Morten Bock

Thoughts about Umbraco as a modular CMS

Morten Bock — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 12:03:52 +0100

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 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:33:43 +0100

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 — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:47:39 +0100

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 — 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 :-)

Time for new challenges

Morten Bock — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:32:02 +0100

After two good years at my current position at Up-Site, it is time to try something new. So from September 1st it is on to new things. What those things will be is not clear yet, but I hope it will include lots of learning experiences, as I am eager to dig deeper into the world of programming.

Will it include Umbraco?
I hope so. One thins is for sure, I am not going to let go of the Umbraco community, even if the future should not bring as much work related Umbraco projects.

All in all, this is an exiting time, so I will just kick it off with escaping for a weekend to a cabin in the woods with some friends from Holstebro Højskole. Fire and acoustic guitars, nothing like it! (Oh, and guitarhero and beer)

Just a tiny XSLT tip

Morten Bock — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:56:55 +0100

I just discovered this little tip that is quite handy (and obvious, if you allready know it).

Imagine you have som xml like this:

<message>
Thank god it is friday
<from>Tony</from>
</message>

Now, you would like to write out the actual message, and not who it is from.

If you use a regular value-of like this:

<xsl:value-of select="message" />

Then you will get "Thank god it is fridayTony", and I don't really want Tony's name in there. So I will do this instead:

<xsl:value-of select="message/text()" />

And voila, it only writes out "Thank god it is friday" and ignores the <from> element.

EDIT:

If you wanted to write out only the <from> element, you would do:

<xsl:value-of select="message/from" />

Umbraco forum has full text RSS again - WUHUU

Morten Bock — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:31:59 +0100

I don't know if you are as slow as I am, or even if this has been out there for a long time, but I just discovered that the Umbraco forum now again has body text in the RSS feed. This is really nice, as the other feed just kind of sucked...

But here it is: http://forum.umbraco.org/rss.aspx

Now go forth and post!!!

SPOT 08: Hidden gems

Morten Bock — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:58:26 +0100

For those of you who don't know what the SPOT festival is about, I recommend taking a look at the website. It's a two day festival in the middle of Aarhus, filled with upcoming artists of different sorts. The whole thing reminds me at bit of the open space format that was used at Codegarden. Basically you don't know anything about 80% of the performing bands, so when you go to a concert, you must apply "The Law of The Two Feet". If you don't like the show, just get up and go see another one.

A hidden gem

When you are cruising a lot of concerts it is obviously harder for an artist to stand out from the vast crowd of talent, but when I sat down to hear Maia Hirasawa I did not want to go anywhere else. Just pure soothing music flowing from the stage with nice arrangements and a twist of meaningful lyrics (I'm not really a lyrics man, so don't take my word for it...). Instead, listen to it yourself (Try to forget the sound quality. The CD is much better, so go buy it!):

She also has a MySpace page, but I fucking hate MySpace, so I won't link to it.

There was also a session called Nordic Cowriters that was basically a bunch of Nordic singer-songwriters that had been placed in a mansion, and forced to write a lot of new songs. Very interesting concert, and there was definitely some talent in that group.

Codegarden 08: Hidden gems

Morten Bock — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:56:35 +0100

This is just an ultra short writeup of some of the hidden gems presented at one of the Open Space sessions at codegarden.

You can now get the image source directly in the template: <img src='<umbraco:Item field="umbracoFile" nodeid="1072" runat="server"></umbraco:Item>' /> 'nodeid' is the id of the media item.

"Magic" document property names

These all work by adding a property to your document type with the mentioned name as property alias

umbracoRedirect When a nodeid is entered in this property on a page, Umbraco will redirect to that page.

umbracoUrlName If you want to change/override the niceUrl of a page, but don't want to change the pagename property, this is the way to go.

umbracoUrlAlias This will _add_ new url's that will show the page. For example if you have a page hidden deep in your nodetree, you can add "signup" to the property, and you can now access the page on "/signup.aspx" (or without the .aspx if you are using directory url's). You can add multiple shortcuts by separating with a comma (no spaces): "signup,membership,deeper/url/here".

Feel free to add more of the gems from the session (I didn't attend the whole thing)

Certification logos in place

Morten Bock — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:32:49 +0100

Today I completed the Umbraco certification test, so I thought this would be a good time to add a little "Certifications" box in my sidebar. So now I'm an MCP and an UCP(?). Gotta get me a new businesscard as well....