Morten Bock

Launced new blog

Morten Bock — 13. februar 2010

Last week I helped launch a new blog based on Umbraco. I used the excellent ImageGen package to generate the images for the galleries and it is working perfectly :-)

Tech wise, it is not feature complete yet, but it is already filled with nice tips about nice design, art and furniture for your home (in danish...)

Go visit http://livingsweetliving.dk/ to check it out.

How to edit Chrome thumbnails

Morten Bock — 24. november 2009

I just wanted to shared this tip, if anyone else wants a bit of control over the thumbnails that show up in the "New tab" page of Chrome.

For me, it was annoying that it had saved the http://twitter.com/ url, because the front page has the stupid login box where you have to get your mouse going. Instead, I want it to go to http://twitter.com/home which has a much better login box.

This is not supported by chrome, as far as I can tell, so I went digging. And I found a small file that contains the tabs. In my case (On XP in danish) it is here:

C:\Documents and Settings\Morten Bock Sørensen\Lokale indstillinger\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Preferences

Open it with your favorite text editor, and look near the bottom. There is a list of "pinned_urls" in what looks like Json to me. I just changed the link I needed from:

"1cc089548931c4fe0463e7a98ec6078e": {

"direction": "ltr",

"index": 2,

"title": "Twitter / Home",

"url": "http://twitter.com/home"

"1cc089548931c4fe0463e7a98ec6078e": {
"direction": "ltr",
"index": 2,
"title": "Twitter / Home",
"url": "http://twitter.com/"
},

"1cc089548931c4fe0463e7a98ec6078e": {
"direction": "ltr",
"index": 2,
"title": "Twitter / Home",
"url": "http://twitter.com/home"
},

And off we go :-)

Just remember to do this while Chrome is closed, otherwise it will overwrite your changes.

Importing Wordpress posts to Umbraco

Morten Bock — 13. oktober 2009

As you may have noticed, my blog has changed a bit this week. I finally got around to porting it to Umbraco. I did this for several reasons, but mainly because I feel at home with Umbraco, and I can tweak it to do just about anything I want. Wordpress on the other hand is PHP, and I just suck at that. So there you go...

Anyhow, after setting up my document types in Umbraco I needed to figure out how to get all my old content into the new site. Wordpress offers to export the entire content as xml, so that part was easy. The exported file was 3Mb, mainly because of some sort of screwed up tags back from when I was using the Ultimate Tag Warrior (I will miss the cool plugin names from Wordpress), which spit out a whole lot of empty tags.

The exported format is basically an RSS feed, but with some extra elements added by wordpress. One of those is an <excerpts:encoded> element, which does not have a namespace declaration at the top, thus making it invalid xml. So I needed to fix this before handling the file in my import routine. I just added it to the rss element:

<rss version="2.0"
    xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
    xmlns:excerpt="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/excerpt/"
    xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:wp="http://wordpress.org/export/1.0/">

Sweet, now the xml is all nice and tidy and ready to be imported. So, how to do the import? Well, I decided to do it through the Umbraco API using a dashboard usercontrol. To get the content from the XML file, I chose to go with Linq2Xml which is pretty neat for navigating through the XML file.

First thing I did was to disable some Lucene lock, because it made my import fail due to the number of operations done. I also set the script timeout value a bit high just to be sure:

Server.ScriptTimeout = 300;
Lucene.Net.Store.FSDirectory.SetDisableLocks(true);

Now, to load the Xml file. Pretty easy. I later added the possibility to enter the XML in a textarea instead, thus the commented out line:

XDocument loaded = XDocument.Load(Server.MapPath("~/usercontrols/wordpress.2009-08-01.xml"));
//XDocument loaded = XDocument.Parse(wpxmltextbox.Text);

XNamespace wpns = XNamespace.Get("http://wordpress.org/export/1.0/");
XNamespace contentns = XNamespace.Get("http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/");
var q = from c in loaded.Descendants("item")
        where (string)c.Element(wpns + "post_type") == "post"
        select c;

So now I got all my blogposts in the variable "q". time to feed them into Umbraco. It's not too nicely structured, but it does the job, and it's a one time deal, so no need to go crazy here.

DocumentType dt = DocumentType.GetByAlias("BlogPost");
User author = User.GetUser(0);

foreach (XElement item in q)
{
    string posttitle = (string)item.Element("title");
    string legacyurl = ((string)item.Element("link")).Replace("", string.Empty);
    string legacyid = (string)item.Element(wpns + "post_id");
    string posturlnodename = Server.UrlDecode((string)item.Element(wpns + "post_name"));
    string postbody = (string)item.Element(contentns + "encoded");
    string posttags = string.Empty;
    DateTime createdate = DateTime.Parse((string)item.Element(wpns + "post_date"));

    int i = 0;
    foreach (XElement tag in item.Elements("category"))
    {
        if ((string)tag.Attribute("domain") == "tag" && !string.IsNullOrEmpty((string)tag.Attribute("nicename")))
        {
            if (i > 0)
            {
                posttags += ",";
            }
            posttags += (string)tag.Attribute("nicename");
            i++;
        }
    }

    Document doc = Document.MakeNew(posturlnodename, dt, author, 1049);
    doc.getProperty("blogPostTitle").Value = posttitle;
    doc.getProperty("blogPostBody").Value = WordpressPostParser.ParseCodeBlocks(WordpressPostParser.ChangeImageUrls(WordpressPostParser.CreateParagraphTags(postbody)));
    doc.getProperty("blogPostLegacyUrl").Value = legacyurl;
    doc.getProperty("blogPostLegacyID").Value = legacyid;
    doc.CreateDateTime = createdate;

    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(posttags))
    {
        umbraco.editorControls.tags.library.addTagsToNode(doc.Id, posttags, "default");
        doc.getProperty("blogPostTags").Value = posttags;
    }

    doc.Publish(author);
    umbraco.library.UpdateDocumentCache(doc.Id);


    //comments here...
    foreach (XElement comment in item.Elements(wpns + "comment"))
    {
        if ((string)comment.Element(wpns + "comment_approved") == "1")
        {

            string commentAuthor = (string)comment.Element(wpns + "comment_author");
            string commentEmail = (string)comment.Element(wpns + "comment_author_email");
            string commentUrl = (string)comment.Element(wpns + "comment_author_url");
            string commentIP = (string)comment.Element(wpns + "comment_author_IP");
            string commentBody = (string)comment.Element(wpns + "comment_content");
            DateTime commentDate = DateTime.Parse((string)comment.Element(wpns + "comment_date"));
            
            Document commentdoc = Document.MakeNew(commentAuthor, DocumentType.GetByAlias("BlogComment"), author, doc.Id);
            commentdoc.getProperty("blogCommentAuthor").Value = commentAuthor;
            commentdoc.getProperty("blogCommentAuthorEmail").Value = commentEmail;
            commentdoc.getProperty("blogCommentAuthorURL").Value = commentUrl;
            commentdoc.getProperty("blogCommentAuthorIP").Value = commentIP;
            commentdoc.getProperty("blogCommentBody").Value = commentBody;
            commentdoc.CreateDateTime = commentDate;

            commentdoc.Publish(author);
            umbraco.library.UpdateDocumentCache(commentdoc.Id);
        }

    }

}

I am using some external methods to parse the body text of the posts. This is because Wordpress doesn't save html, but puts in linebreaks and renders paragraph tags at render time... brrrr... There are also some [source] tags leftover from the syntax highlighter plugin that I need to change:

These are the three methods I am using to parse the text:

public static string CreateParagraphTags(string postbody)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.Append("<p>");
    sb.Append(postbody.Replace("\n\n", "</p><p>"));
    sb.Append("</p>");
    return sb.ToString();
}

public static string ChangeImageUrls(string postbody)
{
    string parsedstring = Regex.Replace(postbody, "src=\"/wp-content", "src=\"/media/images", RegexOptions.Singleline);
    return Regex.Replace(parsedstring, "href=\"/wp-content", "href=\"/media/images", RegexOptions.Singleline);
}

public static string ParseCodeBlocks(string postbody)
{
    Regex regPattern = new Regex(@"(\[source(.*?)\])(.*?)(\[/source\])", RegexOptions.Singleline);
    Dictionary<string, string> replaceValues = new Dictionary<string, string>();

    int i = 0;
    foreach (Match match in regPattern.Matches(postbody))
    {
        string code = match.Groups[3].Value;
        if (code.Contains("<"))
        {
            code = code.Replace("<", "&lt;").Replace(">", "&gt;");
        }
        postbody = postbody.Replace(match.Value, string.Format("[[[replacecode{0}]]]", i));
        replaceValues.Add(string.Format("[[[replacecode{0}]]]", i), "<pre>" + code + "</pre>");
        i++;
    }

    foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> replaceValue in replaceValues)
    {
        postbody = postbody.Replace(replaceValue.Key, replaceValue.Value);
    }

    return postbody;
}

It's not perfect. For example it added some strange <p> tags inside my code blocks, but no more than I could handle by doing manual updates. For these methods I added some unit tests. It is just so much nicer to work with RegEx when you have tests to see if you are breaking existing matches while changing this stuff.

So there you have it. Posts imported and ready to go. It's so easy I don't know why I didn't get around to it before :-)

Natur-Energi bruger ufine metoder

Morten Bock — 10. august 2009

Jeg vil gerne lige gøre mit til at advare mod selskabet Natur-Energi der tilsyneladende ikke har meget respekt for forbrugernes rettigheder. Flere andre har også have uheldige oplevelser med dem, som f.eks. Tonni, der blev svindlet med nog bil streamer værk: http://ekstrabladet.dk/kup/vagthundene/article1195722.ece og John der åbenbart skulle skifte selskab fordi han var med i en spørgeskemaundersøgelse: http://24.dk/user/johnsmedehus/perma/2009/07/19/det_er_da_halvfarligt_at_deltage_i_sprgeskemaer_p_netet

Og Mogens har her på facebook beskrevet noget der meget godt ligner den situation vi også er i: http://www.facebook.com/wall.php?id=59887513919

Humlen i det hele er at Natur-Energi synes det er helt OK at de hijacker dit el-abonnement uden at fortælle det til dig. Det eneste du skal gøre er bare lige at gøre dit og dat for at vise at du "støtter grøn energi", og hvem gør ikke det? Det glemmer bare helt at fortælle at de selv er et el-selskab der har tænkt sig at overtage leverancen af strøm til dig. Og vupti, så får du en faktura. Hvis du prøver at ringe til dem, ja så får du lov at vente i 10 minutter til noget musik før linjen bare bliver tavs. Fedt...

Så hvis du støder ind i en Natur-Energi mand på gaden eller i dit storcenter, så stik ham lige en på kassen fra mig, og så skynd dig videre inden de får fat i din adresse!

Jeg har i hvert fald tænkt mig at sende et anbefalet brev med en opsigelse, og så kan de ellers stikke deres faktura et sted hen hvor solen aldrig skinner. Lorteselskab!

Update: Fandt lige et link der beskriver at det alligevel ikke nytter at købe skidtet: http://www.elsparefonden.dk/presse/arkiv/presseklip_archive/ni.2008-11-07.4088459089

Zyxel P-660R-D1 client list duplicate entries

Morten Bock — 29. juli 2009

This is mainly just a "note to self" about how to solve this problem if I come across it again.

Problem is that somehow the web interface for the router allowed me to enter the same ip/mac address to the "client list" table. This of course is not great, and for some reason there is no "delete" button on there. It just gave me an "ERROR: Duplicate MAC Address!" message. So I had to do a lot of digging to find a way to delete it.

In short:

1. Telnet to the router
2. Go to the Command Line if you are not already there
3. Type this command: "ip dhcp enif0 static delete all"

I found this in a CLI reference for another zyxel router (PDF).

I hope this might help out others in the same situation :-)

Thoughts about Umbraco as a modular CMS

Morten Bock — 05. april 2009

Umbraco is the friendly CMS. At least when you are a developer or an editor. It's just one of those things that grow on you when you get into the mindset of using the ultra flexible framework that it is. Still, once in a while, a new user comes by and can not understand why it is so hard to create a site using the existing packages. That makes me wonder. Because as time goes by, the new users seem to warm up to the concepts.

When I have been in positions where I recommended Umbraco to companies, they always ask if there are a lot of plugins/addons/modules (take your pick), and I have always answered that Umbraco is not as such a modular CMS. Not because it is not possible, but because it is often really fast to build the functionality that you want, instead of installing a module that might not fit your needs 100%, and then spend time trying to squeeze your ideas into that module.

With V4 of Umbraco a lot of effort has been but into making it easier for the new users by giving them the Runway site that supports Modules. This is cool, and probably will get some to hang in a bit longer than otherwise, which again gives them time to warm up to the concepts of Umbraco. But I am wondering if plug'n'play modules on a larger scale would be the way to go?

The upside would probably be a wider adaption in small site installations, and maybe a more active marketplace for commercial modules through the package repo. But is it the right way to go?

Personally I hope that Umbraco remains on the current balance between flexibility and availability of modules. I like the concept of starter sites which gives a great foundation on a blank Umbraco install. But I am not a big fan of packages that hook directly into the existing site. I do love the packages that simply supply some new functionality, that you then have to spend a little time configuring, which in turn gives you lots of control.

So the question remains: How much of an Umbraco enthusiast should you need to be, in order to be able to extend your site with existing packages?

I do not have the answer to that, but I am really looking forward do discussing this and much more at the Core/MVP retreat and Codegarden in June. See you all there!

Setting up membership in Umbraco

Morten Bock — 01. april 2009

I played around with the membership features of Umbraco tonight, and I thought I would share my findings. Mostly because it is just incredibly easy to do without even compiling any code. Just pure templates and a single entry in the web.config file is all it takes.

I started by installing the Runway package, to get a basic website.

First of all, I set up my members area with a member type and a member group:

Now I need to tell asp.net which Member Type I want to use when creating new users. Find this line in the web.config file:

<add name="UmbracoMembershipProvider"
  type="umbraco.providers.members.UmbracoMembershipProvider"
  enablePasswordRetrieval="false"
  enablePasswordReset="false"
  requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false"
  defaultMemberTypeAlias="WebsiteUser"
  passwordFormat="Hashed" />

Edit the attribute "defaultMemberTypeAlias" to the Member Type you want. In my case it is "WebsiteUser".

Now we are ready to create the Sign Up form. I do this in a new template, which is just a copy of the Runway Textpage, but I add the following after the body text:

<script runat="server">

protected void CreateUserWizard1_CreatedUser(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Roles.AddUserToRole(CreateUserWizard1.UserName, "BasicUsers");
}

protected void CreateUserWizard1_ContinueButtonClick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Response.Redirect("/member-area.aspx");
}

</script>

<asp:CreateUserWizard ID="CreateUserWizard1" OnContinueButtonClick="CreateUserWizard1_ContinueButtonClick" OnCreatedUser="CreateUserWizard1_CreatedUser" runat="server">
    <WizardSteps>
        <asp:CreateUserWizardStep ID="CreateUserWizardStep1" runat="server"></asp:CreateUserWizardStep>
        <asp:CompleteWizardStep ID="CompleteWizardStep1" runat="server"></asp:CompleteWizardStep>
    </WizardSteps>
</asp:CreateUserWizard>

Inside the script block I react to two events. When the user is created, I add him to the "BasicUsers" group, which is the one I will give access to my members area. The other method simply redirects the user to the member area when he finishes the signup wizard. (EDIT: Petr suggested that you use ContinueDestinationPageUrl="/member-area.aspx" instead of the redirect method, which I agree with)

Now users can sign up for membership, but we also want them to be able to log in. So we add this to the subNavigation div in the Runway Textpage template:

<asp:LoginView ID="UmbracoLoginView" runat="server">
    <AnonymousTemplate>
        <asp:Login ID="Login1" runat="server"></asp:Login>
    </AnonymousTemplate>
    <LoggedInTemplate>
        Welcome
        <asp:LoginName ID="LoginName1" runat="server" />
        <asp:LoginStatus ID="LoginStatus1" runat="server" />
    </LoggedInTemplate>
</asp:LoginView>

That is all the code that is needed. All that is left is creating content:

The login page is just a textpage with some text about logging in. The Sign Up page is using my new template with the CreateUserWizard control on it. The Member Area page has Public Access set like this:

That is all there is to it. Pretty easy huh? Feel free to post any questions in the comments, and I will try and answer to the best of my ability.

A bit of stats for the year 2008

Morten Bock — 31. december 2008

As many others, i think it is fun to look at the stats for my blog. So here is a little info from Google Analytics:

Most visited

The top 10 url’s visited on this site are:

Only two of these were created in 2008. The Google Analytics post is massively in the lead with 3,386 pageviews. The front page in comparison only has 1,289 pageviews.

Traffic sources

Search engines (Google) represent 63.08% of the traffic. Referring sites is 26.76% and direct traffic is 10.16%. The Umbraco forum in itself is 7.51% of the traffic.

Visitors

48.45% of my visitors use Firefox, and 43.48% use IE. I take that as a sign that this is a geek blog, which suits me fine :-D

36.26% are from Denmark, and 18.96% are from the United States. On a continental level it looks like this:

Northern Europe 49.32%
Northern America 22.08%
Western Europe 9.09%
Southern Europe 4.79%
Australia and New Zealand 3.34%
Eastern Europe 2.82%
Southern Asia 2.43%
Western Asia 1.94%
South-Eastern Asia 1.38%
Eastern Asia 1.00%

Happy New Year

Get safe into the new year, and thanks for all the visits :-)

Umbraco gets an evangelist

Morten Bock — 06. oktober 2008

I just received the news form CGUS that Douglas Robar has has joined the Umbraco company as an evangelist. This is great news and a positive recognition of the huge effort that Doug has put into the forum and the community, which has also earned him two(?) MVP awards.

I like the idea of the evangelist position that I also know from the Microsoft developer departments. (Don't know if this is common in other places). It will be of great value to the community to have Doug as maybe a sort of middle man between the users on the forum and the core developers.

Congratulations Doug, and I hope you have a blast spreading the Umbraco gospel :-)

Starting new job at Vertica

Morten Bock — 25. august 2008

As some of you may have read in my last post, I recently decided that it was time for new challenges. Well, the challenge has now been found, and as of september 1st I will be starting my now job at Vertica.

I will be starting out as a trainee on Verticas integrations team, where I will be working with Microsoft BizTalk server, amongst other things. This is a great and exciting challenge as I will be doing stuff that will not eventually end up in outputting an html page.

I want to thank all the people in my network and from the Umbraco Community that have contacted me with interresting proposals for both freelancing and carrer opportunities. I feel lucky!