Hundreds of thousands of websites use accessiBe to help with ADA compliance and web accessibility, so with mojoPortal, you have a Bonafide system in place to help you make your mojoPortal site perfect for everyone!

Benefits & value for your site:

• Fully automated remediation within 48 hours
• Visible accessibility statement on site
• 24-hour automated ongoing compliance scans
• Monthly accessibility audit sent to the inbox
• Extension of market reach
• Enhancement of brand reputation

Integrating mojoPortal with accessiBe

It is super easy to integrate your mojoPortal site with accessiBe. All you need to do is copy the accessWidget that accessiBe gives you to the "Custom Content" section of Site Settings, click the Save button and you're done! Here's a screenshot of the area in Site Settings:

Get Started with accessiBe Today!

Integrating mojoPortal with accessiBe is a game-changer in web accessibility, simplifying and streamlining the process of becoming accessible and compliant using AI, machine learning, and computer vision.

Get started now!

I've also created some new documentation.

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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Installation and Configuration

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

Developer Series

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

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

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

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

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

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The new parts for me are the Expression Screen Capture and Expression Encoder. I was heavily involved with streaming Windows Media Video years ago like 2003-2005 ish but the new Silverlight technology is so much nicer today. Anyway, the Expression Screen Capture tool is like Camtasia and Wink and other screen capture tools but its pretty darn easy to use and the Expression Encoder can encode the resulting screen capture into various formats, especially .wmv that is optimised for Silverlight, but also formats like mp4 suitable for upload to YouTube or Facebook etc.

I've found some issues with the audio getting out of sync with the video on YouTube but don't really know if its some fault of the mp4 file I upload or the conversion process to Flash that YouTube does. Some of the videos I uploaded to YouTube are better than others in this regard, but the Silverlight versions are consistently good.

There is even free hosting for some Silverlight files up to 1 GB total on http://silverlight.live.com/ and I'm serving my Silveright training videos from there. Expression Encoder can generate an html page to host the video and its easy enough to modify it to point to the video on the silverlight.live.com site.

So I spent the last 2 days doing some screen capture tutorials for mojoPortal using these new tools. For most of the files I uploaded alternatives on YouTube that don't require the Silverlight plugin, but as mentioned a few of them have audio video sync problems but not real bad. Best if you can watch them using Silverlight though and one of them, the Introduction to the mojoPortal Source Code is 20 minutes long so it was too long to upload to YouTube as they limit you to 10 minutes.

Here is a list of the video tutorials I made in the last 2 days:

• Using The Content Template System
• Creating Custom Content Templates
• Using the Content Workflow System
• Video Tour of mojoPortal included skins
• Introduction to the mojoPortal Source Code
• Musicians Can Sell Their MP3 Files Online Using mojoPortal

I was long overdue to make some more video tutorials and having these nice new tools inspired me to spend a few days on it and it was kind of fun. Hope you find them useful and informative. Now back to regularly scheduled development ;-)

How To Filter Out Un-Wanted Content From Feed Manager

by Walter Ferrari of Abertech. Big thanks to Walter! He not only helped with major improvements to the Feed Manager recently but also is willing to help with documentation which is much appreciated.

CSS - Its All About Understanding Selectors

an article I wrote today to demystify CSS a little for those trying to learn how to skin mojoPortal. Once you master CSS Selectors it becomes much easier.

Enjoy!

Hello World - Developer Quick Start

The article has a zip with sample code you can drop in and start hacking on with a few simple steps as indicated in the article. It shows how you can use a plain old UserControl or a UserControl that inherits from SiteModuleControl. Both examples also illustrate the use of the ASP.NET UpdatePanel for ajax postbacks.

Enjoy!

So today I wanted to implement an Ad Rotator so I could alternate the banner ad on mojoPortal.com to switch between my add for Event Calendar Pro and Form Wizard Pro. There is a built in AdRotator control in ASP.NET, so I read a few articles about it, here and here. In those articles they suggest click tracking by using a redirect page, but I wanted to track it in google Analytics since we already have it integrated in mojoPortal. To do this I need to add an onclick to the rendered link to call the tracking code and then navigate to the href. So an example onclick for tracking is like this:

onclick="mojoPageTracker._trackPageview('/EventCalendarProBanner.aspx');window.open(this.href,'_self');return false;"

This just tracks a made up url (/EventCalendarProBanner.aspx) before navigating to the linked product page.

The ASP.NET AdRotator control can consume an xml file in this format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Advertisements>
<Ad>
<ImageUrl>~/images/Contoso_ad.gif</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl>http://www.contoso.com</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>Ad for Contoso.com</AlternateText>
</Ad>
<Ad>
<ImageUrl>~/images/ASPNET_ad.gif</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl>http://www.asp.net</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>Ad for ASP.NET Web site</AlternateText>
</Ad>
</Advertisements>
 

But I wanted to add another property to store my OnClick code, so my new format is like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Advertisements>
<Ad>
<ImageUrl>~/Data/Sites/1/skins/mojosite-brightside/eventcalpro-banner.gif</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl>~/event-calendar-pro-offer.aspx</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>A better event calendar for mojoportal</AlternateText>
<OnClientClick>mojoPageTracker._trackPageview('/EventCalendarProBanner.aspx');window.open(this.href,'_self');return false;</OnClientClick>
</Ad>
<Ad>
<ImageUrl>~/Data/Sites/1/skins/mojosite-brightside/formwizardpro-leaderboard.gif</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl>~/form-wizard-pro-single-installation-license-offer.aspx</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>Form Wizard Pro - Easy Forms for mojoPortal</AlternateText>
<OnClientClick>mojoPageTracker._trackPageview('/FormWizardProBanner.aspx');window.open(this.href,'_self');return false;</OnClientClick>
</Ad>
</Advertisements>

Since I don't really have access to the internal workings of the ASP.NET AdRotator, I decided to have a look at the source code for the Mono project implementation of this control. I downloaded the 3 files AdRotator.cs, AdCreatedEventArgs.cs, and AdCreatedEventHandler.cs, added them into my mojoPortal.Web.Controls project and changed the namespace so it wouldn't clash with the built in ASP.NET version. I had to modify a few small things where it was using some internal Mono stuff but not much. I added the OnClientClick property to AdCreatedEventArgs.cs and added on line of code to the render method of AdRotator.cs:

if (e.OnClientClick != null && e.OnClientClick.Length > 0)
w.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Onclick, e.OnClientClick);

I add it to my layout.master (Master Page) and configure it to read the xml file with my ads:

<mp:AdRotator id="ads1" runat="server" AdvertisementFile="~/App_Data/mojoads.ads" />

And voila, it works and only took about 20 minutes to implement.

Setting Up Your Projects - has notes about how to work with mojoPortal from our repository and your own code from your own repository.

Using The Installation System - talks about how to leverage the mojoPortal installation system to install your own features.

Using The Task System - discusses a little framework we have for managing long running tasks on a background thread. You can implement your own and plug them in. I built it for sending the news letter emails. It can chug through a long list effectively because it can resume even if the thread is killed by recycling the app pool. When the app starts again it picks up where it left off.

To celebrate (boy I really know how to party!), I finally got around to making a video tutorial covering the basics of using mojoPortal.

mojoPortal User Guide Volume 1

One of my resolutions for the new year is to do more video tutorials.
Another is to make another batch of good looking skins. Using free designs I made 10 skins in 10 days several months ago. I still have a bunch of designs I dowloaded before that I didn't get to, I just need to find another week or 10 days to throw at them.

I'm also getting very close to making a release, I know I've been saying that for weeks but some things have gone slower than anticipated. Newsletter is a complex feature. If I don't finish it soon I'll just go ahead and make a release without it as there is lots of other good stuff available now in svn that needs to be set free. Of course anyone working with the source code is smart to be getting the code from svn trunk and not waiting for me to get around to making releases.

If there are particular topics you would like to see tutorials about please let me know. Also any feedback about this one is appreciated. It was just a quick improvised one. I actually did a better longer one first only to realize at the end it wasn't capturing audio. So when I did it again I kept it a little brief.

Extending mojoPortal 

I also added some new ones:

Setup and Upgrade for Custom Featues
Making Custom Features Searchable
Module Settings - A Developer Convenience
Adding Custom Items to The Administration Menu