include in email.
  • A new setting that allows leaving out unanswered questions when including the form details in the notification. This can be helpful in saving paper if you are printing the email notifications and have long forms with lots of optional questions.

You can also try Form Wizard Pro on our demo site to see how easy it really is. If you are getting a lot of value out of the free mojoPortal features why not purchase Form Wizard Pro for your site, it will make your site even better and the sales revenue supports the ongoing development of mojoPortal.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/form-wizard-pro-26-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/form-wizard-pro-26-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/form-wizard-pro-26-released.aspx Thu, 12 May 2011 15:59:00 GMT
mojoPortal.com Gets a New Look! I've just updated this site to use a new skin designed by Joe Davis of http://i7media.net/i7MEDIA. I wasn't really dissatisfied with the previous design in general, it was pretty decent and in some ways it makes me a little sad to change from what had become so familiar to me. But the new design seems very clean and there is a lot of attention to detail that really looks professional and I think in some cases the new design improves the usability of the site.

The menu structure is very nice and one of the most striking elements of the design. But the usability improvements are the result of making things stand out more. For example people hardly seemed to notice the forum descriptions and posting guidelines in the old design. It is right there on the page but somehow it often goes un-noticed because it doesn't grab your attention, so the result is that people often post questions in the wrong forum or leave out information that is expected to be included. With the new design, the forum description/instructions really stand out and I anticipate it will be noticed better than with the old design. Notice also the nice attention to detail for the pager link styles.

New Design Forums

screen shot of new design for forums

 

Old Design Forums

screen shot of old forum design

Similarly, on our search page there has always been a little help link that people could click to learn how to do more advanced searching, but in the old design hardly anyone ever noticed it. Whereas again in the new design it really jumps out and I anticipate more people will click the help link and will have better luck searching once they know the tips from the help.

New Design Search

screen shot of new search design

Old Design Search

screen shot of old search design

A huge thanks goes out to Joe Davis for his hard work on this design! Joe is also working on a variation on this design but with a different color scheme that we will ship with a future release of mojoPortal.

What do you think? Do you like the new design better than the old one?

Please also let us know if you notice any pages on this site that don't look right with the new design, we are still tweaking a few things here and there.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportalcom-gets-a-new-look.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportalcom-gets-a-new-look.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportalcom-gets-a-new-look.aspx Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:00:00 GMT
Recent mojoPortal Sightings April 2011 Just a quick post to highlight a few mojoPortal sites that have come to my attention recently.

The City of Escondido California went live with their main site using mojoPortal back in December of 2010, but more recently they went live with a new site for their Police Department and for Recreation, and work is under way for a new site for their Fire Department.

Escondido Police Department site screen shot

Escondido Recreation site screen shot

Quoting Jamie Eubanks, a developer in the IT Department for the city:

"the PD site was pretty straightforward this time around (nothing custom). I can say that it's the great out-of-the-box flexibility of mojoPortal that allowed us to create a large and comprehensive site like this with no programming on our part. This is also our first site which was developed end-to-end by our webmaster with minimal technical support needed. She developed the site skin from scratch in Artisteer, and reused some of the layout.master tweaks we developed for the main site (like the Google Translate widget at the top of each page)."

Another recent site is the Solar Europa site designed by The Design Loft, one of our partners in the UK. They have done over 20 projects so far using mojoPortal.

screen shot of Solar Europa site

We are continually adding new sites to our mojo Sites list. If you've designed a mojoPortal site that you are particularly proud of, let us know, we'd love to hear about it and maybe we will feature your site in a blog post.

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/recent-mojoportal-sightings-april-2011.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/recent-mojoportal-sightings-april-2011.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/recent-mojoportal-sightings-april-2011.aspx Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:50:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.6.5 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.6.5, available now on our download page.

This is not a major update but it does have some things to make it worth upgrading.

Editor Updates

Both CKeditor and TinyMCE put out new releases with bug fixes and updates, many of which are related to IE 9 and Firefox 4.
Upgrade to CKEditor 3.5.3
Upgrade to TinyMCE 3.4.2

There was an error happening under .NET 4 Medium Trust hosting related to our older FCKeditor. Nothing had changed in this editor for a long time so I'm surprised that we had never seen this error until recently. It makes me wonder if there was some behavior change that came with a recent Windows Update. In any case, the error is fixed in this release.

jQuery Updates

We had a bug report about our jQueryUI Date Picker where it was not formatting dates correctly for en-NZ. It turned out that support for en-NZ was only added to the jQueryUI Date Picker as of version 1.8.9, so the solution was to upgrade to a newer version. However, we had been holding off on upgrading jQueryUI because we knew there was an issue in the Time Picker extension that we were using where it did not work with newer versions of jQueryUI than 1.8.6. Fortunately, we found another Time Picker extension for the jQueryUI date picker and it seems to work with any version of jQueryUI.

So we updated to jQuery 1.5.2 and jQueryUI 1.8.11. Note that upgrading is really just changing 2 config settings since we load jQuery and jQueryUI from the google CDN. So if you are using any custom jQuery plugins and they don't work with the newer versions of jQuery or jQueryUI, you could override the version from user.config to keep using an older compatible version of jQuery or jQueryUI.

date time picker screen shot

Support for Newsletter Throttling

It had been requested a while back to have a way to throttle the sending of the newsletter. Blasting out an email to a lot of users in a short time can make it look like spam to some receiving mail servers, especially if you are using a consumer email account or you don't have a well known reputable mail server. So it can be beneficial to limit the rate at which you send the email messages to your list. The mojoPortal newsletter subscriber list is getting pretty large and we had some trouble with our February newsletter due to sending the emails too fast. I got a few non-delivery notifications from @msn.com and others saying that we sent too many in a short period of time. So it was a priority to implement this before we sent the March newsletter. It really helped as we had no non-deliveries related to sending them too fast. 

There is a new setting that you can override in user.config:

<!-- you can throttle the sending of the newsletter 0 = unlimited/no throttling -->

<add key="NewsletterMaxToSendPerMinute" value="0" />

If you enter a number greater than zero it will sleep for one minute after each round of sending that many. So if you set it to 10, it will blast out 10 in a row and then sleep for a minute and the repeat until it sends to each subscriber in the list. I set it to 10 before sending the March mojoPortal newsletter. Of course the larger the list the longer it will take but you can calculate approximately how long it will take at any given rate and you can use a higher setting to send them faster if you need to. 

Miscellaneous

Support for custom regex and error message for email validation on the registration page, you can override our defaults with these settings:

 <add key="CustomEmailRegex" value=""/>

 <add key="CustomEmailRegexWarning" value=""/>

Support for more page settings when creating initial content from config files

Support for configuring the Thread UICulture separately from the Culture. The UICulture is only used for choosing the resource files, whereas the Culture is used for formatting numbers, currency, and dates.

This example uses German for the numbers and date formats and uses English for the resource files.

<add key="UseCultureOverride" value="true" />

<add key="site1culture" value="de-CH" />

<add key="site1uiculture" value="en-US" />

Fixed bug in the SQL CE data layer that prevented the Newsletter feature from working in our package for SQL CE.

Lots of updated translations thanks to our Translation Team

Other miscellaneous little tweaks and fixes for things reported in the forums since the last release.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2365-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2365-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2365-released.aspx Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:52:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.6.4 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.6.4, available now on our download page.

Improved Usability for Multi Site Administration

There is a new site list page, that provides a link for creating new sites and a pageable list of existing sites. If you want to show the site id in the list you can add this to user.config
<add key="ShowSiteIdInSiteList" value="true" />

site list screen shot

Improved Usability for Managing Large Site Hierarchies

When creating or editing pages there has always been a dropdown list for selecting the parent page or you could set it to root for a root level page. When sites have a large number of pages this dropdown list would become unwieldy, so we implemented a new dialog page for selecting the parent page, the dialog pages uses a treeview with populate on demand to drill down to the page you want to use as the parent page so it can better handle large numbers of pages.
The dropdown list is easier to use for sites that don't have a huge amount of pages so we made it continue to use the dropdown if the number of pages in the site is less than 150. You can configure the setting if needed or desired. For example if you prefer to always use the dialog page then you could set it to 0.
<add key="TooManyPagesForDropdownList" value="150" />

New Child Pages Site Map Module

Pages have had a setting for a long time allowing you to show the child pages site map as a menu. This can be very useful especially for pages that are just used for grouping of child pages.
But the child page site map built into the page has some limitations, for example if you want to have content on the page in addition to the child page site map, it could either go above or below the child page site map depending on the position of the control in layout.master


<portal:ChildPageMenu ID="ChildPageMenu" runat="server"></portal:ChildPageMenu>

so it was an either or kind of thing you could not do it differently on differnet pages unless you used a different skin.

So, Joe Davis implemented a new Feature Module for Child Page Site Map that you can put on a page just like any other content feature and this allows you to position it any way you like, even in side columns

Support for Slide Show Pager in Html Content Feature

Again, thanks to Joe Davis who implemented some default css and other changes needed to support the pager for the jQuery Cycle plugin that can be used in the Html Content feature for making slide shows out of html elements.

Image Gallery Improvement

Changed to use colorbox, a nicer lightbox effect instead of the previously used greybox thanks to Jamie Eubanks.

List/Links Improvement

It is now possible to browse in order to link to pages or files within the site, similar to the link browser that was already implemented in the wysiwyg editor, the new link browser populates the url textbox in the List/Links feature.

Support for Roles That Can Manage Users

allows delegating user management to users without making them full administrators.

Registration Page Improvements

Previously we could make custom user profile properties that were required for registration to appear on the registration page, but there was not a way to show optional custom profile properties on the registration page. It is now possible.

The registration agreement is now per site and has an edit page, previously it came from config files and was global to all sites in an installation.

Improvements to the Initial Content System

The Initial Content System is used to populate the first site during installation and to populate new sites when they are created. We've made changes for better support for configuration of nested pages and also created an interface that can be implemented for populating custom features. I will be updating the documentation for the Initial Content System in the next few days and will update this post with a link once it is completed.

UPDATE 2011-03-31 I've updated the article Configuring Initial Content, and added another article Populating Feature Content.

Improvements for Design/Skinning

It is now possible to import and export skins as .zip files and there is a new permission in Site Settings for "Roles That Can Manage Skins". It is also now possible to edit css files in the browser. While it is probably better to do the main skin development on your local machine, it is possible to edit css files in the browser and it is useful for small css tweaks.

You can disable the ability to upload skins and edit CSS by adding this to user.config:
<add key="AllowEditingSkins" value="false" />

I have it disabled for example on the demo site.

skin manager screen shot

There is a new Page Setting that allows page specific css classes on the body tag as well as a setting for page specific menu css classes.

There is a new class on editor body making it easier when you need to override some of the styles in the editor, you can do it with body.wysiwygeditor {} in CSS.

All of the skins that ship with mojoPortal use h1 for the site name and h2 for headings of feature instances. Some designers prefer for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) reasons to not use a heading at all for the site title and use h1 for the feature instance headings. In the past we had a global config setting that could be used to override the heading:

<add key="ModuleTitleTag" value="h2" />

In the new version, it is possible to edit the setting used for feature instances right from the Feature Instance Settings page (ModuleSettings.aspx). The heading is now stored in the database so it is possible to use different headings on different instances. When new instances are created it defaults to whatever you have for this setting: <add key="ModuleTitleTag" value="h2" />

This is an advanced feature and it is possible to put something incorrect for the heading element, so it is disabled completely by default and even when it is enabled it is limited to users in "Roles That Can Manage Skins". You can enable it by adding this to your user.config:

<add key="EnableEditingModuleTitleElement" value="true" />

Since this is a new data filed used for the heading element, existing data will be updated to have h2 which is the default. However if you were previously using the config setting to force a different heading, for example if you were forcing it to use h1 by using this setting:

<add key="ModuleTitleTag" value="h1" />

then you will need to manually update the existing data by running a sql query like this:

UPDATE mp_Modules
SET HeadElement = 'h1'

Then going forward it will use the config setting for the default on new instances.

We also did a lot of work to make menu and treeview rendering more flexible. It is now possible to control which CSS classes are rendered on the menu ul, li and a elements. In the coming days I will be writing documentation about the new settings available and how to use them. I will update this post with links as I progress with the documentation.

The extra-skins.zip available on the download page also has updated skins for Artisteer 3.0 beta, as well as a number of skins contributed by community member Hennadiy of CMS-Web e-Business Solutions.

As always you should review the sticky thread about important skin changes that you will need to apply to your custom skins after upgrading.

Other Stuff

The friendly urls used in mojoPortal can be problematic for some non-ascii languages, we've had a config setting for a while that could disable it for CMS pages, but it has been requested to also be able to disable it for blog posts. It is now possible to do this from user.config
This setting disables it globally in the blog feature.

<add key="Blog:UseFriendlyUrls" value="false" />

You can also disable it for specific module ids using this pattern, where th number is the module id.

<add key="Blog:UseFriendlyUrls-3" value="false" />

As many of you probably know, javascript wysiwyg (What You See is What You Get) editors don't work in devices such as iPad, iPhone, Android, etc. Historically we have degraded to a plain text area for these devices so at least it is still possible to edit or post in the forums. In this release we integrated MarkItUp textarea editor for use with iPad and smart phones for a little better editing experience than a plain textarea. It is not a wysiwyg editor, it is an editor for html editing, the content in the editor is still raw html but there are convenient toolbar items to help you write the html.

Upgrade to TinyMCE 3.4.1
Upgrade to CKeditor 3.5.2

Many translation updates, thanks to all our translation team members and to the Amanuens service!

Various bug fixes for things reported in the forums since last release.

Corresponding Updates for Add On Products

An Update for NeatUpload is also included and this required us to make corresponding compatibility updates for Form Wizard Pro and Web Invoice Pro. Customer who have purchased these products can get the update from their purchase history under the "My Account" link.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2364-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2364-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2364-released.aspx Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:34:00 GMT
New Add On Product - Web Invoice Pro I'm happy to announce the initial release of Web Invoice Pro, available now in the mojoPortal Store.

Web Invoice Pro makes it easy to send invoices by email and let your customers pay the invoice online at your web site running on mojoPortal. It provides support for receiving payments via PayPal, Google Checkout, or Authorize.NET. A great way for freelance web designers and developers or any business to invoice their customers. You can test Web Invoice Pro on demo.mojoportal.com, so you can try it before you buy it, though of course you should only send test invoices to yourself from the demo site and the demo email messagess will have extra text in them to make it clear it came from a demo site.scree shot of editing an invoice

Features at a Glance

  • Attach a PDF Invoice generated from your accounting system and/or just type in the invoice information as part of the email message.
  • Customers can pay the invoice online at your web site using Authorize.NET, PayPal, or Google Checkout.
  • Customers do not need to be registered on your site to pay the invoice, but if they are then they can see their payment history in the user profile.
  • Optional email notification when invoices are paid.
  • Integrated with the mojoPortal Commerce Reports system so you get reporting and charts of your invoice revenue.
  • Free upgrades to new versions of Web Invoice Pro for the life of the product! That's right, buy it once and any updates are free, we will never make you pay an upgrade fee for new versions of Web Invoice Pro!

Get Web Invoice Pro and get paid!

get paid, get web invoice pro

The initial release supports MS SQL or MySql, but I'm considering adding support for other databases if I get feedback requesting it. I've been using this feature myself for invoicing my customers and it meets my needs pretty well right now but I think there will be lots of possibilities to evolve this feature further, and those who purchase it may help shape its future based on their feedback.

If you need a way to invoice your customers and let them pay online I hope you'll give it a try. The sales of these add on products is what sustains and funds the continuous improvements of the mojoPortal project, so it is a good way to get additional features and to support the project.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/new-add-on-product-web-invoice-pro.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/new-add-on-product-web-invoice-pro.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/new-add-on-product-web-invoice-pro.aspx Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:19:00 GMT
Kudos for the Amanuens Translation System! Back in August we tried out what was then a fairly new service, Amanuens, that makes it easy to crowd source translation. We tried it with several translators, but at the time it seemed confusing and difficult to use so we stopped using it for a while. Since then Amanuens has made a lot of improvements to the usability and now we have used it successfully with a small group of translators and it seems very much easier. So if you are interested in translating mojoPortal into a new language or updating an existing translation, let us know on this forum thread and we can see about setting up an account for you to help with translation. The Amanuens service makes it easy to translate the .resx files used for all labels and buttons, and these are the most important files to translate, but there are also message templates and help files that are just plain text files. These files are not supported by Amanuens so we still work by having you send those in a .zip if you translate them.

screen shot of amanuens

mojoPortal is currently translated at least partially in 24 languages, though many of them have not been kept up to date over time. The English resources are always the most up to date, and Italian is also kept very up to date by Diego Mora. Most other languages are only partially complete so we could use some help in getting them updated. Translated files in Amanuens are automatically synced and committed to our source code repository each morning, so it is a very efficient process.

Amanuens provides this excellent service free for open source projects and it is really working out well for us so far, so I thought I should give them a shout of thanks with this blog post. It isn't just a service for .NET applications, they support all kinds of technologies and they integrate with all kinds of source control systems. You can even hire translations directly through their service. Anyone who is working on a project that needs localization should take a look at Amanuens.

Thanks especially to our translators who volunteer their time to keep our translations updated!

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/kudos-for-the-amanuens-translation-system.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/kudos-for-the-amanuens-translation-system.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/kudos-for-the-amanuens-translation-system.aspx Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:18:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.6.2 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.6.2, available now on our download page.

This is a minor release with just a few bug fixes, the primary purpose of this release is to fix a problem in our Shared Files feature and in our alternate File Manager when running under Medium Trust hosting. In the previous release of version 2.3.6.1 we had changed to strong name signed assemblies for NeatUpload and for the NeatUpload Greybox Progress bar. This strong signed version of NeatUpload allows it to be installed in the GAC (Global Assembly Cache) on the server so it can work in Medium Trust, but there was a bug in the previous release because the NeatUpload.GreyboxProgressBar.dll was not compiled with the AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers attribute so it caused an error under Medium Trust. This release addresses that problem, it just required adding the needed attribute and re-compiling the NeatUpload.GreyboxProgressBar.dll. Since most shared hosting uses Medium Trust we felt it important to get a fix out for this quickly.

Fixed Bugs

  • Fix error under Medium Trust in Shared Files and in the Alternate File Manager
  • Fix bug in SQL CE data layer when creating new sites
  • Fix bug where file manager did not overwrite existing files
  • Fix redirect bug in Search Input that could happen on blog detail pages
  • Fix bug in blog when using google maps (this bug was introduced in version 2.3.6.1 when we added an option to use Bing maps in the blog)

Other Stuff

  • Upgrade from CKeditor 3.5 to 3.5.1
  • Updated Italian resources from Diego Mora
  • Updated Persian resources from Asad Samarian
  • Updated Portuguese (Brazil) resources from Fabio Mastaler
  • Updated French resources from Yves Jadin
  • Updated German resources from Jan Aengenvoort
  • Updated Spanish resources from German Barbosa
  • New partial Arabic translation from Sameer Alomari

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2362-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2362-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2362-released.aspx Mon, 07 Feb 2011 19:07:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.6.1 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.6.1, available now on our download page. We will submit this release to the Web App Gallery next week after we've had a chance to get any feedback from our early adopters.

New Security Options

  • It is now possible to require approval of new users before they can sign in, a setting in Site Settings enables it and you can specify email addresses to receive notification of new users that need approval, and a new button will appear on the member list page to find users not approved yet if you enable this. This is not a recommended configuration if you are doing eCommerce since it creates more barriers to completing a purchase if the user must wait for approval before he can sign in.
  • It is now possible to require any user to change their password from a setting in user management.
  • From Site Settings, you can now configure it to require a user to change their password after password recovery or reset.
  • There is now a custom error message you can configure in site settings if you are using a regular expression to validate password rules, you can provide an error message that explains the rules.

We also made the MS SQL packages of mojoPortal pre-configured for Medium Trust by default since this is the most common installation issue that people encounter. If you are hosted in Full Trust you can use the Web.fulltrust.config file.

Easier Content Re-Use

There is a new way to mark re-usable content as global content, which makes it available for page editors to add existing content to their pages. Joe Davis of i7MEDIA has made a nice video tutorial showing how to use this new feature, see the Global Content Section on this page.

Blog Improvements

  • Someone asked for the ability to not create a 301 redirect when a post is renamed and the URL changes. By default, we believe this behavior is what should happen to automatically help with SEO when a URL changes, but if you don't want that behavior you can turn it off by adding this to your user.config file: 
    <add key="Blog:Create301OnPostRename" value="false" />
  • It is now possible to use Bing Maps in the blog instead of Google Maps.
  • There have been settings in the blog for a while to allow showing the right and left column content from the main blog page also on the blog post pages. Recently someone asked to be able to show upper and lower content when using skins that have 5 content panes, so we added these Web.config settings that you could add to user.config:
    <add key="Blog:ShowTopContent" value="true" />
    <add key="Blog:ShowBottomContent" value="true" />
  • Improved Feedburner integration. When using Feedburner, we now redirect to the FeedBurner feed instead of direct linking so that you can keep users subscribed to your original blog feed and not lose subscribers if you later decide to stop using Feedburner. See updated documentation Using Feedburner with your Blog.

Miscellaneous Little Improvements

  • There is a new setting in Page Settings that allows you to control if pages appear in the child pages site map separately from if they appear in the menu
  • added config setting to allow using a custom registration page URL
  • added config option to not re-suggest URLs when renaming existing pages
  • made it possible to exclude HTML content instances from search index for landing pages that one doesn't want to come up in search, this is in the feature instance settings for Html Content
  • when moving items in pagelayout.aspx keep the item selected
  • make it possible to move pages to the top or bottom of their page tree node in PageTree.aspx
  • revamp of PageLayout.aspx thanks to Joe Davis - it required additional CSS so skins were all updated as well, see notes in this sticky thread for new CSS you need in your skin
  • CSS and markup improvements in WebStore - thanks to Joe Davis
  • when using excerpts in the feed manager make it possible to open the link in a new window
  • added an instance setting in Image Gallery to control the background color used when resizing images
  • update to a strong name signed version of NeatUpload so it can be installed in the GAC to make it work in Medium Trust hosting
  • upgrade to CKEditor 3.5
  • refactor system content templates and add new 2 column over 1 template from Jamie Eubanks
  • make it possible to specify a different site map data source id for SiteMenu control
  • when not combining CSS make URLs relative
  • updated Italian resources from Diego Mora
  • updated Persian resources from Asad Samarian
  • updated German resources from Jan Aengenvoort

Bug Fixes

  • restore possibility to edit HTML content instances that are loaded by modulewrapper
  • make IE specific CSS and favicon respect page specific skins
  • fix a bug in blog RSS when using folder based child sites it was incorrectly resolving URLs
  • fix bug where the smiley base path was not resolving correctly if running in a virtual directory instead of root
  • fix a bug in pgsql data layer for survey
  • fix a bug in pgsql data layer for content catalog paging
  • fix bug in sqlce data layer when adding features to child sites
  • fix a bug in timepicker - thanks, David Dean
  • fix an issue where export to CSV or word was not working correctly in IE 8 when SSL is enabled
  • fix a bug in webstore - add abstract to offer edit page
  • fix a bug in the forum where external images were handled differently on edit page than thread page
  • fix bug - don't show host name tab in site settings until after new site is created

As always, it is a good idea to backup your site and database before upgrading.

Corresponding Update For Form Wizard Pro

Users who have purchased  Form Wizard Pro should upgrade at the same time to the new version of Form Wizard Pro 0.0.2.3, released today for compatibility with mojoPortal 2.3.6.1. This was needed because we updated to a new version of NeatUpload and Form Wizard Pro must use the same version of NeatUpload as mojoPortal or it will result in errors.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2361-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2361-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2361-released.aspx Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:59:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.5.8 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.5.8, available now on our download page.

Whats' New?

  • A new Flickr Gallery feature
  • A new User Sign In Module that can be put on a content page such as the home page
  • A new scroller setting in the Feed Manager to enable a scrolling news ticker
  • Some improvements to the List/Links feature including a new introduction that can be used to place html above the list and a new option for non-ajax paging
  • Thanks to Jamie Eubanks for implementing a way to use both database authentication and LDAP, there is a new config setting for fallback to LDAP if database authentication fails. This allows scenarios where your internal users such as content authors can login with their LDAP credentials while still allowing public users to register and sign in with database credentials.
  • A new option to disable CSS caching while designing by clicking a button that sets a cookie to disable it. The previous way of of disabling it from config still works but this new way may be more convenient. You will find the button under Administration > Advanced Tools > Designer Tools
  • Upgraded to CKeditor 3.4.2
  • Updated Italian resources thanks to Diego Mora
  • Bug fixes for things reported in the forums since the previous release including several fixes in the SQL CE data layer and the Firebird data layer.

flickr gallery screen shot

sign in module screen shot

 

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2358-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2358-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2358-released.aspx Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:45:00 GMT
City and State Government Agencies Improve their Web Presence While Reducing Costs with mojoPortal mojoPortal is catching on in local and state government as a way to improve web presence quality and reduce cost and effort of maintaining web sites and managing their content.

Yesterday after a year of work, the City of Escondido California went live with their new web site built on mojoPortal.

City of Escondido Web Site

 

"About 18 months ago, I was tasked to evaluate low cost and no cost CMS solutions to bring much needed modernization of our web presence. After evaluating more than a dozen open source solutions, mojoPortal was the clear winner for us. The combination of ease-of-use, security, and depth of features just can't be beat by any other open source CMS."
 
"Next will be new versions of our Police, Fire, Library, Recreation, and Sports Center sites, and brand new sites for the aquatics club and skate park. Being able to so easily host and segregate independent sites under a single installation of mojoPortal has been a real blessing."
 
"One of the great strengths of mojoPortal is the ability to easily develop and integrate our own custom features. We were able to take advantage of this with a utility bill lookup feature that lets citizens pull up their previous bills in PDF format, and parcel lookup to retrieve information about land parcels within the City, and download that information to a CSV file. We have plans for many more custom features, including adding the ability for citizens to pay their utility bill and other bills online. For this we will be developing a feature that communicates with our internal core Financials systems across secured web services."
 
- Jamie Eubanks - Information Systems Department of the City of Escondido, California
 
Not long ago I also heard from Linda Sabella from the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, State of California.

Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, State of California

 

"We are a small California state government agency. When we decided that we needed a content management system we reviewed several packages.  We rated mojoPortal far and above all the others. After bringing our new mojoPortal website online in August, we have received kudos from other state agencies as well as from the public."
 
- Linda Sabella - Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, State of California
 
It is always gratifying to hear about success stories from the growing community of mojoPortal users. We'd love to hear about your success stories too, so if you've done something cool or substantial with mojoPortal please let us know!
 
UPDATE: Just found out that the City of Lawrence Massachusetts also recently launched a new web site built on mojoPortal.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/city-and-state-government-agencies-improve-their-web-presence-while-reducing-costs-with-mojoportal.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/city-and-state-government-agencies-improve-their-web-presence-while-reducing-costs-with-mojoportal.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/city-and-state-government-agencies-improve-their-web-presence-while-reducing-costs-with-mojoportal.aspx Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:48:00 GMT
Recognition of Community Experts The holiday season is upon us and Thanksgiving has come and gone but it is still a good time to reflect on the things we are thankful for. I am thankful for so many things, good health, good friends, and being blessed to have a career that is also a creative outlet for me such that I look forward to each day working on mojoPortal which is truly a labor of love for me. While my work has certinly not made me rich (yet), I feel like one of the luckiest people because I know that so many people go to work everyday dreading their job and the time they spend there. I've had a long and diverse work history and have also spent many years doing work that did not make me happy and was not enjoyable, so I know how difficult it is to find one's niche in the world and how lucky I am at this point in my life.

Today I would like to express how thankful I am for the mojoPortal Community and especially those community members who give back to the community by helping others. Throughout the history of the project I have always tried to make sure that we have good support in our forums and over the years I have personally answered many many questions posted in our forums and tried to have short response times especially for people having any difficulty with installation or reporting bugs because I know that first imporessions are very important. As the popularity of mojoPortal has grown over the years it has become more and more challenging to keep up with the volume of questions and I began to worry whether it would just become unmanageable. I think that to some degree, my fast response times in the forums hindered the development of the community itself because others who might have been willing to answer some questions did not get a chance because I answered right away and this discouraged helpful participation to some extent. The bottom line was that people did recieve help so they were happy and more and more people continued to use mojoPortal but it did not encourage others to help and therefore did not contribute to building a community that could sustain itself. There were always a few people who helped in the forums now and then but mostly in the early days it was people asking questions and me answering them and this continued for years.
 
Then in February 2009, Joe Davis joined the community and soon began helping lots of people in the forums and I was elated because this helped reduce the work load for me in answering questions, but the volume of questions continued to grow. We both worked to improve the documentation and make it easier for people to find the information they were looking for to help reduce the questions but it was becoming obvious that we needed to do more to get other community members involved. Joe Davis agreed to help with that so I appointed him Community Manager. We discussed ideas to help foster the community. One of the things we talked about was making forum improvements so that questions and answers could be identified more easily and users could earn points for answering questions. I think StackOverflow has set the bar on what good forums should be like and ultimately I would still like to evolve our forums to be more like StackOverflow, but it will take a good deal of work to improve our forums that much and there are so many other things to work on it still may be a while before we get there. We did a little work to make it more obvious that people could subscribe to forum notification emails and we changed the notifications to include the text of the post so that people could see right away in their inbox if it was a question they knew the answer to and this has helped quite a bit.
 
Gradually, it just seemed to happen that we reached a critical mass of active helpful community members and in the last few months I've been very happy because of the number of helpful people and the quality of help they have been providing. So, Joe Davis and I decided we should provide some recognition for these helpful people by giving them a badge for their forum signature that identifies them as a "Community Expert". While we still plan to someday build a point system into the forums to encourage helpful people, for now we know who is helping and we want to give them some recognition for their expertise in working with mojoPortal and their willingness to share their knowledge and help others.
 
So please join us in thanking the following community members who are true mojoPortal experts and have earned the designation of "Community Expert":
 
Jamie Eubanks who is both a "Community Expert" and a new member of our Documentation Team.
Jamie Eubanks
 
Rick Hubka who is both a Community Expert and our Community Liaison from Arvixe Web Hosting.
Rick Hubka
 
Asad Samarian who is a long time community member and also manages our Persian Language Community and maintains documentation in Persian, has also become more and more helpful in our English forums over the years as his English has improved.
Asad Samarian
 
German Barbosa who is our newest Community Expert.
German Barbosa
 
If you've asked questions in our forums lately, chances are that one of these kind folks or Joe Davis or myself have helped you.
 
If you've become an expert with mojoPortal, why not subscribe to our forums and help out when you can? We'll be on the lookout for more helpful people that deserve recognition as a mojoPortal Community Expert. Maybe you will be our next Community Expert!

 


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https://www.mojoportal.com/recognition-of-community-experts.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/recognition-of-community-experts.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/recognition-of-community-experts.aspx Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:31:00 GMT
In Site Analytics Pro Is Now On Sale I'm happy to announce that the first release of In Site Analytics Pro is now on sale in the mojoPortal Store, starting at $99 for a single installation license.

In Site Analytics Pro provides reporting and charts from Google Analytics in your mojoPortal site and for supported databases also provides long term storage of analytics data. Google only promises to keep analytics data for up to 2 years, in practice it seems they keep it for about 3.5 years, so harvesting the data allows you to keep historic data that would otherwise be lost over time. While In Site Analytics Pro is ideal for tracking the traffic of your mojoPortal site because it integrates with mojoPortal and allows you to have traffic reports integrated in your site, it can be used to track any one of your Google Analytics Profiles, it does not have to track a mojoPortal site, but it does need to be installed in a mojoPortal site. you could for example setup a mojoPortal site with In Site Analytics Pro and use it to track the traffic of one of your other non-mojoPortal sites. While this would not provide reports integrated into your non-mojoPortal site, you would still get the benefit of long term data storage.

The charts and reports can work directly from the Google Analytics Data API or from the database. Only MS SQL 2005/2008/SqlAzure and MySql are supported for data capture, but installations of mojoPortal using other database platforms can still use the charts and reports directly from the API. It is also possible and preferable to use a separate database for the analytics data instead of keeping it in the same database as the site. It can be a large amount of data over time, much larger than the actual site data. You could also use any database platform for the site but still use MS SQL or MySql for In Site Analytics, it just requires you to manually run the database script(s) and change one configuration setting, see the System Requirements/Installation tab for more details.

The main charts and reporting plugs into the Administration menu and is protected by roles, but there are also 2 features that plug into the mojoPortal content system to allow you to publish a traffic chart and/or visitor map on public pages of your site as I have done on our Community page.

Below are some screen shots of the main features, you can also try it out live on demo.mojoportal.com, just login as admin@admin.com with the password admin, then click the Administration Link, the click Site Traffic Reports from the Administration menu.

Screen shot of In Site Dashboard

scree shot of visitor map

Note that the map can be re-sized by dragging the bottom right corner.

screen shot of Todays traffic report

Note that while In Site Analytics Pro does not use the main site skins, it is skinnable, and we include 2 skins and you can also create your own by copying and modifying one of the existing ones. You can set the skin from configuration settings. From the skin you can control the JQueryUI theme as well as colors of the charts and other style elements.

screen shot showing In Site Dashboard with a different skin

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/in-site-analytics-pro-is-now-on-sale.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/in-site-analytics-pro-is-now-on-sale.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/in-site-analytics-pro-is-now-on-sale.aspx Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:10:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.5.5 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.5.5, available now on our download page.

A few weeks ago I was on the verge of releasing my new add on product In Site Analytics Pro, but when I tested the package I discovered that the graphs did not work in Medium Trust hosting. It turned out to be a problem with ZedGraph that was easily fixed by re-compiling it with the AllowPartialyTrustedCallers attribute set to true. However, since both mojoPortal and In Site Analytics use ZedGraph, they really need to both be compile against the same version of ZedGraph. There are ways around such issues with configuration to map assembly versions, but to keep things simple I decided to wait and release a new version of mojoPortal with the new version of ZedGraph before releasing In Site Analytics Pro. So I went through our list of to do items and things that have been requested by the community to find a few low hanging fruit items that could be finished quickly to make the mojoPortal upgrade more appealing. I will follow up in the next few days and make the first release In Site Analytics Pro, but it will require mojoPortal 2.3.5.5 or newer.

What's New?

In recent versions, we added a Facebook like button and a Tweet This button in the blog, in this release we made it also possible to have the Facebook like button and/or the Tweet This button in the RSS feed so that users who subscribe to the feed using Google Reader or other Feed Readers can also Like or Tweet your posts. We also added logic so that if a blog post is saved with a blank url, the url is generated by server side code.

Thanks to a good suggestion from Tim Cadenbach, we added some nice ajaxy transitions for the jQuery UI tabs and Accordion used in administrative features and elsewhere.

Added a setting in Site Settings to require a Captcha on the Registration page.

Added a setting in Site Settings to require users to type their email address twice on the registration page (to avoid typos during registration).

Added a setting in Site Settings to show a Password Strength Meter on the registration page to encourage strong passwords.

Added a setting in Site Settings to require a Captcha on the login page, not something I generally recommend doing but if your security requirements call for this it is now possible.

Added support for a new token in newsletters for #viewaswebpage# which is replaced with a link to the web page version of the newsletter.

There was a usability issue previously with the forum notification emails where an opt out link was shown for both the forum as a whole and for just the thread regardless of whether the user was really subscribed to both the forum and the thread. Now we have different notification templates for each scenario so that only opt out links are shown for notifications the user is actually subscribed to.

Added an automatic machine key generator to the Security Advisor page to make it easier to create a custom machine key.

screen shot of machine key generator

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed issue where ZedGraph was not working in Medium Trust
  • Fixed issue where multi file selection for bulk upload did not work in IE after a recent Flash update
  • Fixed Member list paging bug in pgsql data layer

Don't forget that we are moving this site to a new server this evening so there may be some down time during the move.

If you haven't already, please vote for mojoPortal in the 2010 Open Source CMS Awards

 

Vote For mojoPortal in the 2010 CMS Awards

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2355-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2355-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2355-released.aspx Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:41:00 GMT
In Site Analytics is Now on demo.mojoportal.com Hello mojoPortal friends,

I've been working hard for the last few months to complete a new add on product for mojoPortal named In Site Analytics Pro. It is basically feature complete for what I envisioned for the first release and you can check it out on our demo site demo.mojoportal.com where you can login with the credentials admin@admin.com and the password is admin

I'm still doing a little work on the data management page, but that is a page I would lock down so you can't see it on the demo site anyway for security reasons. Once I complete that I still have to produce documentation for installation, configuration and use before I put it on sale in the mojoPortal store. For now I invite you to check it out on our demo site and let me know any feedback positive or negative.

The primary features are the ability to have traffic reports and charts from Google Analytics in your site and the ability to capture the data from Google Analytics into the database for long term storage. Google only promises keep the data for 2 years, in practice it seems they keep it about 3.5 years, so harvesting the data allows you to keep historic data that would otherwise be lost over time. 

The charts and reports can work directly from the Google Analytics Data API or from the database. Only MS SQL and MySql will be supported for data capture, but installations of mojoPortal using other database platforms can still use the charts and reports directly from the API. It is also possible and preferable to use a separate database for the analytics data instead of keeping it in the same db as the site. It can be a large amount of data over time, much larger than the actual site data. You could also use any db platform for the site but still use MS SQL or MySql for In Site Analytics, I will be producing documentation about how to do that.

The main charts and reporting plugs into the Administration menu and is protected by roles, but there are also 2 features that plug into the content system to allow you to publish a traffic chart and visitor map on public pages of your site as I have done on our Community page.

Below are some screen shots to give you an idea of the features, but it is best to check it out on our demo site.

screen shot of insite analytics dashboard

screen shot of insite analytics visitor map

note that the map can be re-sized by dragging the bottom right corner

screen shot of todays traffic report

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

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https://www.mojoportal.com/in-site-analytics-is-now-on-demomojoportalcom.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/in-site-analytics-is-now-on-demomojoportalcom.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/in-site-analytics-is-now-on-demomojoportalcom.aspx Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:36:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.5.4 Released mojoPortal 2.3.5.4 is now available on our download page.

This is a compatibility update for the changes in ASP.NET that resulted from the security patch recently released by Microsoft and now available from Windows Update. I blogged about this issue previously and provided a workaround for the compatibility issue, this new release eliminates the need for the workaround.

Before the security update, there was a possibility for a System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException when decrypting the role cookie if the machine key had changed and the user was already authenticated. We already had error handling for this error, but after the security update the behavior changed and it would throw a more generic HttpException there which we were not handling, and this would cause users who were previously authenticated to experience an error until they cleared the cookie. Even without a machine key change, the same error could happen if a user was authenticated before the windows update was applied, the error could happen for that user after the update was applied (because there were also changes to how cookies are encrypted in the security update) In this release we have added handling for the new more generic exception so the cookie will be reset if this error occurs and the user will not experience an error on your site.

We've also removed the previous workaround for the ASP.NET security issue since it is not needed after the update is applied.

Other Changes

Thanks to Steve Railsback of Colorado State University we have some new CSS that can be used to add images to the Administration menu. It uses some Crystal Icons which are licensed under LGPL. I've updated many of the included skins that ship with mojoPortal to use the new icons, you can easily add them to your skin by adding this to your style.config file:

<file cssvpath="/Data/style/adminmenu/style.css" imagebasevpath="/Data/style/adminmenu/">none</file>

It will transform the admin menu from a plain looking vertical list to a list of images with hover effects like this:

screen shot of admin icons

This release also has:

  • upgrade to CKeditor 3.4.1
  • upgrade to TinyMCE 3.3.9.2
  • updated Italian resource files thanks to Diego Mora
  • fixed a bug where menu items that were configured as unclickable were still clickable in the breadcrumbs

I'd also like to point out a new article in the skinning documentation written by Steve Land, Using Wireframe Skins. Steve has shared a skin he designed to solve the problem of how to keep your discussions with clients focused on functionality when you need to. It is a very common issue that the customer can easily get side tracked onto colors and other visual aspects which is fine if you are trying to discuss the design but distracting if you are trying to focus the discussion on functionality or other non-design aspects of the site. The wireframe skin can help with this because it is designed to not be distracting and to clearly represent that the design is not what is being shown. Please let Steve know if you find his wireframe skin useful if there is interest he might make more variations.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2354-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2354-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2354-released.aspx Thu, 07 Oct 2010 13:02:00 GMT
The fix for the ASP.NET Security Bug is now available on Windows Update The fix for the ASP.NET  security bug is now available in windows update. However, the change has a negative side effect for the current release of mojoPortal which may cause authenticated users to experience an error on your site. The error occurs when trying to decrypt the role cookie which was encrypted before the update was applied. Previously, if there was an error decrypting a role cookie, it was throwing a System.Security.Cryptography.CrypotgraphicException (which we were handling so the user would not experience any error). After the windows update it now throws a more generic HttpException which the current release does not handle so the user will see the error page, and the only way to solve it is to clear the cookie. I have added handling for the changed error for the next release of mojoPortal, but you may begin seeing this error after you or your host applies the security fix.

There is one workaround you can do right away to solve this problem, you can add code to the ErrorPage.aspx in the root to clear the role cookie so that at least the user will only see the error page one time. To do this, edit the ErrorPage.aspx file with a text editor. At the top add this:

<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Business" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Business.WebHelpers" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Web" %>

then add this code to the bottom of the Page_Load event:

after this existing line of code:

if (disposable != null) { disposable.Dispose(); }

add this:

try
        {
            SiteSettings siteSettings = CacheHelper.GetCurrentSiteSettings();
            if (siteSettings != null)
            {
                string roleCookieName = SiteUtils.GetRoleCookieName(siteSettings);
                HttpCookie roleCookie = new HttpCookie(roleCookieName, string.Empty);
                roleCookie.HttpOnly = true;
                roleCookie.Path = "/";
                HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(roleCookie);
            }
        }
        catch{}


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https://www.mojoportal.com/the-fix-for-the-aspnet-security-bug-is-now-available-on-windows-update.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/the-fix-for-the-aspnet-security-bug-is-now-available-on-windows-update.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/the-fix-for-the-aspnet-security-bug-is-now-available-on-windows-update.aspx Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:41:00 GMT
mojoPortal Is a Finalist in the 2010 CMS Awards A big shout of thanks to the mojoPortal Community!

Thanks to your nominations, mojoPortal is a finalist in the 2010 Open Source Awards in the CMS Category.

Now the voting phase has begun and we need your vote! The voting phase goes from September 27, 2010 until November 5, 2010. Please take a moment and vote for mojoPortal! By voting, you also get a chance to win an Amazon Kindle.

https://www.packtpub.com/open-source-awards-home/vote-open-source-cms

Vote For mojoPortal in the 2010 CMS Awards

The competition is always tough in these awards, so every vote is important. We really need your vote!

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-is-a-finalist-in-the-2010-cms-awards.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-is-a-finalist-in-the-2010-cms-awards.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-is-a-finalist-in-the-2010-cms-awards.aspx Mon, 27 Sep 2010 13:48:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.5.3 Released mojoPortal 2.3.5.3 is now available on our download page.

This is another security update in follow up to version 2.3.5.2 which we released on Friday afternoon to address 2 mojoPortal specific security issues and it had some initial defense against a more general ASP.NET vulnerability the full details of which were released Friday afternoon at a security conference in Argentina. On Friday night Microsoft released information about the vulnerability and a workaround to help protect sites until Microsoft can provide a fix to the underlying problem. On Saturday morning I updated the post for version 2.3.5.2 with the workaround information.

Over the weekend we continued to review how best to protect mojoPortal and this morning we are releasing mojoPortal 2.3.5.3.

This release has the same fixes provided in version 2.3.5.2, but also has the Microsoft suggested workaround pre-applied. Additionally, we have added a new page in the Administration Menu that can detect a few common configuration issues that affect security and provide links to information about how to correct the configuration. If a serious configuration issue is detected, it shows an alert in the Administration Menu to bring it to your attention.

screen shot of security alert in the administration menu

Note that in a multi site installation this page is only available in the root administrative site.

I strongly advise everyone to upgrade as soon as possible if you haven't already.

There was also a bug introduced in version 2.3.5.2, the fix I had made for the FileService issue had caused an error in the page if using the alternate File Manager (which doesn't use the file service). This issue is fixed in version 2.3.5.3

Note that in this release I also commented out the PageNotFoundHandlerModule in Web.config. I'm not 100% sure this is needed but it is probably better to play it safe. The downside is that users who click bad links will not see the friendly page not found page but the generic error page. 

For more details see also:

UPDATE 2010-09-25

Scott Guthrie of Microsoft just posted about an additional protection that can and should be applied at the server level. If you have control of your own server you should take the additional step of installing UrlScan and configuring a rule as indicated in the article.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/09/24/update-on-asp-net-vulnerability.aspx

UPDATE 2010-10-04

The fix for the ASP.NET  security bug is now available in windows update. However, the change has a negative side effect for the current release of mojoPortal which may cause authenticated users to experience an error on your site. The error occurs when trying to decrypt the role cookie which was encrypted before the update was applied. Previously, if there was an error decrypting a role cookie, it was throwing a System.Security.Cryptography.CrypotgraphicException (which we were handling so the user would not experience any error). After the windows update it now throws a more generic HttpException which the current release does not handle so the user will see the error page, and the only way to solve it is to clear the cookie. I have added handling for the changed error for the next release of mojoPortal. There is one workaround you can do right away to solve this problem, you can add code to the ErrorPage.aspx in the root to clear the role cookie so that at least the user will only see the error page one time. To do this, edit the ErrorPage.aspx file with a text editor. At the top add this:

<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Business" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Business.WebHelpers" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Web" %>

then add this code to the bottom of the Page_Load event:

try
        {
            SiteSettings siteSettings = CacheHelper.GetCurrentSiteSettings();
            if (siteSettings != null)
            {
                string roleCookieName = SiteUtils.GetRoleCookieName(siteSettings);
                HttpCookie roleCookie = new HttpCookie(roleCookieName, string.Empty);
                roleCookie.HttpOnly = true;
                roleCookie.Path = "/";
                HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(roleCookie);
            }
        }
        catch{}

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2353-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2353-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2353-released.aspx Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:13:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.5.2 Released mojoPortal 2.3.5.2 is now available on our download page.

This is an important security and bug fix release. All users of mojoPortal are urged to upgrade as soon as possible.

Yesterday a security exploit bulletin identifying 2 security vulnerabilities in mojoPortal 2.3.4.3 was posted on the internet. I was able to verify the issues still exist as of version 2.3.5.1, so I immediately began working on a fix. You can see the information on this page: http://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/15018/ however it might be wise to disable javascript or use the NoScript Firefox plugin when visiting that page just out of respect for what these guys are capable of. When I view the source of the exploit information page it seems to have a lot of javascript. Possibly there is nothing malicious about the page but better to use caution just in case.

Issue #1

The first issue listed in the exploit bulletin was an issue in the file manager service where it was possible to target an admin with a social engineering attack to make him visit a malicious web site specifically targeting his site while he was logged in as admin and this would allow the attacker to run some javascript which would call the file service on the ADMIN user's mojoPortal site using the move command to rename the user.config file. If the attack was successful then the site would stop working the next time the application pool recycles because the user.config file is no longer there so it would not be able to find the connection string. From this it is described as a DOS (Denial of Service) attack because it could take the site offline. By renaming the user.config to something with an unprotected file extension like user.config.aaa the attacker could then download the user.config file and capture the database connection string and potentially other sensitive data that might be stored in user.config.

Mitigating Factors

  • if the site is configured as recommended with only the /App_Data and /Data folders being writable by the web process, this attack would not work because the web process would not be able to rename the user.config file in the root. So the site would have to be mis-configured for this exploit to work.
  • this requires a targeted social attack against a specific admin user and a specific site. The admin user would have to be tricked into visiting a malicious site while logged in as admin in his mojoPortal site for it to work, and the malicious site would have to be coded to target the specific mojoPortal site belonging to the user. Also javascript would have to be enabled. When I visit random sites from internet searches or links people send to me, I use Firefox with NoScript plugin, and I recommend you do the same.
  • if the site is actively monitored the Denial of Service would be corrected quickly

Issue # 2

There was a cross site scripting vulnerability on the public profile page /ProfileView.aspx where we were appending the user name/id into the page title without sanitizing it first. Since we were not enforcing any rules on user name/id by default other than it must be unique, a user could register with a specially crafted string to add an external script to the page. The script could be used for malicious purposes such as stealing the authentication cookie of a user who visited the infected user profile page. The fix for this involved both sanitizing the user name/id before we append it to the title and also adding some validation of user names /id when the user registers to prevent characters that can be used for this kind of exploit such as angle brackets.

Mitigating Factors

  • The user name/id is shown on the member list and is html encoded there so that no exploit is possible. It would be easy to spot a malicious user name/id on the member list and then edit the user profile and lock the account.
  • For several versions now we have had an optional config setting for entering a regular expression for user name/id validation. Sites that were already using this would not be affected since the user would not be able to enter the malicious user name.

Potential Issue # 3

This one was not from this exploit bulletin, and is not specific to mojoPortal, but could potentially affect millions of ASP.NET sites. This article was brought to my attention by a community member, George Birbilis. 
http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2010/09/14/aspnet-security-hack.aspx

The full details of the vulnerability have not been posted yet so I'm not 100% sure whether it will affect mojoPortal or not. I will have to review it once the full details are posted. However from what I gathered so far, it sounds like a real issue that will affect a lot of sites. When I first read the article, I thought it was saying that the hacker would use error messages received from the server to crack the machine key and then they could forge a cookie to get administrative access to a site. If that is true then it is not as bad because by default no error details are sent from the server, there would only be sent the 500 status code which indicates an error. However from reading comments on a few other places it sounds like they do not in fact need any error details but can gradually decipher the machine key through a lot of requests just using the response status codes 200 (success) 404 (not found) and 500 (error). I took steps in this release in case that is how it works to help protect against this attack. Basically what I did was make it always return a 404 if there is a cryptography error. So if the theory is true that they need to see the 500 status code this solution may protect against it. We will have to wait for the full details to know for sure. As I understand it the full details will be released today at a security conference.

UPDATE 2010-09-18

Microsoft has posted a Security Advisory 2416728  on TechNet which says they are investigating this problem to provide an update. They also provide a workaround. The workaround is basically to use a custom error page so that no error details are returned from the server. We already have that by default in mojoPortal where we use error.htm as the default error page. The only difference in their workaround suggestion, is that they use a custom.aspx page to show the generic error instead of plain html, and they use some logic to make a random amount of time for the thread to sleep so that timing of the 500 status code cannot easily be used as an alternate to error details. I recommend that you copy the C# version of the error page they provide into a text file named ErrorPage.aspx, put it in the root of your web site, and edit the web.config as follows (this is also shown in the Microsoft article):

  1. wrap the entire <system.web section inside a location element <location allowOverride="false"></location> - this might cause an error in some installations, if it does just skip it and follow step 2.
  2. find this in your Web.config file:

    <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="Error.htm">
          <error statusCode="413" redirect="~/NeatUpload/Error413.aspx"/>
        </customErrors>

    and change it like this:

    <customErrors mode="On" redirectMode="ResponseRewrite" defaultRedirect="~/ErrorPage.aspx">
       
      </customErrors>
     

That should help defend against possible attacks until an update is available from Microsoft. For more details to understand this problem, see http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2010/09/17/understanding-the-asp-net-vulnerability.aspx

You should also review the post installation check list to make sure you have configured your site securely.

UPDATE 2010-09-25

Scott Guthrie of Microsoft just posted about an additional protection that can and should be applied at the server level. If you have control of your own server you should take the additional step of installing UrlScan and configuring a rule as indicated in the article.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/09/24/update-on-asp-net-vulnerability.aspx

UPDATE 2010-10-04

The fix for the ASP.NET  security bug is now available in windows update. However, the change has a negative side effect for the current release of mojoPortal which may cause authenticated users to experience an error on your site. The error occurs when trying to decrypt the role cookie which was encrypted before the update was applied. Previously, if there was an error decrypting a role cookie, it was throwing a System.Security.Cryptography.CrypotgraphicException (which we were handling so the user would not experience any error). After the windows update it now throws a more generic HttpException which the current release does not handle so the user will see the error page, and the only way to solve it is to clear the cookie. I have added handling for the changed error for the next release of mojoPortal. There is one workaround you can do right away to solve this problem, you can add code to the ErrorPage.aspx in the root to clear the role cookie so that at least the user will only see the error page one time. To do this, edit the ErrorPage.aspx file with a text editor. At the top add this:

<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Business" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Business.WebHelpers" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="mojoPortal.Web" %>

then add this code to the bottom of the Page_Load event:

try
        {
            SiteSettings siteSettings = CacheHelper.GetCurrentSiteSettings();
            if (siteSettings != null)
            {
                string roleCookieName = SiteUtils.GetRoleCookieName(siteSettings);
                HttpCookie roleCookie = new HttpCookie(roleCookieName, string.Empty);
                roleCookie.HttpOnly = true;
                roleCookie.Path = "/";
                HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(roleCookie);
            }
        }
        catch{}

 

Other Non Security Bug Fixes

  • fixed a long standing issue in the VirtualPathProvider that we use to serve the theme.skin file from the skin folder. For a long time this problem was not very noticeable because most skins did not have much variation in the theme.skin files, but more recently with our support for Artisteer we use settings in the them.skin file to control how markup is rendered so that we can add the needed markup for Artisteer and also the newer jQueryUI skin. The problem was that whatever skin was used first after the application startup, would have its theme.skin file cached and when pages with other skins were used it was getting the copy from the cache because the cache key was identical. Since the one in the cache may not have the correct settings then it could cause it to render incorrectly. The fix was to make sure they are uniquely cached. Note however that VirtualPathProvider does not work under medium trust in .NET 3.5 (it does work in 4.0), in that case all skins use the theme.skin file from App_Themes/default. For those in full trust or in .NET 4 hosting, you should see things work better in this release when using multiple skins or allowing user skins.
  • fixed an issue in folder based child sites where the canonical url rendered in the head was not correct, it was doubling the folder name.
  • fixed a bug where if using related sites mode, newly created sites were not correctly inheriting security settings from the parent site unitl you saved the parent site again and then it would propagate to the child sites.
  • fixed a bug where if using related sites mode, the admin and edit links were not shown consistently to site editors in child sites
  • fixed a bug where jquery script was disabled if you set the StyleSheetCombiner to not load jQuery UI
  • fixed a bug where the Superfish menu was not rendering the mouse over effects in .NET 4 - Thanks to Benedict for the solution!
  • fixed a bug where if FirstName and LastName were used as custom profile properties it was not loading them correctly
  • fixed a pgsql data layer error in the forums feature
  • fixed a SQL CE data layer error in the image gallery
  • added error handling to the feed manager so that if a feed is missing the required channel element it does not crash the page

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2352-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2352-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2352-released.aspx Fri, 17 Sep 2010 16:38:00 GMT
Nominate mojoPortal for the 2010 CMS Award Hi mojoPortal friends,

It is that time of year again, the 2010 Packt Publishing CMS Award has begun the nomination phase. Please nominate mojoPortal for the Best Open Source CMS.

 

Nominate mojoPortal for the 2010 CMS Awards

Nominations end on September 17, 2010, and we need as many nominations as possible in order to make it to the next phase of the contest, so please take a minute and nominate mojoPortal.

Thanks!

Joe

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/nominate-mojoportal-for-the-2010-cms-award.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/nominate-mojoportal-for-the-2010-cms-award.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/nominate-mojoportal-for-the-2010-cms-award.aspx Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:14:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.5.1 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.5.1, available now on our download page.

What's New?

jQuery UI Skin

This release includes a new skin based on jQuery UI, as described in my previous post, there is also a theme picker for choosing the jQuery UI theme. There are a bunch of pre-defined themes and you can roll your own with the jQueryUI theme roller, so this skin is like many skins in one.

A number of people have been asking in the forums about how to make menu items not clickable. Typically people want this when they are using a flyout menu like the jQuery Superfish menu or the horizontal menus used in Artisteer skins. Usually there is a parent page that is just a container for child pages that have the actual articles, and you may wish to make the parent menu item not clickable. If the user clicks it, it is the same as if they mouse over it, it just shows the child items and does not navigate to the page. This is now supported as described in the documentation article Un-clickable Menu Items.

Feature Setting Groups

This is something I've been meaning to do for a long time, when a feature has a lot of settings (like the blog for example), the settings page could become very daunting just because there are so many settings. By adding groups, we can organize the settings into logical groups that make it much easier for the user to digest because they can view one group at a time.

feature setting groups

A Few Blog Improvements

As the screen shot shows, there are some new settings for the blog. You can now add extra content into the blog side bar in 2 locations. This is suitable for adding a blog roll or an advertisement or other content you would like to add to the sidebar of the blog.

There is also a new Tweet This link available in the blog, located in the Social Settings.

Limiting Available Features by Roles

This is another popular request in the forums, many users have asked about being able to filter the list of available features by roles. This is now possible from Administration > Advanced Tools > Feature Configuration, you will see a new link for permissions next to each feature and you can set roles allowed to use the feature. Note that it only controls what is available in the list when creating new content, it does not change a user's permissions on existing instances of a feature.

Other Stuff

  • Upgraded from TinyMCE 3.3.7 to 3.3.8
  • Upgraded from CKeditor 3.3.1 to 3.3.2
  • Upgraded to the latest MySql Connector
  • Updated Italian resources thanks to Diego Mora
  • Updated German resources thanks to Jan Aengenvort
  • the Extra Skins download file has a new skin contributed by Nitin Sharma

Bug Fixes

  • fixed a redirect bug when using the MyPage feature in folder based child sites
  • fixed an issue where the tabs did not work correctly on the user profile and manage users pages in folder based child sites
  • fixed a bug where consuming the aggregate feed from on feed manager into another instance of Feed Manager caused the page to hang
  • fixed a bug where the download link in shared files did not always work correctly in IE 8
  • a few other bug fixes and enhancements based on feedback in the forums and by email

Upgrade Notes

After the previous release, 2 people reported errors upgrading and were not able to upgrade. I believe this issue happens only with SQL 2005 if it does not have all the service paks installed. This is related to changes we made to consolidate the MS SQL layer so it could support SqlAzure. In making the needed changes we made a conscious decision to drop support for SQL 2000, so our MS SQL Data layer is designed to support SQL 2005/2008/SqlAzure, but it turns out that SQL 2005 only works if you have the service paks installed. I was already running SQL 2005 Express with all service paks, so I did not anticipate any issues with SQL 2005, but apparently there are problems if you are not up to date on service paks. As always, you should backup your site and database before upgrading, and if you are using SQL 2005 you should check whether you have the service paks installed before upgrading.

 

Nominate mojoPortal for the 2010 CMS Awards

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2351-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2351-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2351-released.aspx Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:57:00 GMT
mojoPortal and jQueryUI ThemeRoller I was recently reading the documentation for The jQuery UI CSS Framework, and it got me thinking about making it possible to style mojoPortal content instances using it. Then a user asked in the forums about being able to skin mojoPortal using jQueryUI ThemeRoller, and that got me thinking further, what if I could create a mojoPortal skin where the whole site is a jQuery UI widget and could be styled by jQuery UI themes? That would be kind of cool, wouldn't it? 

It doesn't take much to make a feature instance style as a jQuery Widget, skeleton markup like this will do the trick since the jQuery UI CSS is already included in the page:

<div class="ui-helper-reset ui-widget ">
 <h2 class="ui-widget-header ui-corner-top">Heading goes here</h2>
 <div class="ui-widget-content ui-corner-bottom">
  <p>
   This is styled with jQuery UI!
  </p>
 </div>
</div>

So I just needed a way to make mojoPortal features render that kind of skeleton and it wasn't difficult to achieve given that I had already implemented a solution for rendering the special markup needed for Artisteer designs. I just added some more options to the rendering that can be configured from the theme.skin file in a mojoPortal skin. It took me maybe 10 minutes and I had it working for proof of concept. It was much easier than implementing support for Artisteer because we already had the needed markup structure, all we really needed was an option to render the CSS class names for jQueryUI. So I made a new skin and modified the layout.master to use the same widget skeleton for the site as a whole so that the jQuery UI theme pretty much controls the look of the site. There isn't yet any themeable menu for jQuery UI, so I used the jQuery Superfish menu that we were already using in a few other skins and used neutral colors and color inheritance to make it look reasonably well with all of the jQueryUI themes, though it looks better with some than others. It would be easy for users to copy this skin and change the menu colors to match better with a specific theme. The jQuery UI CSS framework doesn't have style for all purposes and features, though, so additional CSS is needed for some features, and again I tried to make it use neutral colors so it would not clash with any of the jQuery UI themes.

I'm a ThemeRoller baby, bound to roll all over you...

ThemeRoller makes me think of James Taylor singing with a lisp! :-D

Once I had the new skin basically working it begged for a theme switcher so I could see the magic instantly of changing the jQuery UI theme. There are about 25 or so standard jQuery UI themes that can be loaded from the Google CDN (Content Delivery Network) which is where we load jQuery and jQuery UI javascript and CSS from by default. You can also make your own custom jQuery UI themes with ThemeRoller, but if you do that then you need to host the jQuery and jQuery UI files locally as documented here.


You can control the list of available themes in the theme switcher from a config setting, that you can override in user.config, and you can set the default theme in the layout.master file of the skin like this:
<portal:StyleSheetCombiner id="StyleSheetCombiner" runat="server" JQueryUIThemeName="eggplant" UseIconsForAdminLinks="false" />

The theme switcher can be removed from the layout.master or disabled or limited by roles if you don't want a user to be able to change the theme. It is basically setting a cookie based on the dropdown choice, and then setting the jQuery UI theme based on the cookie.

Maybe it is too widgety looking for most sites, but it might be useful for some kinds of sites or web applications built on mojoPortal. You could easily add a div above and/or below the menu to make room for a banner ad or some other additional content.

Anyway, it was easy and fun to implement. It is in the source code repository now but requires a build of the latest source code to work. It will be included in the next release. You can try it now on demo.mojoportal.com by going to Administration > Site Settings and choose the jqueryui-1 skin. 

So basically the new skin jqueryui-1 is like many skins in one since there are many jQueryUI themes available and you can roll your own with ThemeRoller.

Here are a few screenshots showing a few of the jQueryUI themes.

mojoportal with jquery ui eggplant theme

mojoportal with jquery ui excite bike theme

mojoportal with jquery ui dark hive theme

mojoportal with jquery ui humanity theme

So, look for this in the next release or if you are a developer you can get the latest code from the repository. I think this gives us one more useful approach to skinning mojoPortal and hope you find it useful.

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-and-jqueryui-themeroller.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-and-jqueryui-themeroller.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-and-jqueryui-themeroller.aspx Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:58:00 GMT
mojoPortal SQL CE and WebMatrix 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 WebMatrix with mojoPortal

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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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sql-ce-and-webmatrix.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sql-ce-and-webmatrix.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-sql-ce-and-webmatrix.aspx Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:38:00 GMT
SQL CE Support for Form Wizard Pro and Event Calendar Pro I'm happy to announce the availability of new packages of Form Wizard Pro and Event Calendar Pro, that include support for SQL CE. Existing customers can download the latest package from their order history under the My Account link after signing in to the site.

Event Calendar Pro

Form Wizard Pro

I've also updated the SQL CE package for mojoPortal on Codeplex to fix a couple of bugs reported recently, and I've created documentation about using SQL CE with mojoPortal. In the near future I will also create documentation to explain how to migrate a mojoPortal installation from SQL CE to SQL Server using WebMatrix.

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/sql-ce-support-for-form-wizard-pro-and-event-calendar-pro.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/sql-ce-support-for-form-wizard-pro-and-event-calendar-pro.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/sql-ce-support-for-form-wizard-pro-and-event-calendar-pro.aspx Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:55:00 GMT
Improvements to the mojoPortal Visual Studio Projects and Solutions Just a quick post to give a heads up to folks working with mojoPortal from the source code repository that the latest code in the repository has some significant improvements to the Visual Studio projects and solutions and I have updated some relevant documentation but wanted to bring it to your attention.

You can now use the Visual Studio Publish feature to package mojoPortal as described in the updated article Packaging and Deployment. I'm very happy about this because it has historically been one of those things that developers who are new to mojoPortal always stumbled with but prior to VS 2010 there was not an easy way to solve it. We've used the free UnleashIt tool to package mojoPortal since 2004 as we progressed from Visual Studio 2003 through VS 2005 and VS 2008, but improvements to Visual Studio 2010 and MsBuild made it possible to solve this problem easily so going forward will be able use Visual Studio 2010.

Also much nicer now for those who work with data layers other than MS SQL, you no longer have to change project references to use a different data layer. Now it is as easy as choosing the build configuration. I updated the old document "Setting the Data Layer in Visual Studio". I really love this since I'm always going back and forth working on different data layers.

screen shot of build configuration dropdown list

 

I think the out of the box experience with working with the source code in Visual Studio is significantly improved.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/improvements-to-the-mojoportal-visual-studio-projects-and-solutions.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/improvements-to-the-mojoportal-visual-studio-projects-and-solutions.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/improvements-to-the-mojoportal-visual-studio-projects-and-solutions.aspx Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:46:00 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.4.8 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.4.8. 

Data Layer Consolidation

The primary focus of this release is consolidating our support for SqlAzure into our main MS SQL data layer so that we don't need to maintain a separate data layer for SqlAzure. For new installations that use SqlAzure, you should just use the package for MS SQL. If you have an existing installation using SqlAzure, you should follow these steps:

  1. Upgrade using the mojoportal-2-3-4-8-sqlazure-net35-deploymentfiles.zip or mojoportal-2-3-4-8-sqlazure-net40-deploymentfiles.zip depending on whether you are using .NET 3.5 or 4.0
  2. Copy your connection string from the SqlAzureConnectionString to the MSSQLConnectionString
  3. Download mojoportal-2-3-4-8-mssql-net35-deploymentfiles.zip or mojoportal-2-3-4-8-mssql-net40-deploymentfiles.zip again depending on your .NET version.
  4. Extract the files and copy the mojoPortal.Data.dll, mojoPortal.Features.Data.dll, and WebStore.Data.dll from the MS SQL package and replace them in the /bin folder your installation
  5. Going forward we will no longer have separate packages for SqlAzure, so for future upgrades you will just use the MS SQL package

Important - We no longer support MS SQL 2000. Our MS SQL Data layer is compatible with SQL 2005/2008/SqlAzure

As I mentioned in my previous post, we also now have a package for SQL CE. I encourage you to give it a try. It would be really cool if someone out there could do some load testing of mojoPortal using SQL CE and then using MS SQL to get an idea of how well SQL CE can handle traffic. I would not expect it to do as well as MS SQL but I think it might hold up better than one might expect. My guess is it can handle more traffic than the Sqlite version of mojoPortal because Sqlite only supports 1 connection and SQL CE does have a connection pool and supports more connections.

In the near future I will be looking into using WebMatrix which is the tool that can be used to migrate from SQL CE to SQL Server. WebMatrix could also be used for light mojoPortal feature development for those who find Visual Studio to be a little scary. WebMatrix is also a pretty neat tool for trying applications from the Web App Gallery and it includes IIS Express.

New Date Picker

This release also includes a new jQuery DatePicker. You could still use the old one if you like it better by changing the default DataPickerProvider in mojoDatePicker.config in the root of the site.

jquery date time picker

I also added jQuery UI styling to the buttons in most of the included skins (except Artisteer skins since they already have button style). You can enable it in a custom skin from the theme.skin file by adding this:

<portal:mojoButton runat="server" UsejQueryButton="true" />

A Few Bug Fixes

  • fixed a bug where using Live Writer an error would happen when trying to open existing posts
  • fixed a bug in the blog where the rating was not shown even on the detail page if using excerpts
  • fixed a bug in the blog where the default comment allowed days was being ignored
  • fixed a bug in Feed Manager where the aggregate feed link did not work in child sites
  • fixed a few bugs in the Sqlite data layer where the paging logic was not correct

Updated Italian resources from Diego Mora

Updated Dutch translation from Bouke Bisschop

As always, it is a good idea to backup your site and database before upgrading.

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2348-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2348-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2348-released.aspx Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:38:00 GMT
SQL Server Compact 4.0 and mojoPortal On June 30, 2010, Scott Guthrie blogged New Embedded Database Support with ASP.NET, announcing that SQL CE 4 (SQL Server Compact Edition) would soon be available. It was officially released as a public CTP (Community Technology Preview) on July 7, 2010 with an announcement on the SQL Server Compact Team blog in a post by Ambrish Mishra entitled Introducing SQL Server Compact 4.0, the Next Gen Embedded Database from Microsoft.

This little database is big news for mojoPortal

Today I am happy to announce a preview release of mojoPortal 2.3.4.7 for SQL CE 4 and ASP.NET 4.0. This package has a pre-configured database and can be deployed under Medium Trust with .NET 4 hosting.(*) This means it is easy to deploy and use even on budget shared hosting where Medium Trust security policy is almost always used. You can download the package mojoportal-2-3-4-7-preview-sqlce-net40-deploymentfiles.zip from the bottom of this page on Codeplex. It is an MsDeploy package, so it can be installed by importing it in IIS, or you can just unzip it and install manually.

When installing web applications like mojoPortal, often one of the more challenging installation issues is setting up the database, for non-techies this is the part that people really struggle with, and even people who consider themselves fairly tech savvy can find themselves struggling to get it working unless they have a background in working with databases and understand all the nuances of connection strings and permissions. Using SQL CE 4 eliminates this challenge completely because the database is just a file on disk. There is no database software to install on the server, so it does not depend on the host having it installed, it only requires .NET 4 hosting. Since we ship a database file already populated with initial data, it is basically zero configuration for the database, you don't have to do anything, it just works.

I'm sure some of you are aware that mojoPortal has supported Sqlite for a long time, and it is also a zero configuration, file based database that many people like a lot. However, it has never worked under Medium Trust and if your site traffic starts to grow there is not an easy way to migrate the data to a more robust database.

  SQL CE Sqlite
Zero config deployment yes yes
Backing up the files backs up the database yes yes
Works in Medium Trust yes no
A supported migration path to a more robust database yes to SQL Express/Server/SqlAzure no convenient migration solutions that I know of

 

Now, I'm not yet sure yet how easy the migration of mojoPortal from SQL CE to SQL Server will be. Scott Gu mentioned that they will be shipping migration tools that will make it straight forward to migrate the tables and data from SQL CE to SQL Express, SQL Server or SQL Azure. However, since SQL CE does not support stored procedures and we do use them in the SQL Server data layer for mojoPortal, it means we will also need to make migration scripts available to install the latest stored procedures into the database after migration. So, in theory, the migration process will be to first use the tool that Microsoft will ship to migrate the tables and data, then run the scripts we will make available that contain the stored procedures for a given version of mojoPortal, then you would just deploy the mojoPortal version for SQL Server over your existing mojoPortal for SQL CE installation and set your connection string for the new database. Once the migration tools ship I will verify the process and create documentation with the migration steps.

In summary, I think that the SQL CE package for mojoPortal will make it easy for you to stand up impressive new web sites quickly and easily in budget hosting with the possibility to upscale to a more robust database platform later without too much difficulty. I would say that if you are putting up a site that you are expecting to grow traffic quickly, then you should probably just start out using SQL Express, SQL Server, or SQL Azure. But, how many sites that you put online for your customers really get a lot of traffic? If the answer is not many, then you may find SQL CE is the best choice for many of your projects, reducing costs and time to deployment.

Screen shot of mojoportal system information showing SQL CE

 

Top Secret Early Access! :-D

 
Now you may wonder how I managed to have a version of mojoPortal for SQL CE ready so soon after SQL CE 4 was released. The answer is that I had early access to SQL CE 4.0 and access to a bunch of good folks on the IIS and SQL Server teams to help me with guidance and questions and was also able to give them feedback while they were working on this release.
 
Back in early March I was contacted by Jonathan Hawkins of Microsoft and was invited to an online meeting where they told me what they were planning for SQL CE and why it might be beneficial for mojoPortal to support it, I of course was very excited about it.  At the time the alpha bits of SQL CE 4 were not quite ready but I was provided with good help and work arounds that would enable me to work on support for SQL CE using the 3.5 version so I could get started without waiting. So I went ahead at that time and implemented it for the core mojoPortal features (it took me about a week) and managed to get it working as proof of concept. Once that was done I moved on to work on other things not knowing how long it would be until the alpha bits of SQL CE 4.0 would be ready. Finally on June 2nd I got an email that the alpha bits were available, but I was knee deep in other projects right at the time, so it was around June 27-28 when I finally tried the new bits and verified it worked under Medium Trust. Then when Scott Gu blogged about it on June 30, I realized it was going to be public very soon so I scrambled to complete the SQL CE data layer for the rest of the mojoPortal features (except for WebStore and my Add On Products). It took about 1 week to finish that work and by Friday July 9 I was ready to produce a package but decided to wait until Monday to blog about it.
 
So here we are, it is Monday, and I've uploaded the package on Codeplex, at the bottom of our current release. I've done sanity testing of all the features but not exhaustive testing of every configuration of every feature, so it is possible and perhaps likely there are still a few bugs here and there in the data layer, after all this is our newest data layer and therefore the least tested of all our data layers at this point. That is why I'm calling it a "Preview" release, and I hope you will give it a try and report any problems you may encounter. I will fix them quickly.
 
I'd like to thank all the folks at Microsoft for giving me this opportunity to work closely with them and get early access to the technology, and I especially thank Jonathan Hawkins, Parasuraman Narasimhan, Radhakrishnan Srikanth, Mohammad Imran Siddique, Himadri Sarkar, and Ambrish Mishra for all their help. It has really been a great experience for me getting to work with these guys and do something with mojoPortal that fit well with cutting edge work these guys have done on SQL CE. I really think they have solved one of the long standing problems in ASP.NET web deployment. For low traffic sites or quick prototyping or proof of concept deployment, or just low budget web sites, this is really going to reduce friction and make it easy to put a site up in minutes. 
 

Technical Notes

 
It turned out well that I waited for SQL CE 4 before implementing all the mojoPortal features. When I implemented the core features I only had SQL CE 3.5 to work with so in places where I needed to select a page of data, I was having to use some awkward SQL syntax to make it work, it did work but it was difficult to read and write. One of the coolest new things in SQL CE 4.0 is the new syntax for selecting a page of data like this:
 
SELECT * FROM mp_GeoCountry ORDER BY Name OFFSET 10 ROWS FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS ONLY;
 
It would be great if someday SQL Server supports an easier paging syntax, as it is still awkward to get a page of data efficiently in SQL Server, though it is a little easier than SQL CE 3.5 since SQL Server at least gives us stored procedures which provides a few additional strategies for getting a page of data. Anyway, you can guess I like this new syntax, it is much more convenient. Probably since I've worked with so many open source database platforms in mojoPortal, and have learned the major syntax differences between them, and really most of them have had easier ways to get a page of data than SQL Server for a long time, I'm glad to see something that makes a bit more sense. In a nutshell, MySql, PostgreSql, and Sqlite all support the LIMIT x OFFSET y syntax, Firebird has an interesting twist with SELECT FIRST x SKIP y, and SQL Server has always had the SELECT TOP (x) syntax but no equivalent to OFFSET, and this makes us have to jump through syntax hoops to get any efficient way to grab a page of data. So at the moment, in my view, SQL CE 4 has at least one cool syntax thing better than its big brother SQL Server even if it is not as capable in handling large traffic.
 

The mojoPortal Query Tool can talk to SQL CE

The above screen shot shows that the built in mojoPortal query tool can be used with SQL CE.

No need to install it in the GAC

One of the interesting things to me is that it seems like SQL CE 4 must be all managed code, that is, I think it must be implemented purely in .NET. The reasons I think this is because it seems that the database engine must be completely contained in System.Data.SqlServerCe.dll, and this dll just needs to be in the /bin folder, it doesn't even need to be installed in the GAC (Global Assembly Cache). The main reason why Sqlite doesn't work under Medium Trust is because it does some P/Invoke against a native dll written in C. To be allowed to do that the managed dll for Sqlite would have to be installed in the GAC. Since SQL CE can work without being installed in the GAC, I can guess it does not do any P/Invoke and is all managed code. Someone asked about this in the comments of Scott Gu's post, and while he did not specifically answer it, he did mention in comments that they are looking at enabling use of SQL CE in Silverlight which I think lends more evidence to it being fully managed code. I could be wrong though, possibly there are changes in code access security in .NET 4 that makes it possible to use without installing in the GAC.

The idea of being able to use SQL CE as a client side database in Silverlight is pretty compelling to me, so I'll be keeping my eyes open for future announcements. I had once done a proof of concept where I managed to use Sqlite as a client side database in Silverlight via Google Gears, but it had a few issues because database calls had to be marshalled back and forth from javascript to Silverlight via the Html Bridge. It would be much nicer to be able to use SQL CE directly from Silverlight. That would enable some really interesting client side scenarios.

(*) Actually I think SQL CE 4 could probably be used under 3.5 .NET but not under Medium Trust, it requires .NET 4 to work under Medium Trust, and the mojoPortal package for SQL CE is only going to be available for .NET 4.

Consolidation of Data Layers

At the moment we have a separate data layer for SqlAzure, SQL Server, and SQL CE. Back in March when I first began work on SQL CE support in mojoPortal, I blogged Anyone Still Using SQL 2000?, to guage how many people still use it. Going forward we are dropping support for SQL 2000 and then the MS SQL data layer will be modified to make it compatible with SqlAzure, and then we will eliminate the separate data layer for SqlAzure. I "think" the previous release of mojoPortal 2.3.4.5 was still compatible with SQL 2000, but the latest code in the repository is not compatible because we have changed from ntext to nvarchar(max) which is not supported in SQL 2000. So the next release of mojoPortal for sure will not be compatible with SQL 2000. Going forward we will support SQL 2005/2008/SqlAzure and SQL CE.

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https://www.mojoportal.com/sql-server-compact-40-and-mojoportal.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/sql-server-compact-40-and-mojoportal.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/sql-server-compact-40-and-mojoportal.aspx Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:15:00 GMT
Organizing the mojoPortal Community The mojoPortal community has been gradually growing along with the evolution of the project since late 2004. We have had quite a few contributors over the years such as Dean Brettle, who implemented NeatUpload, Joseph Hill, who implemented the initial version of Feed Manager (later improved by Walter Ferrari) as well as the initial data layers for PostgreSql and Sqlite, Rob Henry, who implemented the Survey, Christian Fredh, who implemented the Poll, and Kevin Needham who implemented the content workflow, and many others who contributed various little improvements over the years. You can find a list of contributors on our developer page for more detail. All the contributions and involvement have been pretty organic, we have never really organized project teams or a holistic strategy to grow and support the community. mojoPortal is now the 3rd most popular CMS on the ASP.NET stack and we are reaching a critical mass of popularity that I think requires us to get a little more organized. We are beginning to see more people helping out in the forums and more and more people are offering to help with development, but it is challenging for me to manage the community all by myself.

Today I would like to announce that Joe Davis will be stepping up to take on new responsibilities in the project as Community Manager. Joe has been a huge help to myself and the community already in the forums. He has helped a lot of people with skinning questions, installation and configuration questions, and lots of implementation tips and tricks to help others achieve their goals with mojoPortal. Joe mentioned to me a long time ago that one of the things that drew him toward mojoPortal was the friendly forums, we don't make people feel stupid for asking questions, there are no stupid questions. This is not to say that every question gets answered, most of them do but not all of them. Sometimes people ask questions for which we don't know the answer, or there isn't a good answer that comes to mind, or the amount of time required to answer it would be too much effort, or what I playfully would describe as "Wizard of Oz" questions. But by and large if people ask reasonable well articulated questions and we are able to help we do help. In his participation in the forums, Joe Davis has been exemplary in putting a friendly face on our forums and making people feel welcome. I mean just look at his mug shot, if you lookup "nice guy" in the dictionary there should be a mug shot of Joe Davis!

Joe Davis i7MEDIA

As Community Manager, Joe Davis will be able to help with forum moderation and logistics of managing the community, and he will collaborate with me on strategy to promote community engagement and how best to organize teams and contribution guidelines to facilitate development help offered by the community. As such we are in the beginning stages of working on the strategy and will be communicating more about that as our ideas begin to take shape. For now I just want to thank and congratulate Joe for stepping up to take on this role as a Core Team member and Community Manager.

Joe's company i7MEDIA provides high quality mojoPortal hosting and design services.

I also want to officially welcome Katherine Moss, who has joined our team as an Accessibility Advisor. Katherine will be instrumental in helping us keep mojoPortal accessible for users who use assistive technology such as screen readers. She will be helping with testing and feedback of various mojoPortal features in terms of their accessibility.

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/organizing-the-mojoportal-community.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/organizing-the-mojoportal-community.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/organizing-the-mojoportal-community.aspx Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:28:22 GMT
The Miraculous Resurrection of Novell Forge svn and the Recovery of Source Code History If you read this blog on a regular basis you may recall that back on May 12 I blogged Caught Off Guard Novell Forge svn is Gone!

I had missed the email and had not known that Novell Forge was going away as of March 2010. So as it was, the Novell Forge svn server had already been running way past the deadline when I found it was down on May 11 and 12. That morning I googled and found the notice about it. So we quickly moved to Codeplex with a new Mercurial repository which I have since found to be a joy to use. Ultimately I felt the whole situation had been a blessing in disguise because I like Mecurial so much better than Subversion.

Then a few weeks later on June 6, a surprising thing happened, there was a post in the forums where a user said he just got the latest version of the code from svn. As it turned out, the svn repository at Novell Forge was back online!

So the next morning I did some research and found this post and this linked post about how to get svn history into Mercurial. It seemed pretty straightforward so I kicked the process off wondering if it would really work given we have history in the svn repository going back to 2005. The process started working, it scanned the repository and started counting down from 6000 plus change sets that I guess it was converting to Mercurial change sets. So that was the morning of June 7, 2010 and it finally finished running this morning sometime before I got up. Today is June 28 so it ran for about 21 days. The conversion process was surprisingly robust in that a few nights (including the screen shot below where it was getting close to finishing) it would lose its connection with the server and stop running, but I would kick it off again and it would scan and then pick up where it left off. The process was killed one night because my computer went into hibernate mode an would not wake up without powering it off, and another night a forced reboot by windows update killed it, but every time it managed to work again and pick up where it left off.

hg convert screen shot

So now I have the ability to browse change history going back to the beginning of our svn repository using TortoiseHG with a Mercurial repository on my local machine.

TortoiseHG repository browser

I'm kind of glad we started with just the latest code in a clean repository at Codeplex because this much history takes up a lot of space on disk, but now it is nice that I will be able to have an archive the source code history on CD ROM.

I have to say that I am pleasantly amazed with Mercurial and TortoiseHG!

Anyway, thought I would share the happy ending!

 

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https://www.mojoportal.com/the-miraculous-resurrection-of-novell-forge-svn-and-the-recovery-of-source-code-history.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/the-miraculous-resurrection-of-novell-forge-svn-and-the-recovery-of-source-code-history.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/the-miraculous-resurrection-of-novell-forge-svn-and-the-recovery-of-source-code-history.aspx Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:08:42 GMT
mojoPortal 2.3.4.5 Released I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.4.5, available now from our download page.

What's New

  • New Bing Map Feature
  • New alternate site search features allow you to use Bing or Google for site search in addition to or instead of the internal Lucene search engine
  • Upgraded to the latest version of AjaxControlToolkit
  • Upgraded from TinyMCE .3.6 to 3.3.7
  • Upgraded from CKeditor 3.3 to 3.3.1
  • Added a required checkbox if a registration agreement is used
  • Updated Italian resources from Diego Mora
  • Fixed a bug introduced in version 2.3.4.4 where if you were using excerpts in the blog, the read more link was malformed
  • Fixed a bug introduced in version 2.3.4.4 where the FeedManager page size setting was ignored
  • Fixed some more places where we had not implemented the new TimeZone system and the old hard coded offsets were still being used
  • Fixed a bug where the google 404 enhancement gives a script error in IE, it is now disabled in IE
  • Fixed a bug in the pgsql data layer for the blog that caused an error on viewing blog categories
  • Other minor enhancements and fixes for things reported or requested in the forums since the last release

Bing Map Screen shot

There were also a few additions to CSS in included skins that you will need to add to custom skins, see this sticky thread for details.

Upgrades for Add On Products

Because of the upgrade to the latest version of AjaxControlToolkit, there are also corresponding compatibility updates for Event Calendar Pro and Form Wizard Pro because they must use the same version of AjaxControlToolkit as mojoPortal. Existing customers can download the updates from their purchase history. We have officially changed our upgrade policy, originally the policy was free upgrades for 1 year after purchasing our add on products, but now our policy is free upgrades for the life of the product and this is retro active to all existing customers. If you've never purchased our add on products now is a good time to consider adding them to your site, visit the store to learn more about our add on products for mojoPortal

Online User Group Meeting

Don't forget to sign up for our free online user group meeting coming up this Wednesday June 23, 2010 8 PM Eastern Daylight Time on Yamisee.

mojoportal user group ad

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https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2345-released.aspx joe.audette@gmail.com (Joe Audette) https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2345-released.aspx https://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2345-released.aspx Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:46:00 GMT