Morten Bock

Umbraco gets an evangelist

Morten Bock — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:08:51 +0100

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 :-)

Wuhuu - Codegarden 2008 is here

Morten Bock — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:31:12 +0100

I just signed up for the 2008 version of Codegarden. I really like the look of the program that contains both planned speakers as well as the Open Space format.

So I'll see you there? Maybe swing by the Facebook Umbraco group and join the event and say hi as well?

Codegarden Session: E-commerce Direction

Morten Bock — Fri, 11 May 2007 12:57:06 +0100

Here on day 2 of Codegarden, all sessions are created in what they call "Open Space" which is a forum where everyone can suggest a session that they want to hold, or they want to listen to.

Gert Abildskov suggested an E-commerce session to discuss the future of the E-commerce extension, which has been floating around the community, but has never really found a home, so to speak. The extension was originally built as a framework that could be enable umbraco developers to create e-shop facilities. The problem/challenge so far has been, that its pretty diffcult to get started with the extension, and that what's really needed out there is an extension that is plug-n-play for a simple shop.

I've entered in a group with the purpose of trying to define what the E-commerce extension should develop into. The first things to be done are creating a repository on Codeplex and opening the discussion on how to proceed. So look out for news on this subject.

Codegarden Session: Custom Datatypes

Morten Bock — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:08:34 +0100

Version 3 ships with a new datatype that functions as a Usercontrol Wrapper. This means that you dont actually have to think about saving the values to the Umbraco DB.

So when is this usefull?

Actually this makes it possible to apply security on document properties. Because you just make a usecontrol that defines the UI, you can actually check to see which type of user is logged in, thus deciding wether the user should be allowed to see to property.

It also makes it easier to make a datatype that uses external data to decide which data to display in the property.

Other usage examples from the session was making a usercontrol to list childnodes with paging for high volume areas of the site, and building a small messaging system where you can pick a user an let them know that the page needs to be reviewed.

Niels also commented on the possibilities of placing usercontrols in the dashboard, and mentioned that version 3 supports tabbed dasboard controls. Neat!

Umbraco Codegarden: Day 1

Morten Bock — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:32:52 +0100

I'm at the Umbraco Codegarden event in London for two days, and I thought I'd do a bit of light blogging for those of you who are not here.

Niels Hartvigs Keynote Niels started out with a bit of general info about how Umbraco is doing, and all in al it's looking good. Number of installs have increased by some 350% and the forum is buzzing.

He also named five Umbraco MVP's who are recognized for their contribution to different aspects of Umbraco. The Five were:

All very well known names to anyone who've come across the forums from time to time.

And Umbraco 3 RC1 is out! There are a lot of new features and improvements:

Umbraco UI SQL calls have been reduced by 70% = speed for editors Umbraco now uses compiled XSLT's = SPEED for frontend websites Content channels makes it possible to edit content using f.ex. Word 2007 or client that supports Metablog API New RTE based on TinyMCE making it bossible for RTE usage with autoform (yay!) Syntax Highlighting for developers in XSLT's and the new javascript editor (also yay!) Document types can have large icons and descriptions opening up for better usability for Editors. Umbraco Base (By Per) is included making it very easy to call .Net methos from Javascript, thus making it easier to ajaxify your website.

I've probably forgotten a lot, but there are a lot of goodies in there!

I'll try to keep you posted on the sessions I attend.

Oh, and pictures from Codegarden07 here!