Posts in Category: Releases

mojoPortal 2.2.9.5 Released

I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.2.9.5, available now on the download page.

This release is primarily a bug fix release but it does have some new things.

Whats New?

A new option in Page Settings, "Show Home Crumb", adds a home link to the breadcrumbs when "Show Beadcrumbs" is enabled. Thanks to Damien White for help with this.

Added a setting to the blog to control whether google maps are displayed in Excerpt view. Previously they were displayed, but now they are not by default, but can be displayed if the setting is enabled.

Added a feature on the Member List page to allow Admins to lookup users by ip address

Implemented a Discount feature in WebStore that allows defining discount codes supporting percentage and dollar amount discounts with various rules. The user can apply the discount by entering the discount code on the cart page. The apply discount feature is only visible on the cart page if there are currently active discounts.

Forum Improvements: added an email icon to make it more obvious that you can subscribe to forum post notification emails. Added the forum description to the forum post page so that its easier for users to remember which forum they are in and what the forum description says. For example on this site it helps users remember to post certain details like OS, db platform, and version of mojoPortal when reporting bugs.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed bug in url re-writer where paths could be re-written incorrectly in folder based child sites if the folder name was a substring of a page name. 
  • Fixed broken background image in css for one of the skins.
  • Fixed broken image urls on MyPage when used in folder based sub sites.
  • Fixed bug where an error would occur when removing users form roles under SQLite.
  • Fixed broken folder image url in forum UserThreads.aspx.
  • Fixed an issue with the css handler incorrectly resolving site id for folder based sites.
  • Remove unused files as these cause errors when people try to use the release packages in Visual Studio. I still think people should use the source code for development not the release files but people keep trying to use release files so I'm trying to make that possible.
  • Fixed a bug in the MS SQL install/upgrade scripts where one procedure was not compatible with SQL 2000.

Upgrade Notes

If you are upgrading from 2.2.9.2, you can skip uploading the /ClientScript folder as nothing has changed there.

 

Gravatar Joe Audette is the founder of the mojoPortal project and was the primary developer until February 2017.

mojoPortal 2.2.9.2 Released

I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.2.9.2 available now on our download page.

Whats New?

Easy Woopra Integration

I mentioned Woopra in this previous post, its an awesome web analytics and real time traffic monitoring tool. Now its easy to use Woopra with your mojoPortal site. Just sign up for woopra and install their software on your home or office computer. Once they approve your site, you enable the script in mojoPortal from the Site Settings page as shown in this screen shot:

screen shot of woopra setitng in mojoportal

If you are using a custom skin, then you also need to add the woopra control to the layout.master file in your skin, just before the closing </form> tag like this:

<portal:Woopra ID="woopra11" runat="server" />
</form>

All the included skins in mojoPortal already have this. There was a long waiting period when I first signed up for woopra but lately people have been telling me they are getting approved within a few days of signing up for woopra. Its agreat service, I highly recommend it.

WebStore Improvements

We've added the ability to set the quantity when adding items to the cart from the product detail page and we've made it possible to update quantities directly on the cart. So previously if you wanted to buy me more than one beer, you had to add the beers to the cart one at a time, but now its very easy to be generous :-).

Last release we moved reporting out of WebStore and created a common set of reporting tables in the core so that the same reporting system can be used across ecommerce features. Since then we've begun fleshing out more reports, there are a number of new reports this release and even more to come later.

Miscellaneous

Japanese resource files thanks to Suzuki Teku, this brings us p to 18 languages!

A new setting in Page Settings for "Inlcude In Site Map", this was requested recently by a community member, we already had a setting for "Include In Menu" but that setting also excluded the page from the site map, so this new setting allows creating pages that don't appear in the menu but do appear in the site map.

Canonical Urls in the meta data, this is a new thing agreed upon by the big search engines so that if a page is available from more than one url the preferred url can be specified by a meta link with rel=canonical. This helps make sure the urls that is shown in search results is the correct one. In mojoPortal we haven't really had problems with this for content system pages because they generally only have one url, but in the past I would see some dupplicate warnings in google webmaster tools about my forum pages because the same page could be seen with query string paramters in different sequence and google would think they were duplicated pages when it was really the same page with just a variation in the sequence of parameters in the url. So the forums now specify the preferred url with the preferred sequence of parameters. We also add cononical urls to the main content pages but its really probably not much impact there since there hasn't been problems with duplicated pages with different urls.

One customer recently asked about being able to use separate read/write connection strings with MySql so they could use MySql replicatin as a scaling strategy. I don't know much about using this approach, it seems it could be problematic unless the replication is instantaneous. Nevertheless, I did the grunt work of going through all the MySql data classes and making it possible to use different connection strings for read and write operations. Bascially I made all the read methods get the read connection string and all the write methos use the write connection string. If you don't specify a write connection string in Web.config/user.config then it just uses the read connection string, so the logic is like this:

private static String GetReadConnectionString()
{
return ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MySqlConnectionString"];

}

private static String GetWriteConnectionString()
{
if (ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MySqlWriteConnectionString"] != null)
{
return ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MySqlWriteConnectionString"];
}

return ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MySqlConnectionString"];
}

So, if you want to use a different connection string for write operations just add a connection strng setting with the key MySqlWriteConnectionString. I'd be interested to hear back from anyone who does use this approach with MySql. I don't know if the same scaling strategy is commonly used for MS SQL, Postgre SQL or Firebird, but I could make the same changes for those data layers if people tell me it would be helpful.

Event Calendar Pro 0.0.1.3 Released

Coinciding with this new release of mojoPortal is a new release of Event Calendar Pro. It now uses the new commerce reporting system so ticket sales are reflected in commerce reports and user purchase history is consolidated in the My Account/User Profile page. Note also that previously there was a module setting for currency but this now uses the currency setting from Site Settings. Also fixed a bug on the event detail page where the correct currency was not always displayed. Existing customers can download the new version from their Order History under My Account. Because Event Calendar Pro depends on the new reporting system you must upgrade to mojoPortal 2.2.9.2 before upgrading to the new version of Event Calendar Pro.

Form Wizard Pro 0.0.0.4 Released

This is just a minor bug fix release of Form Wizard Pro. There was a bug in the data export where the submission date for the forms was not correct, all the rows were suing the submit date of the first row. This is now fixed. Existing customers can download the new version from their Order History under My Account.

Upgrade Notes for mojoPortal

If you are upgrading from mojoPortal 2.2.8.6, then you can skip uploading the /ClientScript folder as nothing in that folder has changed. Its a large folder so leaving it out can save a lot of upload time.

 

Gravatar Joe Audette is the founder of the mojoPortal project and was the primary developer until February 2017.

mojoPortal 2.2.8.6 Released

Whats New

French translation of resource files by Thomas Nicolaïdès and Bernard Cortesi. This brings us up to 17 languages that mojoPortal has been translated into!

Updated Danish Translation by Kurt Greve

Upgraded FCKeditor from 2.6.4 beta to 2.6.4 final release.

Upgraded NeatUpload to version 1.3.8

Upgraded to the newest version of NeatHtml, NeatHtml is a tool for protecting against cross site scripting. This release fixed a bug where sometime un-trusted content would be visually clipped in WebKit based browsers like Chrome and Safari. We use it in the forums and in the blog comments.

Moved commerce reporting out of WebStore and into the core. This is a preliminary step so that we can aggregate commerce reporting across features at the site level. This will also eliminate the need for a lot of duplication of effort that would occur if we implemented reports in each commerce enabled feature.  My next 2 add on products will be e-commerce features, Fund Raiser Pro and Web Invoice Pro, so I'm thinking ahead and implementing commerce reporting as a core feature so I only need to implement reporting in one place and each feature will push its own data into the common reporting system. Event Calendar Pro for example is already a commerce enabled feature since it can sell tickets and soon it will have the ability to push its data into the reporting system. I still have a lot more reports to develop, but the point is I only want to develop one set of them.

Implemented a separate skin setting for MyPage. This was requested recently in the forums and it was a good idea since the layout needs of MyPage are not the same as for the main content system.

Implemented a Web.config setting to disable the search index. While mojoPortal works well in Medium Trust, there can be some problems with the search index if you host multiple sites on a single installation under Medium Trust so this provides an option if you can't get it working correctly you can disable it.

Added an anchor to the ModuleTitle control so that if you have a bunch of modules on a page you can easily create links that jump right to a module with #Modulex, where x is the module id. This was also a recent community request.

Fixed a recently introduced bug in the Shared Files module where the upload controls were displayed to users who did not have upload permission.

Added better error handling to the SiteMap to prevent errors if invalid urls are entered manually. Urls are generally auto-suggested but users can override the suggestion and put in something invalid. With great power comes great responsibility, but at least with the better error handling we can keep it from causing major problems with the menu when a user puts in something invalid. We also added a regular expression validator that checks for common mistakes and typos but it doesn't prevent all possible bad urls.

Fixed a bug in the url re-writer that caused a problem in folder based sub sites. In folder based sub sites, you can have an extensionless root url like /folder1/ if you actually create a folder named folder1 and put an empty text file there named Default.aspx, but there was a bug in the url re-writer that prevented this from working. There are components available for IIS to enable extensionless urls but this approach works without any IIS add ons.

A Shout Out To Our Consulting Partners

My own small company Source Tree Solutions, LLC has only limited availability for consulting engagements. I am trying to shift my business to product sales of add on features for mojoPortal so that I can have more freedom to work on the things I think will best advance the project. Consulting will always be a part of my business but I am very selective about projects I will take on myself and prefer to be a consultant to the consultants, so I am fostering a Consulting Partners Program to build a network of reliable consultants I can refer customers to and so that there are other qualified developers I have a relationship with and could pull in as additional resources to meet tight deadlines on larger projects. So far we have 5 companies in the program.

Summit IT Solutions

Summit IT Solutions uses mojoPortal extensively in their work, providing custom feature development, skinning and hosting.

Abertech

Abertech provides custom solutions and feature development based on mojoPortal and also helps maintain the Italian translation files.

Turbo Front Office

Turbo Front Office is a Dutch company that can handle all technical aspects of your mojoPortal site you can focus on the content. They also manage the mojoPortal Dutch Community site.

Samar Software Samar Software provides services for mojoPortal and also maintains the Persian translation files and manages the mojoPortal Persian Language Community Site.

talesis100b

TALESIS is our newest partner in Paris France, and helps maintain the French translation files for mojoPortal.

Gravatar Joe Audette is the founder of the mojoPortal project and was the primary developer until February 2017.

Event Calendar Pro 0.0.1.0 Released

I'm happy to announce the release of Event Calendar Pro 0.0.1.0 a premium event publishing system for mojoPortal. This is a significant upgrade and is free to existing customers who have already purchased Event Calendar Pro. Just sign into the site and visit our Store, click the "Order History" link to get to your order history and you will be able to download the new version using the same page where you originally downloaded. For new customers pricing starts at $99 for a single installation license. You can also try it on our demo site at demo.mojoportal.com. This release requires mojoPortal 2.2.8.3, so you should upgrade to the latest mojoPortal before installing or upgrading to the new version of Event Calendar Pro.

Whats New?

  • Ability to take registrations or sell tickets to a course or class. If you create a recurring event, for example a weekly course that runs every Tuesday for 6 weeks, you can specify that the ticket/registration includes the recurrences.
  • If you have customers that pay by check or other means in person, you can enable a "Will Pay Later" button so users can register for the event but pay upon arrival. You can optionally limit the roles allowed to use this feature so for example you could create a role named "Trusted Customers" and add your trusted customers to that role and then limit use of the "Will Pay Later" button to members of that role.
  • You can color code events differently on the Month View using our new color picker.
  • You can customize the text on the ticket purchase/register link per event, so instead of the default "Register for this event", you could put "Register for this class" or whatever you like.
  • There is a new setting to specify the default Country and State for ticket orders/registration to make it more convenient if most of your customers are local.
  • Ability to specify the end date for recurrences.
  • Location Alias in case you want the location label to be different than the location you use to get the google map to work.
  • Meta keywords and description per event.
  • Google Map settings are now per event rather than global.
  • Addition of a Summary field so you can have a more brief description of the event on the List View and Ticket Purchase/Registration page.
  • This version now supports all 5 databases that mojoPortal supports, including MS SQL, MySql, PostgreSql, Firebird Sql, and SQLite

monthview screen shot

event editor screen shot

color picker screen shot

Gravatar Joe Audette is the founder of the mojoPortal project and was the primary developer until February 2017.

mojoPortal 2.2.8.3 Released

I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.2.8.3, available now on the download page.

In addition to bug fixes for things reported in the Forums since the last release, highlights of this release are as follows:

  • Upgrade to FCKeditor 2.6.4 which includes a new spelling checker that works out of the box, a long wished for feature.
  • A new set of translation files for Danish language thanks to Kurt Greve
  • Blog improvements, an option whether to hide the URL input for comments and an option to require users to authenticate in order to post comments.
  • New sorting levels for products and offers in WebStore to allow better control over sorting on the product list.
  • A new CountryStateSetting control. I needed this for an improvement to Event Calendar Pro in order to specify a default country and state for ticket orders, but I built it into the core so it can be re-used in other features.

spell checker screenshot

Note that the spell checker uses a free ad supported web service. Its very useful but you probably would not want to use this if your web page contains top secret content. It can be disabled from a configuration file for that kind of scenario but I think most users will be glad to have this. It is also possible to purchase a paid account with no ads or a version that can run on your own server, though I'm not sure what the integration steps are for those scenarios.

Gravatar Joe Audette is the founder of the mojoPortal project and was the primary developer until February 2017.