I'm thinking of switching from FreeTextBox to FCKEditor for the Html WYSIWYG used in this project.  FreeTextBox is great but its not as free as I'd like it to be for this project.  FCKEditor is licensed under the GNU Lesser Public License and most importantly includes the source code.  It also looks plenty feature rich, I let you know how it goes with a trial.

As promised a new release is now available on the download page including the new Image Gallery and File Manager features.  The File Manager feature allows you to manage the file system subject to the permissions that the .NET worker process has. For my installation on monoForge, I had the staff make my Data folder and all its children writable, you may wish to do the same if you want to be able to upload files and also images for the Image Gallery and you are hosting a site there.

I tested the installation process much more carefully for this release, but as always if you run into problems please post a message in the forums.

I had to comment out the use of the HttpUpload module (SlickUpload) because I'm so far unable to get it to work under mono. This feature allows large uploads and has a progress bar. You can use it if your site is installed on a windows machine by setting the web.config entry UseUploadModule to true and uncommenting the HttpModule entry.  I think the problem is in mono, not in the module code but I'm having a hard time figuring out just what to report for a bug since I haven't yet pinned down why it doesn't work.  I posted the error and the code in the Bugs Forum if you want to try and help.

I'm almost finished with a new File Manager module based on the free open source SeekDotNet File Manager  Its pretty sweet and was easy to integrate.

I'm also using a free and open source HttpModule for file uploads written by Chris Hynes. Its called SlickUpload and it can handle very large files and supports a progress bar easily.  It also integrated easily with just a few lines of code and a little javascript.  I've been looking for something like this for a long time and am really glad to have found it. I've used the ABCUpload control and its pretty nice too but I needed a free one for this project since this project is free and open source.

For those of you who had troubles with the last release I promise to test the installation process more carefully, there was some bad data in the initial data creation scripts. I don't have an upgrade procedure in place yet but thats one of the reasons I'm still calling the releases alpha. I think you can upgrade though by replacing all the files and then carefully comparing the table and data scripts to your database and modify your db where needed. At some point I will have an automatic upgrade process but thats my best advice for now. I'm shooting for a new release by Sunday evening hopefully with both the new Image Gallery and File Manager modules.

I'm also happy to report that the performance improvements in mono for ASP.NET are very evident since they upgraded the servers at monoForge to the newer mono 1.1 branch.

Exciting times at mojoPortal!

It's pretty much ready. I will try for a new release this weekend. You can see it now, look under the Features menu or click here.

A new release is now available on the download page with several bug fixes.  I wanted to get these fixes out before I start work on the Photo Gallery feature. You'll notice a few structural changes in the folder hierarchy. I have moved the Register, Login and User Profile pages into a folder named "Secure". I plan to soon add page level configuration for requiring SSL but by moving these pages into a special folder you have the option in IIS and I guess also in Apache to require SSL for all files in the folder.  I'm just thinking ahead of ways for hardening an installation. I've also moved all files that can by uploaded or updated by the site code into a folder named "Data", this way you have the option of limiting write priveledges for the ASP.NET worker process to this folder and its sub folders rather than having to allow it for the whole site folder structure.

In case you are interested, as of today we've had 281 file downloads about 76 of which are for the VS.NET solution source code. The rest are for deployment files or the monoDevelop solution for the MySQL data layer.

Update: 11/29/2004 There was a problem with the original files I posted yesterday for deployment on monoForge so if you already downloaded it please download again to get the corrected version. Only the monoForge deployment version was affected, it had the wrong version of mojoPortal.Data.dll in the bin.