I made some progress tonight converting from Paul Wilson's MasterPages to the built in ASP.NET 2.0 MasterPages. I got the Default.aspx page converted and working on Windows, it was pretty straightforward given that Paul modelled his version from early specs for the real thing. Now it will just be a machanical repetitious task to update the remaining pages and skins, but not tonight, I'm spent.  I tested on mono at demo2.mojoportal.com, it did load the MasterPage but something went wrong loading the rest of the page content as you can see. I'll follow up with that and see if I can pin down the problem.

I've been getting very excited learning about the Web Part framework. I know I said I would pace my changes with mono support but I think what I will do is keep a separate branch in step with mono support until the mono support catches up so I can move forward taking advantage of 2.0 ASP.NET features. Some of them are just too compelling to wait and besides it will take some time to make the changes and figure out exactly how I want to do it. Right now I'm thinking the Web Part model will replace the existing implementation for Feature Modules.

I definitely will try and help implement some of the missing mono features if I can, or at least provide testing and feedback for the guys who are doing it.

I just put up some release files compiled against the 2.0 .NET framework for those eager to play in the 2.0 space.

Unfortuantely I found another bug today in the mono 2.0 runtime that I haven't been able to work around and will probably have to wait for a bug fix in mono to get it working correctly. The site does run under mono using the 2.0 runtime as you can see at http://demo2.mojoportal.com but when posting back updates on pages using a CheckBoxList like the Module Settings page and the Page Settings page, I'm seeing this error:

System.Exception: Unhandled Exception while processing NeatUpload child request ---> System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index is less than 0 or more than or equal to the list count.
Parameter name: index
2
in <0x00096> System.Collections.ArrayList:get_Item (Int32 index)
in <0x00012> System.Web.UI.WebControls.ListItemCollection:get_Item (Int32 index)
in <0x0010f> System.Web.UI.WebControls.ListControl:LoadControlState (System.Object savedState)
in <0x00141> System.Web.UI.Page:LoadPageControlState (System.Object data)
in <0x0004d> System.Web.UI.Page:LoadPageViewState ()
in <0x0012f> System.Web.UI.Page:InternalProcessRequest ()
in <0x000aa> System.Web.UI.Page:ProcessRequest (System.Web.HttpContext context)--- End of inner exception stack trace ---

in <0x004a3> Brettle.Web.NeatUpload.UploadHttpModule:Application_BeginRequest (System.Object sender, System.EventArgs e)
in (wrapper delegate-invoke) System.MulticastDelegate:invoke_void_object_EventArgs (object,System.EventArgs)
in <0x0046f> System.Web.HttpApplication+<RunHooks>__0:MoveNext ()

I posted to the mono dev list and will follow up when I hear something but figured I would go ahead and make the files available to those who want them.

Things are shaping up on the VS 2005/ASP.NET 2.0 branch of mojoPortal. I am shooting for a release of that branch this weekend to ring in the new year.

It seems to be working very well on Windows and on mono with a few tweaks. There is really not much holding us back from just going forward with the vs 2005/ASP.NET 2.0 version.

So now I'm trying to figure out at what point we fully transition to 2.0 and how long we keep making releases for the 1.1 framework.

Most Windows developers I know already have VS 2005 and of course those of us who have it would rather work with the new version than the old version. But I get a lot of downloads of the release files so I'm not sure its only developers I need to consider. I would love to hear feedback on that question if you have a point of view.

This decision I think will have to factor into my versioning scheme. If we are going to support 2 release branches for a while I might bump the version for the vs 2005 branch of mojoPortal to 2.0 to distinguish it clearly from the 1.x branch but if we are just going to drop development on the vs 2003/1.1 framework version I'd be more likely to version the next release 1.x and from thence forward its not for ASP.NET 1.1/vs 2003 but for vs 2005. Obviously the second choice requires less effort than maintaining 2 branches, but will anyone be left behind? Speak up if you will be negativley impacted by a quick transition to 2.0

Release 1.0 is now available on the download page.

I've also put up a new tutorial on my personal site about configuring multiple sites running on a single ip address using apache Virtual Hosts with mod_mono on Suse 10.

In the article I walk through the apache setup for 2 mojoportal instances with different host names. Then I create a 3rd site using the multiple sites feature in the second physical instance of mojoportal so that it has 2 sites using the same web folder and database but the content and users are completely independent.

Its been a couple of months since we had a release but I think things are coming into place for a new release to happen within the next week or so.

Highlights of the coming release will be

• Support for LDAP authentication thanks to code contributed by TJ Fontaine
• Option to use a User ID for login instead of email
• New Forum Notification Subscription features and ability to delete threads and forums contributed by Dean Brettle
• A new module that lets you include html fragments from external files in a page
• The DatePicker and SmartCombo controls have been split into a separate assembly mojoPortal.Web.Controls.dll so they can be used easily in other projects
• Features for the Admin to update user names and delete users or flag users as deleted
• Various bug fixes

I'm thinking of a new versioning scheme, the previous versions were in the date format 20050912 which makes it easy to tell if you have the newest version but gives no idea how mature the project is. I think since we have passed the 1 year of development mark it is good to be able to know that from the version so the next version will be 1.2005xxxx to indicate the date of release and the number of years since the first release. Each year this will increment.

I'd like to thank Jasmin Savard for the new graphic depicting mojoPortal as boxed software.

I've posted a few things of interest lately on my personal site. Here is some information on the difference between VS 2003 and VS 2005 Web Projects and here is a new tutorial for installing Suse 10. It is the first in a series, the next one will show how to build mono from source code and the one after that will show how to install mojoPortal and configure Virtual Hosts in apache for using mod_mono.