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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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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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:

• A & C Welding
• The Burton D. Morgan Foundation
• Cardinal Retirement Village
• Cohen & Company Certified Accountants Career Site
• Church of Our Saviour Episcopal - Akron Ohio
• Leadership Akron
• Qylex IT
• Roderick Linton Belfance LLP Attorneys at Law
• Rock and Recovery - Entertaining and Meaningful Music with Positive Messaging
• Summit Education Initiative
• Soprema Liquids - Complete Waterproofing Solutions
• Weathervane Playhouse
• Boys and Girls Club of the Western Reserve

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

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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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.

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

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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This month's mojoPortal sightings include Clearview, the UK's leading regional glazing industry magazine.

and Total Waste Managers Ltd

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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